Preached at Good Shepherd Berkeley on the 4th Sunday After Epiphany, January 31, 2021

Proper B: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

Our reading from Deuteronomy this morning reminds us of an unavoidable reality: there is no single final revelation, perfect in every detail, that can embody God for all time. Times change. Circumstances change. Cultures change. We invent new vices. We rediscover old virtues. We face new threats and stumble over new opportunities. Sometimes we grow fearful. Sometimes we become overbold. We need guidance. We need prophets here and now.

The written Scriptures, voices from the past, are our fundamental starting point for learning faith and hope and love. But they’re not the whole package. In every age, people of faith need living voices that can help guide us, can impart what God means to tell us here and now, in the moment where we live. That’s why the Eucharist always has a sermon. It’s a reminder that there has to be a spoken word alongside the written one. 

But Moses is frank about the difficulties. There will be false prophets alongside the true ones. Even those truly called by God may not always have good hearing, or they may garble the message in relaying it. But the false prophets are the real problem. Moses paints a very ugly picture of them. And, indeed, what could be worse than to substitute falsehood for truth?

We know about that. It’s become a hallmark of our time, hasn’t it? Falsehood hardly needs a disguise any more to masquerade as truth. It just caters to the anxieties and prejudices of its hearers and instantly it goes speeding its way around the world. “False prophet” has always been a good business opportunity; you can make money off it. And it’s a good way of getting people’s attention if that’s what you crave. It can help you hide your own demons and the things you hate in yourself. (I remember a series of vicious anti-gay preachers in the recent past who got caught with their pants down in very awkward situations.) And it can also create a sense of belonging for those who take it up and spread it and begin to feel that they’re a select in-group who alone know the real truth.

You don’t have to be religious, either, to be a false prophet. But it can help. The devil’s bargain between white nationalists and white Evangelicals in our time has shown that. Both groups feel themselves on the defensive because they are afraid of losing power over the rest of us. [Cf. the excellent op/ed piece by Thomas Edsall—”‘The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets'” in the New York Times for 1/28/2021.] 

I’m not attacking all Evangelicals (or even all white Evangelicals). There are faithful people among them, and they’re not the only denomination, over time, have fallen into false prophecy. Our Episcopal Church treated its own black clergy and people as a kind of second-rank church until fairly recent years. Roman Catholics had their anti-Semitic Father Coughlin in the ’30s. Lutherans and Reformed had their pro-Hitler cadres in Germany. The medieval church persecuted heretics and witches in whirlwinds of panic. Churches have often provided a home for false prophets. But that makes it all the more important to call them out when they appear and to say, “This is not of God. This is in the service of evil.” 

Jesus’ world had its prophets, too. Some were true prophets like John the Baptist, some false ones like the various leaders of armed bands who presented themselves as prophets of liberation but whom others called, perhaps not unjustly, “bandits.” All rather confusing, not unlike our own time. But Jesus, to his followers, was the prophet par excellence, the one Moses foretold. Why did they come to see him in that way? Partly, no doubt, for his teaching. Matthew, whose gospel we read from last year (“Year A” of our three-year lectionary cycle) emphasizes Jesus’ teaching. Mark, whom we’re reading this year, also has the teaching but adds a stronger emphasis on what Jesus did in his ministry.

Our Gospel reading this morning starts off with teaching: Jesus taught like a prophet with a message from God for here and now, not just a reiteration of received doctrine. The people were duly impressed. But there was more: he also demonstrated a prophet’s power for good. Right in the middle of the synagogue service, a man with an unclean spirit disrupted everything by challenging Jesus. Can’t you picture the congregations’s reaction? “Oh no! why did this guy choose a moment like this to raise a ruckus! Just when things were getting really interesting.” But the demon knew it was in danger—just like our demons of white supremacy and cultural Evangelicalism. It said as much: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” And Jesus did exactly that; he cast the spirit out. And it was a grim and ugly scene with convulsions and deep pain, producing a scream. Yet, it freed the man from the madness of falsehood and lies and restored to him the freedom of a fully human life. 

It must have been a stunning thing to witness. No wonder people were impressed. But it was more than just a spectacle. It was a gift of God’s healing power, a miracle of grace. And it was this that testified to Jesus’ standing as a true prophet. We do not serve the true God by harming other people. True prophets—like Jesus, like Francis of Assisi, like Martin Luther King, Jr.—go right on loving even the people who attack them, try to bring them back to their senses, aim at giving them new life. It’s false prophets who bring guns and talk about hanging their enemies. False prophets aggrandize themselves and bring death and destruction for others. Jesus brings new life. 

A “miracle,” in itself, is just something that causes people to marvel. But this was more; this was a life-giving miracle, a miracle of grace. We need more of those in our own times. And they’re happening already. When people feed one another, comfort one another, encourage one another, bring good news, help house others, share prayer with one another, give hope to others, we are experiencing miracles. It isn’t going to be easy. But true prophecy can, in the long run, face down false prophecy. And, like Jesus, we’re in it for the long run.

It’s important in these difficult times not to give up on anybody. We go on doing our best to love our neighbors, even when they’re being unlovable. It’s what Paul was writing about in that passage we heard from 1 Corinthians. It’s a difficult passage, more amenable to being lectured on than preached, and my first thought, as I began thinking about this sermon was, “Skip it!” But there is something important for us here. 

The gist of the situation that Paul was addressing is this: our early Christian forebears (at Corinth and at Rome, too) had some serious conflicts with one another. People were dividing up into two factions. One group—Paul calls them “the weak in conscience” believed in the grace Jesus preached, but they worried a lot about keeping all the rules as they had always known them. The other faction, called “the strong of conscience,” argued that the Gospel of Jesus overrides the old rules. In Corinth, they were saying, “Why worry about eating something that’s been sacrificed to a pagan god? Those gods are nothing. There’s only one God, the God of grace.” 

So the Weak were saying, “You liberals are turning everything on its head!” And the Strong were saying, “You conservatives are just not thinking this thing through clearly.” Or, as Paul puts it in Romans, the Weak are judgmental and the Strong are contemptuous. Sounds a lot like modern conflicts between Red State folk and Blue State folk, doesn’t it? Paul, who identified himself as one of the Strong, was saying to both groups, “Don’t forget that these are your sisters and brothers, your family, the family of grace. Don’t just dismiss one another.”

We face similar challenges in our time. We must not dismiss the people around us, even those who have fallen victim to false prophets. We must witness against false prophecy, we have to declare the true grace of God’s love and forgiveness. But we must remember that those who may have fallen victim to it are still, like us, creatures of God and beloved of God. The miracle we need and hope for now, however far off it must seem, isn’t just that false prophecy be defeated, but that we can and will find one another again on the other side of it.

That may sound unlikely. (But miracles are always surprises, aren’t they?) Maybe it would be easier just to ignore the deluded—give up on them. (That’s what the “strong” were tempted to do, wasn’t it?) We must not fail to call false prophecy out for what it is. Can we also remember to hold out hope for a time when our divisions will be transcended? It may seem an impossible thing. But with God all things are possible. And people, as Jesus showed, can in fact be rescued from unclean spirits by acts of grace and be given new life and hope.