Third Sunday After Trinity

Sermon preached by the Revd Anna Matthews

As we’ve heard in the gospel readings over the past weeks, Jesus has been preparing his disciples for the sort of reaction their ministry will provoke. It will rouse opposition from religious and political authorities who resent the challenge it brings to their power and status. It will provoke crises in families, as the meaning of relationship and kinship is redrawn through baptism and belonging in the Christian community. There will be hatred and suffering and persecution in Christ’s name – for the way of the disciple is the way of the master, and we know that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross.

 If I’d been one of the first disciples I suspect I’ve have been swiftly revisiting my life choices, and wondering whether I could recover my old boat and go back to being a fisherman. But here, in today’s Gospel reading, there is some comfort. ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.’ The disciples’ ministry will not just provoke opposition. There will be those who welcome them, who are hungry for the salvation they proclaim; who in Jesus Christ find freedom and forgiveness and life. Like the crowds in the gospels, who flock to Jesus even while the religious authorities are plotting ways to get rid of him, there will be people ready to support and welcome and provide for the disciples.

 And yet, even in these verses which promise a more positive reception, we should pause for thought. ‘Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward’, says Jesus. What does it mean to welcome a prophet? What is a prophet’s reward?

 Well, here our Old Testament reading gives us some insight, though it’s not particularly reassuring. It’s part of the account of Jeremiah’s prophecy about the future of the people of God. In 605 BC Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonians, resulting in king Jehoiakim having to pay tribute to the Babylonian Emperor, Nebuchadnezzar. A few years later, Jehoiakim refused to pay the tribute, and started plotting with other vassal states to revolt against Babylon. This is the point at which we hear some of the argument between Jeremiah and Hananiah, between true prophet and false. Jeremiah has by this point already prophesied that the temple will fall, Jerusalem be laid waste, and the people will be carried off into a long exile. This is exactly what happens in 587.

 Hananiah, by contrast, has a more hopeful message. ‘Thus says the Lord’, he proclaims, using the usual prophetic utterance. ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this house all the vessels of this house, which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took away from this place and carried to Babylon.’

 Jeremiah’s message is uncompromising, unwelcome, and unpatriotic. Believing that the preservation of the kingdom of Judah when the northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen was an act of divine providence, the temptation for the people was to see in the temple, in the land and in the monarchy guarantees of God’s protection of them against imperial threats. To prophesy the destruction of the temple, the place of God’s dwelling among his people, together with the fall of the land and the end of the monarchy is tantamount to treason. Jeremiah calls for submission to Nebuchadnezzar, not because he does not believe in God’s election of Israel, but because he situates Israel and Judah within God’s sovereign rule as the creator of all that is, who can use even the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar to achieve his purposes.

 For his prophecies, Jeremiah is threatened with death. No one wants to listen to him. Hananiah’s words are more beguiling: the Babylonian threat will be overcome in 2 years. History will show this to be wishful thinking, as it will vindicate Jeremiah.

 ‘Whoever welcome a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward’, says Jesus. And as Jeremiah reminds us, we must beware false prophets who say only what we want to hear, rather than what the Lord wants to say. Prophecy is not simply about foretelling the future as though it is an already settled state of affairs. In all prophetic utterances there is also a summons to faithfulness to what has been given – in the Old Testament to the keeping of the law and its repeated calls to care for the poor, the discriminated against, and the powerless. There is a recognition that God is not to be taken for granted – that belonging to God will bring judgement as well as blessing; that the God who is active in history will also act to vindicate his holy name when his people besmirch it.

 And this, in the end, makes true prophets prophets of hope. Jeremiah’s advice to submit to Nebuchadnezzar isn’t a cowardly fatalism that sees no alternative, but a conviction that even through this event of national trauma and humiliation God is active, and will act to restore his people. God is faithful even though the people are not. What he counsels looks like surrender to a people who have presumed that God’s promises will take particular forms. But through it God will write his law on his people’s hearts and summon them to a deeper trust. It takes courage for Jeremiah to prophesy. It takes wisdom and discernment to hear what he has to say and recognise it as the word of the Lord when it means dismantling the systems they have lived by for so long.

 ‘Whoever welcome a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward,’ says Jesus. So how do we recognise a prophet? How do we distinguish between the Hananiahs who say what we want to hear, and the Jeremiahs whose words are true but often difficult?

 Well, we test them against scripture and against all that God has revealed of himself. We know enough from the bible to be able to recognise calls to trust in nation, ethnicity, class or power as the idolatries they are. So do the prophet’s words and actions encourage us to trust in God, or in something else? Do they accord with what we know of the character of God who is holy and just and loving? Simply claiming to speak in the name of God is not enough, nor is popularity necessarily a marker of the genuine prophet – we remember that Jesus himself experienced rejection, and was chased out of his home town. As with all that Jesus says in this part of Matthew’s gospel, the test of a true prophet is fidelity to him. Do the prophet’s words and actions reveal Christ? Do they further the reconciliation of all creation with God which his death and resurrection make possible? Do they draw in to the kingdom’s promises those who have been excluded, denied dignity, told there is no space for them? Do they disrupt our complacencies and provide comfort for the afflicted?

 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, says Jesus, whose own proclamation of the word of the Lord led to condemnation and death. Jeremiah’s prophecies led him to death threats, the stocks where children and passers by mocked him, and being thrown into a well. He has long years of being ignored, mocked, and threatened. What persists in him is integrity, a truth he cannot hold in. The word of the Lord gives him no rest and little reward – save that of being faithful.

 So whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet can expect a similar reward – faithfulness to the God who continues to work his purposes out; whose word will not return to him empty but will accomplish that which he purposes. To welcome a prophet is to recognise in their mouth the word of the Lord, and to hear and respond. Welcoming a prophet will bring repentance and amendment of life, because this is what an encounter with Jesus Christ demands. It is supposed to change us. May he open our ears to hear and to respond.