prophetic desperation

My last entry, on prophetic loneliness, ended by introducing another characteristic of the prophets--desperation.

I came to this realization in the course of teaching the topic last month. As I was desperately trying to communicate my message (as always, across vast language and cultural barriers), I sensed how the words and actions of the biblical prophets also reflected desperation.

For the small group activity, I had asked the students to find examples from the prophetic books that fit four categories of prophetic communication that I had identified from my own reading.

They are:

1. Analysis and Truth-telling. The prophet looks around at the world and observes that it is not as God designed it to be. Then the prophet tells the truth about the world. I think here of Amos, for example, in chapter 8:4-6. He identified the social situation of his time and decried it as it was.

2. Prophetic Displays/Dramatizations. The prophet enacts before the people the message he is trying to communicate to them. The prophet Hosea, for example, married a prostitute in order to show Israel that they were prostituting themselves with gods who were not God, with gods who neither loved Israel nor had married her (as Yahweh had) (Hosea 1-3).

3. Parables and Allegories. We think of parables in the ministry of Jesus, who certainly continued the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. One of my favorite parables is that which Nathan told to David after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband (2 Sam. 12)

4. Visions. The prophets saw visions and reported them. I chose to highlight Isaiah 6.

In the course of proclaiming again these texts, I realized a common thread: God is persistent in trying to reach God's people. God is desperate to turn the people back to himself. Consequently, God uses the prophets in many and various ways. If simple analysis and truth-telling does not get through, God will dramatize the people's sin before their very eyes; the prophet performs a drama. Where words cannot communicate, perhaps actions stand a chance. On the other hand, perhaps the limits do not lie with words but with the manner of words; not analysis but imaginative portrayal will get through. In desperate times--but not only desperate--only story, parable, hits home. Still, If even parable will not do, perhaps a vision of the Holy Itself will convince one of his sin. In the case of Isaiah, "a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips", purification begins with the prophet.

There are doubtless many ways to tackle a subject as big as the prophets. For this time and place, this was mine.

-Joe