The Not So Minor Prophets

A week ago, I preached from the prophet Zephaniah, and it made me think about the Minor Prophets as a group (so named because their scrolls were short, rather than an indication of their theological importance).  Most of us know so little about these voices of God, so bear with me as I reintroduce them. I’ll explain why in a moment.

There are twelve of them, something the Gospel writers picked up on as significant, for in it they saw a sacred congruence. God seemed to work in predefined sets—threes, sevens, and twelves—so, there are twelve tribes, twelve prophets, and then twelve disciples. Do not make too much of the numbers, but consistency is always a clue to significance. If something comes in one of these sets, we are to pay attention.

Now, some of the Minor Prophets are well known—Jonah and Micah lead the way—everyone knows the great fish story, and everyone seems to know Micah 6:8 by heart (“…do justice…love kindness…walk humbly”). Amos, the angry firebrand, is fairly familiar, and Hosea with his extraordinary marital problems (marrying a practicing harlot) is noted. 

But then there are the others—we know little or nothing of them.

Nahum and Obadiah were prophets to nations beyond Israel (Babylonia and Edom, respectively—both with the warning that even though God used them for the discipline of Israel, their own time of judgment was coming). Habakkuk and Zephaniah shared the stage with Jeremiah, albeit from different vantage points—Habakkuk was a priest in the Temple, Zephaniah a royal. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were all from the Restoration of Ezra and Nehemiah, but again with very different visions—Haggai was the prophetic support for Ezra’s societal reforms to ensure that Exile never happened again; Zechariah was really an apocalyptic visionary, and Malachi was lost in the fog of something coming—someone coming (who we name the Messiah). 

There were all captured by God for a specific purpose of interpreting the times for God’s people. In a marvelous little book, Jewish Meditation, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan argues that they all became prophets through the practice of deep sitting in the presence of God. We often are curious about how prophets gleaned their message, and here is a beautiful thought—they spoke a Word God gave them as they took the time to be with God in full awareness, focus, and attentiveness. 

Let that last thought sink in—we often wonder why prophets are so rare in our time (if they exist at all anymore). Here is a potential answer—we have lost the practice of contemplation. 

Rabbi Kaplan and Christian writers like Richard Foster and Richard Rohr all note a momentous shift in faith practice that was coincident with the Enlightenment—as reason took top spot in academic lists of human attributes, contemplation fell as being irrational. The result was that religions became intellectual exercises. We see this in the writing of 20th Century theology—the Niebuhrs, Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Emil Brunner, right on through even contemporary theologians like N.T. Wright, John Dominic Crossan, and Marcus Borg wrote highly academic, completely rational theologies. Even voices like C.S. Lewis and Eugene Peterson followed suit. What was lost was an emphasis on the mystical practices of faith like deep, silent prayer; reading the Word with no thought of interpretation, but simply to hear it (i.e., lectio divinia); or repeating  a single verse until it simply becomes a part of one’s awareness. That loss was not mourned because they were seen as irrational practices.

However, recently, there has been a reawakening to the power of these lost practices. There has been a rekindling of prayer for prayer’s own sake (e.g., our own prayer room at church); reading scripture not as a work of higher criticism (i.e., taking it apart to know who wrote it, when, and what the original languages say), but as a call to service (i.e., taking a word and letting it actually lead you into the day, relationships, and meetings); and taking time to just be with God with no other thought than being with God.

Rabbi Kaplan invites us into the world of the prophets with such a new awareness. As they sat with God, they heard God; as they heard God, they knew what needed to be done. 

As we consider and reconsider our life and work together at church, this invitation could well lead us into a deeper, fuller awareness of who we are within our corner of the world. It could well help us form the message we need to share with our neighbors and how to be even more neighborly than we already are. 

Ready for a scary bit?

Maybe we are to be prophets to our community.

By that, I do not mean standing on a corner shouting condemnation and brimstone (a gross misunderstanding of prophecy), but as a presence of the love, reclamation, and redemption we proclaim in Christ, lifting it from the page and making it real in our actual living within the world. 

To get there, we begin by sitting with God.

It’s scriptural.