THE PROPHETIC MOMENT
Micah 6:6-8
Matthew
13:54-58
"What does
the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with you God?"
"Prophets
are not without honour except in their own country and in their own
house."
About a third
of the Old Testament is made up of books referred to as "The
Prophets." We are probably all
familiar with some of them, or at least a few of their verses, whether from
Isaiah or Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel or
Jonah, though we are probably less familiar with Obadiah and Zephaniah to say
nothing of Habakkuk and Haggai. Then in
the New Testament we read about the "gift of prophecy" and how
prophets in the early church brought messages of encouragement and guidance to
congregations and individuals. We also read
about "false prophets" who proclaim "peace, peace" when
there is no peace, and prophets who misled the church usually out of greed. And then there are the self-proclaimed
contemporary prophets who clam to predict the future, some who claim to have a
hot-line to God, can heal you of all your diseases, and can tell you precisely
when Jesus will return. But there are
also others we deem prophets today who. in the tradition of the great OT
prophets, speak truth to power, proclaiming the need for justice if there is to
be peace and reconciliation. I generally
use the word prophet in this sense, but
when we use the word we need to be sure
we know who we are referring to.
The great
prophets of social justice in the Old Testament were not religious leaders or
professional preachers, neither were they fortune tellers who knew precisely
when the end of the world would come, nor did they spend their time writing
proof texts for the coming of the Messiah.
But as they witnessed injustice in the land, and saw the way in which
the poor were oppressed conrary to God's commandments, they declared in no
uncertain terms that if Israel did not change its ways, it would be judged by
God with dire consequences. But if they
did change, the prophets declared, God would fulfil his promise of peace. In that sense they predicted the likely
future, and also indicated that one day God would send his anointed one, that
is, Messiah, to establish God's kingdom on earth. Christians believe Jesus was that anointed
one and therefore fulfilled not just the law of Moses but also the promise and
hope of the prophets. Jesus, for us, was more than a prophet, but he was also a
prophet in the lineage of the great prophets of Israel.
In 1985
during the first State of Emergency while I was teaching at the University of
Cape Town, a well-known South African Roman Catholic theologian, Albert Nolan,
arrived, almost out of the blue it seemed, to give a seminar in our Department
at UCT. Albert, who was a leading figure
in the anti-apartheid struggle was on the run from the Security Police, so his sudden appearance was quite dramatic,
and our graduate students, who were already familiar with his writings, were
excited to meet him in person and listen to his seminar presentation. It was all about a new theological document called
the Kairos Document which was in the
process of being drafted by a group of theologians in Soweto and Johannesburg. As he read it to us and talked about it, we
soon realised that this was a momentous event, for the Document was the most
frontal theological attack on apartheid we had yet heard. It was, in the tradition of a Hebrew
prophets, a prophetic statement. At the end of the seminar we all put our names
to it and within a few weeks the document was made public, causing a major stir
within the churches and in government.
And those of us who signed it soon came under attack from various
quarters.
Next week Edwin
Arrison and I will be attending a
conference in Johannesburg to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Kairos
Document, and as a matter of interest, Alyson's great painting of one of
the Stations of the Cross, will be unfurled at the opening ceremony in Regina
Mundi Cathedral in Soweto. Also
attending the conference will be people from around South Africa and the rest
of the world, some of whom have subsequently produced their own kairos
documents. So what is so important about the Kairos Document that we should celebrate its thirtieth anniversary?
Kairos is a Greek word which means
"time," not time understood in terms of years, months, days, hours,
and seconds, that is chronological time; in the New Testament kairos refers to "God's time,"
the time of God's judgment and salvation.
Jesus arrived, St. Paul tells us, in the "fullness of kairos," (Galatians 4:4) in other words, at the right moment, and
Mark begins his gospel by saying that "the kairos is fulfilled. and the kingdom of God has come near."
(Mark 1:15). God's time or kairos is, in short, a "prophetic
moment." That is, a moment in time
when peoples and nations are in crisis and prophets arise calling them to grasp
the opportunity to change their ways or else they will face catastrophe.
The
mid-nineteen-eighties was such a time in South Africa. President P.W. Botha had infamously failed to
cross the Rubicon in 1983 and the country was heading towards civil war. At that "prophetic moment" the Kairos Document was a call to Christians and the churches to actively
resist injustice and work for a truly reconciled nation. Neither the government nor most white South
Africans, were prepared to accept this word of prophecy which so fundamentally
challenged the status quo with its clear cut message. But looking back, what the Kairos Document declared was right on
target. It was in the tradition of the great prophets of
ancient Israel. It was, as it claimed, a
prophetic theological document.
Prophets of
God's justice are invariably rejected by the authorities and end up in prison
or worse. It was Jesus who declared that
Jerusalem rejected and stoned the prophets, and they did so because they refused
to acknowledge the things that made for peace, namely doing God's justice. So, with reference to himself, Jesus declared
in the passage we read today, "prophets are not without honour except in
their own country and in their own house." And that was so true in South Africa, of Beyers
Naudé, Sheena Duncan, Desmond Tutu, Steve
Biko and others, as it is of prophets around the world today who are speaking
out about the ecological crisis facing us, or about the situation in Palestine,
and a host of other issues, including poverty and corruption in South
Africa. The message is the same as it
has always been, Unless you change your ways disaster will strike.
As we take
note of what is happening around the world as well as in our own country, we
would be foolishly blind if we did not recognise the global and national crises
facing us. The world has become a much
more dangerous place than we ever imagined when we entered this new
millennium. So we should listen to the
prophets. They are not prophets of doom
but prophets of justice and hope. This
is God's time, they declare, a time to grasp the opportunity to change. So let us not be among those who, as Isaiah
said, "look but do not see, or listen but do not hear." Rather let us following the counsel of the
prophet Micah and the Kairos Document
" do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God."
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 13 August 2015
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