The Prophet as Agent of God's Time

[A version of this was delivered as part of Barclay College's "Spiritual Emphasis Week"]

In the last post I discussed one way that time and eternity function in theology and in lives of faith in a direct experience of the indwelling Christ. These two posts address how a realizing eschatology changes the possibilities for spiritual transformation in the present, how God’s eternal promises are invading our lives at every moment, an apocalypse of the heart. Christ lives in us in His fullness. He dwells in our hearts in his completion, not as parceled out and obscured but as God’s revelation to the world. Christ resides in us as the crucified one, the resurrected one, and the glorified one. Christ is not only crucified, Christ is not only resurrected, Christ is not only glorified by the Father. The salvific and eschatological promises of the past and the future are directed incarnationally into every time and every moment.

Crucified, resurrected and glorified.

And the paradox of paradoxes is that Christ is all three eternally and dwells in us as this eternal presence. And according to Second Peter, we are “partakers” of this nature made incarnate in us (2 Peter 1:4).

What I want to say in this post is that the saints, the ministers, the faithful prophets of God, are those who see time for what it is. They are those who see the reality of time and are commissioned by God to proclaim the meaning of time and to embody the fullness of time. These are prophets. Prophets are those who can see God’s will and can call our brothers and sisters to a more living understanding of our place in God’s world, of our relationship to the fulfillment of God’s presence.

On Mercy, Commitment, and Being Right: John Woolman’s Way of Prophetic Non-Attachment

 

[[[This message was given at North Seattle Friends Church, 8/1/2015]]]

This is the Message from GOD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your prayer. He says, "If you are ready to stick it out in this land, I will build you up and not drag you down, I will plant you and not pull you up like a weed. I feel deep compassion on account of the doom I have visited on you. You don’t have to fear the king of Babylon. Your fears are for nothing. I’m on your side, ready to save and deliver you from anything he might do. I’ll pour mercy on you. What’s more, he will show you mercy! He’ll let you come back to your very own land."
Jeremiah 42:9-12

Many of you know that I have a special (and some would say excessive) affection for people of faith in ages past; people who lived lives of absolute surrender to the voice of God, who walked against the tide of human opinion and, in so doing, became a foretaste of heaven on earth. And, most of all, I have a special admiration for an unassuming colonial American tailor named John Woolman.

The Theology of John Woolman, part 3 of 6

The Colonial American Jeremiah: Woolman’s Prophetic Witness

In the last post, I explored how colonial American Quaker, John Woolman, came to spiritual knowledge. In other words, how did he know what he claimed to know of God's will? The answer to that question is to be found in an encounter with God that reshaped his understanding of reality and that dissolved physical/spiritual, temporal/eternal dichotomies.


In this post, I want to explore how the revelation Woolman received, which was spiritual and inward, made claims on human affairs and societal organization. In other words, I want to look at the way religious conviction can move beyond the predefined sphere of meaning we call "religion," and can shape all the venues that typically, and artificially, fragment human existence (i.e. political, spiritual, economic). The inward turns outward. I call this "propheticism," because the task of the prophet is to embody and pronounce the revelation she or he has received. This is what Woolman did, too.