If This Man were a Prophet

“If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.” What is a prophet? What do you think a prophet is? More to the point, what did Simon think a prophet was? He was a Pharisee, steeped in the Mosaic Law. He wanted fervently to be a good and faithful Jew. Thus, he was especially concerned with keeping himself free of ritual defilement and with observing as many of Moses’s 613 commandments as possible. Simon surely also knew his Scripture. He might have been skeptical of Jesus’ teachings, but he surely also knew that a prophet is much more than someone who knows who is touching him. Of course, Jesus did not need to be a prophet to know that the woman touching him was an outcast of society. He could see how she sneaked into the house through the back door. He could see how the pious men drew back from her to avoid her touch. And he could see how she flung herself at his feet and began to weep.

So what is a prophet, and what could it mean to think that someone might be a prophet? From your own hearing of Scripture, you know that a prophet is not someone who foretells the future. Purporting to read the future is fortune-telling not prophecy. Our word “prophet” comes from the Greek prophetes, which means someone who speaks God’s word intelligibly (as opposed to speaking in tongues or some other unintelligible language), or someone who has insight into the divine mind. In Hebrew, the word for prophet is navi, i.e., “someone who is called.” We can relate to that: think of some of the call stories in the Old Testament: Samuel being called as a boy, while lying beside the sleeping old Eli; Isaiah in the temple having his lips cleansed with a live coal and being sent out to proclaim God’s message; Jeremiah hearing God’s call and protesting, “But I am only a boy.” Along with the other prophets, all were called to speak for God and to act as God’s intermediary with the people.

Our lections today give us two powerful examples of prophets who spoke for God, Nathan in our first lesson, and Jesus in our Gospel lesson. In the Hebrew Bible the writings of the prophets were collected and edited over many centuries. All of them spoke to particular times, places, and issues. Yet their words were deemed universal enough to be worth preserving for succeeding generations. The earlier prophets tended to be private counselors to kings. Most of the later prophets, prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and others, proclaimed their words publicly. They were often in conflict with the rulers, often speaking against injustice and for the poor and the outcast.

Nathan was one of the earlier prophets. As such, he was a private counselor to King David. David has committed adultery with Bathsheba. To cover up Bathsheba’s pregnancy, David has sent her husband Uriah to his death at the front lines. Enter Nathan. Speaking for God, Nathan calls David to account. By means of a poignant parable, he enables David to see how wrongly he has acted, and how deeply he has transgressed God’s law. Unlike Simon in our Gospel story, David readily admits his guilt. Nathan continues to speak for God as he pronounces God’s forgiveness. Even so, he reminds David that, even with God’s forgiveness, he may not be able to escape the consequences of his sin. As the story plays out, the illegitimately conceived child dies, while David’s taking Bathsheba as his wife causes turmoil in the rest of David’s family.

Our Gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus’ prophetic role is a continuing motif in Luke’s gospel. In Luke’s Jesus, we especially come to understand that Jesus is a prophet in the later tradition, i.e., he is one who speaks for God through public proclamation. More important, Jesus is a prophet who is especially called to speak truth to power, i.e., to speak God’s word to the powerful on behalf of the powerless. In the scene before us, Jesus clearly knows who this woman is. Luke gives her no name, nor does he identify her sin. There is no evidence that she is a prostitute, although later tradition has read that into the story. In that society, her sin could be anything. She could be living with someone without marriage. Clearly she was wealthy enough to afford an alabaster jar of costly ointment, so perhaps she was an unscrupulous businesswoman. Perhaps she cooperated with Roman authorities. Whatever her sin is, it is well enough known for the polite guests at Simon’s dinner party to be scandalized not only by her appearance, but by what she does to Jesus. Only Jesus is not scandalized. Speaking for God, in response to her courageous gesture of repentance and deep love, Jesus proclaims that her sins are forgiven. Actually, through his parable, Jesus proclaims that Simon’s sins are also forgiven. Indeed, Jesus proclaims God’s acceptance of all who throw themselves on God’s mercy. Whether one is repenting sins of pride and arrogance, as Simon might, or whether one is repenting other transgressions of God’s law, as the woman presumably does, all debts are forgiven for those who acknowledge their need for God’s forgiveness.

Who are the prophets in our time? Who speaks for God now? Jesus was the prophet par excellence. But did prophecy cease when Jesus was nailed to the cross? If prophets are called to reach out to outcasts, as Jesus did with the woman in our story, if prophets are called to speak to the powerful on behalf of the powerless, then prophecy is still very much alive in our time. It’s not hard to think of those who were directly called by God to the prophetic role. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a prominent scholar of the Hebrew Bible, frequently testified to the connection between their faith and their commitment to the Civil Rights movement. Since the 1970s, feminist theologians have argued passionately for the full inclusion of woman and other marginalized people in the leadership of the church. In this century, Diana Butler Bass, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and others are calling us to look again at how we view God, how, how we care for the poor, and how we relate to other faith communities.

However, I’d like to share with you a story from the middle of the last century that demonstrates the way that those with only modest social standing can speak and act for the powerless. In the late 1930s, as Nazi tanks were rumbling across Europe, André and Magda Trocmé were living in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in south-central France. André was a pastor in the French Protestant Church, who had been assigned to a small obscure parish because of his pacifist views and anti-Nazi preaching. In 1938, he and the Reverend Edouard Theis founded the Collège Lycée International Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. The lycée was initially founded to prepare rural students for university entrance. However, it soon became a home for Jewish refugee students who were flooding into France.

After France fell to the Nazis in 1940, André and Magda became part of a wide network that rescued Jews fleeing the Nazi Final Solution. Trocmé and other area ministers encouraged their congregations to shelter "the people of the Bible". Through Trocmé’s advocacy, the area around Le Chambon became a unique haven in Nazi-occupied France. Inspired by their faith, the Trocmés established "safe houses" where refugees fleeing the Nazis could hide. The Trocmés and other families enabled many refugees to escape to Switzerland following an underground railroad network. Along with the rest of the village, they took in under false names children whose parents had been sent to concentration camps. Trocmé himself spoke truth to power. "We do not know what a Jew is. We only know men," he said when asked by the Vichy authorities to produce a list of the Jews in the town. In 1942, Vichy gendarmes came into town to locate "illegal" aliens. Fearing his own imminent arrest, Trocmé urged his parishioners to "do the will of God, not of men". He reminded them of Deuteronomy 19:2–10, a passage calling the Israelites to give shelter to those who are persecuted. Fortunately, the gendarmes left the village without any “illegals.” Trocmé was eventually arrested in 1943. He was released after only four weeks. He went underground and continued his rescue work until the end of the war. Because of his leadership, about 3500 Jewish refugees were saved by the small village of Le Chambon and the communities on the surrounding plateau, as he and people like him refused to give in to Nazi rule

In January 1971, the Holocaust memorial center in Israel, Yad Vashem, recognized André as Righteous among the Nations. In July 1986, Magda Trocmé was also recognized. Several years later, Yad Vashem honored the work of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the neighboring communities. Today, the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have become symbols of the rescue of Jews in France during World War II.

“If this man were a prophet….” Who speaks the prophetic word for you? Is it one of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible? Is it Jesus? Is it a contemporary prophet? As one of Jesus’ followers, to whom might you speak the prophetic word?