We need to show appreciation and obedience to the prophets in our lives/

Monday, 2/9/15

When Jesus said, “No prophet is accepted in his own native place” he was telling us to appreciate the prophets in our midst.

In speaking of prophets, Jesus was using the word as it was used in the Bible. There, the Hebrew word for a prophet was a Nabi, which originally was a child’s word for a mouth. Those ancients regarded a true prophet to be a man or a woman who lent his or her mouth to God to speak God’s truth.

For our time, we could connect that interpretation with the latter part of our Baptism ceremony. There, after the baptism proper, the priest says something like this to the newly baptized person:

 “You have been baptized into a union with Jesus Christ, and as such, you have come to share in his roles as prophet and priest. As priest you will be one with him in offering the Eucharist. As prophet you will be called upon to let God use your mouth to speak his truth.

We have all had parents and teachers who let themselves serve as God’s mouth. Often they have had to put their own interests aside to say and do what God wants. Your dad or mom or teacher might have said something like this, “For myself I would like to tell you to go ahead with what you are planning, but you and I know that isn’t right with God.”  

To those prophets in our lives we need to show appreciation and obedience.