Foundry United
Rev.
“God is still speaking -
Reclaiming prophecy in our personal and political lives”
Sunday, September 18,
2011
Rev.
Fire in my bones: How prophecy disrupts the status quo
Jeremiah 20:7-13
This is the way I remember it. My memory may not be totally accurate but close, I think.
When I got here to Foundry in 2002 there was a trustee policy that homeless people not be allowed to sleep on our church steps. I don't think the policy was enforced much.
Sometime after Jana Meyer came to be our minister of mission in 2004, neighbors who live in the neighborhood started complaining that we were allowing people to sleep on our church steps. They said it was unsightly and felt unsafe. And I must admit that there were sometimes shopping carts parked on the sidewalk and cardboard shelters.
Jana and I talked about it. Jana said that she couldn't see herself telling people they couldn't stay on our church steps when the available shelter was in the condition it was. I said I had some appreciation for our neighbors' feelings. We bounced it back and forth. I asked Jana if she would be willing to talk with other churches and see how they are handling this tension.
Jana organized meetings. Several of the other churches she was meeting with were also members of the Washington Interfaith Network (WIN), which was already working for affordable housing. Jana asked why WIN couldn’t also fight for housing for people who are homeless. Amy Vruno, a new WIN organizer at the time, recognized this as a concern shared by many of the downtown churches. Monte Hillis who was minister of mission at National City church at the time said she had heard about a program in New York City that was highly successful at getting chronically homeless people housed. WIN organized a trip to Common Ground in New York City. Jana came back and told me about the work that Common Ground was doing in New York City. She told me that Common Ground's goal was not just to help homeless people, not just to feed homeless people, not just to clothe homeless people, not just to find shelter beds at night for homeless people. Common Ground's goal was to end homelessness.
As soon as Jana spoke the word, I knew that the only real possible solution to the problem of our housed neighbors being upset because our unhoused neighbors are sleeping on our church steps was the end homelessness in Washington, DC. The only solution is to end homelessness.
Ending homelessness in Washington, DC through housing first and permanent supportive housing, the model used by Common Ground, became part of the agenda of WIN. And we discovered that the idea had other supporters throughout the nation and here in the city. People in the city administration were already talking about it. WIN fought for permanent supportive housing here in DC and helped to create the political will to establish 1,100 units of permanent supportive housing.
We made ending homelessness in Washington, DC one of our five year goals here at Foundry. Our bishop John Schol heard about the idea of ending homelessness. He made a trip to visit Common Ground in New York City. After he visited he took his entire cabinet to visit. With our bishop we have formed a new non-profit called BeTheChange Development Corporation (BTC). Mandi Janis from our congregation has become staff for BTC.
This coming December 18, the Sunday before Christmas, Roseanne Haggerty, founder of Common Ground and Bishop John Schol, our bishop, will be here at Foundry to announce a partnership to develop hundreds of units of permanent supportive housing. We think the movement will go national within the United Methodist church.
Here's what happened, I believe -- God spoke a prophetic word into Roseanne Haggerty. God spoke a prophetic word into Jana Meyer. God spoke a prophetic word into Laura Zelinger who worked in the city administration at the time. God spoke a prophetic word into Bishop Schol. God spoke a prophetic word into the writer Malcolm Gladwell who wrote about ending homelessness in the New Yorker. God spoke a prophetic word into the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
God spoke a prophetic word and the word began to become flesh and to dwell among us. We experience it as an idea whose time has come.
We are doing a teaching series this fall on prophecy. The title of our series is taken from the slogan of our sisters and brothers of the United Church of Christ – God is still speaking.
God did not stop speaking when they sewed the back cover on the Bible. God still speaks prophetic words into nations and cultures and cities.
And God speaks prophetic words into our individual lives. There may be a prophetic word that God is speaking into your life today.
Here is what I want to say about prophecy today: Its context is commonly the discomfort and tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be, to quote Saul Alinksy. The breeding ground of prophecy is the discomfort that burns or nags us due to our awareness that the way things are is not the way things ought to be. This is true politically and personally.
