by Lita Brusick Johnson

Have you ever talked with a person whose every sentence begins with I? "I am...." "I did ...." "I think...." That’s bad enough in casual conversations. But it’s absolutely deadly in someone who claims to be prophetic.

And there are lots of people making that claim today! A two-second Web search yields 7 million links to occult, Muslim, Christian, and other "prophetic" sites (some complete with animated crackling flames).

Church folks often think of the Old Testament prophets who pointed to the coming of Christ. But being prophetic means more than reading the tea leaves of the future. Prophetic, from its Greek root, describes one who speaks before the people, who speaks for God. It’s an amazing concept: God using human beings to declare God’s judgment and intent in ways that change lives, spark action, overturn unjust systems, and lead to reconciliation. The prophetic voice is a gift of God that tears down and builds up. It shapes and re-shapes Christian community, even as it advances justice and wholeness.

But sometimes individuals equate their will with God’s will, their voice with God’s voice. The claim to speak for God has at times resulted — literally —in crackling flames for those who did not agree. Today, too, we hear preachers and their followers declaring "Thus saith the Lord!" Many vehemently denounce not only "sin" but also specific "sinners" whom they threaten with the direst of punishments. Sometimes it’s hard to figure where egos end and God begins.

Prophetic is a word used in Washington, D.C., too. When I worked for our church’s advocacy office, I grew weary of Christians from all sides of the political spectrum declaring that their position on a particular bill was "prophetic." That’s a real discussion stopper! For if I say "Thus saith the Lord," you must be speaking against God if you don’t agree with every nuance of my position.

How then, in the Babel of claims to be prophetic, can we resist the urge to clap our hands over our ears to shut out all the confusing voices? How do we discern the truly prophetic word, the gift of God, amidst all the chaotic chatter?

We get some clues about what it means to be prophetic as we light the candles of our Advent wreaths and hear words spoken by Old Testament prophets about God’s light in the midst of this world’s darkness. We remember John the Baptist, who called people to repentance and pointed toward Jesus. They illustrate clearly that there is no I in prophet. Prophets always point to the Other.

So how might we discern how God is speaking to us today? It helps me to think of "I-less" prophets as fragile pieces of glass that reflect, refract, collect, and focus God’s light. Their importance is not in themselves, but in what the Light does with and through them.

Like a Mirror
Prophets reflect light, to help us see what is. The prophetic word is like a mirror that uses light to reflect back to us what is. God’s light comes to us through observation and reason, and prophetic mirrors reveal truths that make us uncomfortable, truths that reveal inconsistencies between what we say and what we do. Mirrors expose truth. When I see myself in the prophetic mirror, I see myself and my actions revealed as what they really are — whether I am truly choosing to love my neighbor as myself or simply walking by on the other side of the road, allowing suffering to go on while I protect my carefully nurtured appearance.

Mirrors are necessary, for to change reality we must first see what is clearly. But mirrors alone can drive us to despair, like Don Quixote encircled by mirrors. Mirrors alone are not sufficient.

Like a prism
Prophets refract light like a prism, to help us imagine what can be. Prisms bend light to show the rainbow of colors that make up white light. Just so, prophets reveal that there is more to God than blinding light and harsh judgment. Prophets point to God’s reconciling intent. They point to God’s love, expressed in Christ Jesus. The Old Testament prophets cast a vision that still rings true: a world where faithfulness is the norm, where widows, orphans, and the most vulnerable can expect fair treatment, where all made in God’s image have the basics of life. The prism’s rainbow proclaims God’s promises that give hope for the future to those who know that God has more in mind than simply what is.

Prophets both reflect and refract God’s light. For if judgment without vision leads to despair, vision without judgment leads to pious platitudes. Prophets help us both to see clearly what is and to imagine what can be. They live in the tension between judgment and vision...between the law and grace… between what is and what should be.

Like a telescope
Prophets collect light, to help us discern what to do and how to do it. Living in that tension, some prophets are like the glass lenses of telescopes. The more light such lenses gather, the brighter is the image seen. Such prophets gather knowledge, energy, wisdom, and resources from all directions. They collect light to help us see clearly what can be accomplished in that middle ground between current reality and vision. They focus on what and how: specific actions that make the church more faithful and society more just.

Like a spark
Prophets focus light, to spark action in community. The prophetic word is like a magnifying glass. Every Girl Scout knows that such a lens can concentrate sunlight in one spot to kindle a flame for a campfire. Some prophets have the gift of focusing God’s light in ways that spark wildfire movements for renewal and change within church and society.

Pieces of glass
Prophets are like fragile but essential pieces of glass, not noteworthy in themselves. They are a powerful witness when they reflect, refract, collect, and focus the light of God. By God’s grace, prophets are everywhere, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see. Some examples:

> Artist Wendy Brusick, a member of Pilgrim Lutheran Church in Warwick, Rhode Island, holds up a mirror to those of us in the "shop ’til you drop" sorority. She invites us to see what is: the consumerism in our culture that consumes us. Her sculpture features an old cast-iron scale. On one side of the balance is a glittering mound of money, rhinestones, tiny cars, and credit cards. But this glitzy monument is outweighed by a feather-light word painted in red on the other side of the balance—tekel, a word of judgment the prophet Daniel interpreted to King Belshazzar: "You have been weighed and found wanting." What is the handwriting on our wall?

> During the brutal Liberian civil war, God’s light was refracted into a rainbow of hope when it passed through the prism of George Kolle. His home had been shelled and his father and several siblings were killed as the family fled. In a crowd crowded refugee camp, George spoke for God with his hands. He cut into spent brass artillery shell casings that had been harvested from the killing fields and straightened the curved surfaces to fashion crosses. Forming the symbol of God’s love from the very weapons that killed his family, George witnessed to the God of hope, who wills reconciliation in the midst of violence.

> U2’s lead singer, Bono, gathers light from all sectors of society to telescope the global community’s attention toward an achievable goal: reducing by half the number of extremely poor and hungry people by 2015. Powered by the sweeping vision of God’s justice, Bono uses his celebrity to raise awareness about poverty and HIV/AIDS in Africa, engaging with anyone and everyone who can make a difference: from business leaders to youth, from President Bush to the editor of Vanity Fair. He cajoles the leaders of wealthy nations to make specific changes in aid, trade, and debt policy that reduce the burdens on the poorest countries. He’s brought visibility to the One Campaign to Make Hunger History (of which the ELCA is a part; see www.elca.org/advocacy/one). In the middle ground between reality and vision, Bono encourages each and every person to take specific actions that do make a difference.

> Leymah Gbowee is like glass that focuses light on tinder. Her actions in 2002–2003 helped spark a protest movement that helped end the decade-long civil war in Liberia. Leymah is a mother, a Lutheran woman of no particular authority or power, who said, "No more!" She literally sat down and invited others to sit down with her. Women linked arms with women and sat down at the airport, in front of government facilities, in the rebel strongholds.

Women of the Lutheran Church in Liberia joined hands with Muslim women, protesting for peace. "Our faith became the light of our journey," Leymah says. "Lying on our bellies with our backs to the sun, fasting and praying, was the position that puzzled a lot of people, including former President Charles Taylor. We wore sackcloth and ashes for six months while acting for peace," facing guns and whips and bribes. These women’s simple relentless action helped force the two sides into a ceasefire.

In this Advent season, as we light the candles and rejoice in the Light that dispels this world’s darkness, we pray: Stir up, O Lord, your power and come. Come to us. Speak to us. And give us ears to hear the prophets in our midst through whom your voice speaks today.