Prophets and Us
Sister Elise Saggau, OSF
Advent is a time when the Church puts before us the voices of the prophets. The prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures are a motley crowd of religious spokespersons. They come from many walks of life, both high class and low class. They often come reluctantly, as the vocation of prophet is a terrible vocation and guaranteed to make people mad at you and even reject you or maybe even kill you. The ministry of the prophet, then, is often dangerous, or at least unpleasant. And this is because a prophet sees more clearly than others.
A true prophet is someone who reads the handwriting that is already on the wall. It is someone who can predict outcomes with some accuracy. Gerard Sloyan says that a prophet is “a person who has insight into the future course of human events based on careful observation of the present and has the courage to tell what he sees.” He adds, somewhat unnecessarily, that “prophetic voices are usually not welcomed.”
Prophets do not actually predict the future. The future may not turn out the way they envision it. But prophets are living in the light. They announce that if things keep going the way they’re going the results are going to be catastrophic. So? We need to do something NOW! There is urgency here. Let us change our ways NOW; it is not too late. The future the prophets foresee can be altered by what we do now. Our freedom definitely counts for something.
But prophetic voices are not always warning about catastrophes. The prophet knows that God is the one that saves and that God always does save. This does not mean that God will prevent disasters from happening in our human situations, but that in our human situations God will always be with us to see us through. And that there will be a “through.” On the other end of the darkness there will always be light, and this light will be there no matter how profoundly dark things seem to us now. Perhaps this is not a completely consoling idea. God’s promise never guarantees that we will not have to undergo suffering and loss. The very life of Jesus himself, obviously, does not provide an image of human life free of suffering and loss.
The prophetic ministry offers “an alternative perception of reality. It helps people see their own story in the light of God’s freedom and justice. Such prophetic ministry is alive among peoples who try to live together and discern together their future and their identity” (Walter Brueggemann).
These ideas remind us that ultimately we are not in charge of our world, of our communities, of our own personal lives, and certainly not of our future. We need to see how much we depend on something, someone greater than ourselves. We need to remember who we are and who God is. God’s freedom is a mysterious reality that is always beyond us. We are profoundly moved when we think how we ourselves were chosen by a God who is perfectly free and did not need to choose us. God did not need to create us or to create anything at all. God did not need to make any kind of promises to us. And yet this loving Creator did just that; and God is faithful.
This is always the prophetic announcement, the message of the true prophet: God is good and God will not abandon what God has chosen. God’s promises are true and enduring and God will never be anything but a God who is with us. This is what Advent is about. This is what Christmas is about.
