All Saints' Sunday: Prophetic Witness, Prophetic Voice

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6a

John 11:32-44

 On 21 February this year five members of Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist punk-rock group staged an impromptu and clearly unwelcomed performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.  The piece performed was what they termed a “punk prayer”: “Mother of God, Chase Putin Away.”  They were stopped by security officials, and currently two of the members have begun harsh prison sentences for the crime of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.  I heard about the performance on BBC’s radio programme Beyond Belief, as well as an interview with Maria Baranova, a prominent social activist in Russia.  She voiced her concern as to the Church’s growing political influence in Russia, due in large part to its subservience to the  state; she voiced her concern that the Church was becoming simply another governmental office, an employee of the Kremlin.  This relationship with the state, she felt, handicapped the Church in furthering the work of the kingdom; in hearing the voices – not of those in power – but of the power-less.  She is not alone in her concern; some have opined that not since the 17^th century has the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed so much political influence.  What we can detect in Baranova’s words, and in those of others, is a concern for the Church’s loss of a prophetic voice – that voice which stands from the outside and calls people to a greater vision of reality and which is beholden not to an earthly kingdom of power, but to God’s heavenly reign of justice and truth.

One of the recent initiatives of our Episcopal Church is the development of Holy Women, Holy Men as replacement for Lesser Feasts and Fasts, and which makes provision for the keeping of saints’ days in the Church.  One introduction made by the new book is including many saints considered to be “prophetic witnesses”.  Among these are people like William Wilberforce who worked tirelessly for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain and in British colonies; the women’s suffragist and feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Prudence Crandall who, in the mid-19^th century, went to prison in our own country for opening and running a school for African-American children.  In their cases, and in that of many others, they stood against not only the government, but also against the religious authorities and structures of their day – the Church of England herself was heavily invested financially in the slave trade, for example.  On account their stances and actions, they were often vilified and persecuted by their contemporaries – social and religious; and it is only in hindsight that the truth of their causes and arguments have become widely appreciated.  It is in hindsight that we have realized their claim to sanctity, and come to celebrate their lives and their witness to God’s purposes among us.

The voice of the prophetic witness will always speak from without, always speak from the margins, unsettling their times, pointing out and opposing not only individual injustices, but systems which foster and thrive on injustice.  As such the prophetic witness is considered dangerous, because the ones in power and who control those systems understand these people as de-stabilising their world-view, undermining their authority and hence their power to control.  For Christians this should have a particular resonance, because it is the pattern we see in the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels.  Jesus comes with something radically new: he preached the blessedness of the most poor and most despised; he broke down the stringent divisions of table etiquette, and thereby of society generally;  he touched the sick and the dead and offered them the possibility of new life, spent time with women – prostitutes even, and called the religious authorities to task for their uncaring and demoralising attitudes towards their fellows.  In short, he de-stabilized the system which, while benefiting some, was far removed from God’s vision for humanity, what Jesus called the kingdom of God – and if you don’t think that language is inflammatory for its time, think again.  Today in the Gospel Jesus is the prophetic voice of life as he speaks those marvelous and definitive words: “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43); and then, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:44)  Yet, it seems to be this event which finally makes the authorities decide to do away with him.  Listen to verses just following the account of Lazarus’ resurrection: “Many…who…had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.  But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.  So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do?  This man is performing many signs.  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’…So from that day on they planned to put him to death.”  (John 11:45-47, 53)  Jesus’ proclaiming life even to the dead was the final straw, or so it seems, and his actions threatened the status quo, the power balance brokered by the religious authorities with the the civil authorities – that is, the Romans – and which kept them firmly on top of things.

Jesus was dangerous, and we do not often care to admit it; neither do we care to admit that had we lived in his day we would more than likely have sided with those who worked to maintain the status quo and thus our own comfortable positions in society.  Yet, so many of those we call saints, whom we venerate and remember patterned their life and witness on this particular aspect of Jesus’ own life – the willingness to speak the truth to the power structures – social and religious – of his day, structures which in their wake minimised and marred the image of God in their fellows; and we know they often suffered in ways similar to Jesus.  But they too spoke up for the most vulnerable in their societies.  They decried the too close relationship between church and state, and religion’s collusion with status quo injustice.  They pointed the accusing finger and spoke the harsh word to the religious and political powers around them   For these reasons, they were sometimes called traitors and heretics, revolutionaries and even atheists.  And yet today we call them saints, and admire them for subverting what we now understand as the apparently unjust systems of their day.  We venerate them, we commemorate them, but do we imitate them?  No, we usually don’t; and worse, we all too often vilify those who speak the prophetic word among us now.  I am reminded of words spoken by Helder Camara, one-time Roman Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in Brazil.   He once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”  Feeding the hungry is a corporal act of the mercy, but it does not challenge the powers that be; asking why there are hungry does.  This latter is the voice of the prophetic witness.  As Christians that is the voice we are called to listen to and the voice we called to be, because it is the voice of Jesus and of his saints.  And sometimes that voice is not nice, it is not pleasant, it is disturbing and may sound discordant.  It may shock, it may rattle our sensibilities.  Like the contemporaries of Jesus, we may be driven to scapegoat and persecute those who speak in it. 

As we celebrate and rejoice in the communion of the saints, let us bear in mind how many of them were conveyors of uncomfortable prophecy in their day, and let us pray that we may have the courage in our day to “follow [them] in all virtuous and godly living”, yes, but also in the prophetic stance of speaking truth to power – whether in society or the Church, of standing with the vulnerable even at the cost of ridicule and of our well-being, of being disturbers of the status quo for the sake of God’s justice and God’s kingdom.