Prophecy usually begins in a place of dis-ease in our lives. Jeremiah calls it "something like a burning fire shut up in my bones."
Where are you unhappy in your life? Most of us feel guilty about our unhappiness. We are so fortunate. Compared to the rest of the world, we have so much. We are so fortunate. We ought to be happy. Preachers guilt-trip us about our unhappiness. If we really believed in God we would be full of joy.
Our unhappiness is one of our greatest resources if we pay attention to it because our unhappiness is often the expression of the dis-ease that comes from the misalignment between the world as it is, and the world as it ought to be.
What makes you feel like drinking yourself numb? What makes you feel like watching endless reruns of Friends one after another? What wakes you up at 4 AM and doesn't let you fall back asleep?
There is a very effective TV commercial. It begins in an empty apartment. There is a parrot in a cage. The parrot says: "I can't take this. I can't take this. Not another day. "Can't take this. Not another day." As the parrot is speaking the apartment door opens and a man walks in and say "I can't take this. I can't take this. Not another day."
It is a commercial for the Washington Post classified ads.
The context for prophecy is something like a burning fire shut up in our bones. The place in our world that enables us to hear God's prophetic word is the place of our dis-ease and unhappiness. Do not feel guilty about your unhappiness. Pay attention to your unhappiness. Sit with your unhappiness.
Jeremiah longed to live a quiet life. But there was something like a burning fire shut up in his bones. There was an unhappiness; a dis-ease.
The prophetic word that comes from God is a transcendent and transcending word. It is a game-changing word.
Several years ago when our leadership team was working on a mission statement, which became our statement of call that you see on our bulletin every Sunday, we were looking for an adjective to describe the kind of worship we felt we were called to hear. We must have brainstormed 30 words. The word we finally decided on was transcendent.
Some people said, what does that mean? Is that like transcendent meditation? We talk a lot in staff about what the word transcendent means.
It is funny. These several years later, transcendent is sort of becoming an “in” word now. I was part of a discussion with a group of pastors most of whom are in a somewhat different place on a number of issues from where I am. We were having a discussion about worship and what made worship worship. The other pastors in the group started talking about the need for a sense of transcendence. It has to be bigger than us. It has to be greater than the sum of the parts.
I'm sitting there thinking, what are you fundamentalists doing talking about transcendence? That was bad of me, I know.
A prophetic word is transcendent. It transcends our ways of thinking. It transcends our categories. It transcends our either-ors.
I am staying awake nights saying do we satisfy the neighbors by doing what they want and have the police ask the homeless people not to sleep on our steps, or do we stand up to the neighbors and let the homeless people sleep on our steps. And Jana brings back a prophetic word from New York City that transcends the either-or in my head to which I have been captive.
The secret of prophecy is to be willing to sit with our unhappiness, to pay attention to our unhappiness, until a transcendent word comes. Prophecy transcends our way of thinking.
One last thing today – prophecy is beyond our control in the sense that it is not something that we can manage. It is not beyond our control in the sense that we cannot regulate our speech or behavior. But the prophetic word is larger than we are and we cannot control it.
I talked last Sunday about being given a prophetic word one Sunday and someone coming to me after the service and telling me that the prophetic word I spoke had been for him. It was a wired experience but it was sort of also cool. I made an appointment for him to talk in my office. At the end of our conversation, a voice inside my head said, "Okay. Your part of this is done." I said, No, it is not. I am the one who spoke this word into his life. I am going to direct this. So I made another appointment for him to meet with me. I should not have.
He had work to do to figure out God's call on his life that it was very hard for him to do with me because I represented the word spoken to him that he had to wrestler with. I actually held him back.
A prophetic word from God is larger than we are. We can control ourselves and our speech and our behavior. We can not control a prophetic word.
Pay attention to your unhappiness. Sit with your unhappiness until a word that transcends your categories comes. Pray for a prophetic word. And then let the word steer you rather than you trying to steer it.
I Corinthians 14:1 Pursue love and strive for the spiritual, and especially that you might prophesy."
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