OS IXX Prophetic Imagination
One of the great First Testament scholars of our age, Walter Brueggemann, reflecting on the biblical prophets writes this (The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, Fortress 2012, p. 2): “When I ponder what the ancient prophets in Israel are doing … I arrive at this judgement … prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH – the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit – were a real character and an effective agent in the world.”
Imagining God – YHWH, the Trinity – as a real character and effective agent in the world has been incredibly costly to the prophets of every age, from Moses to Martin Luther King. Speaking truth to power has its consequences. Brueggemann describes the prophetic task as (p. 3): “the staging and performance of a contest between two narrative accounts of the world.” The dominant narrative, he argues, in active opposition to the prophetic proclamation, is a commitment to the notion of “self-invention in the pursuit of self-sufficiency” powerfully enjoined to “competitive productivity, motivated by pervasive anxiety about having enough, or being enough, or being in control” (p. 4); we see it everywhere. The battle, if you like, is between a life devoted to self-imagination, as opposed to prophetic-imagination. The story of the prophet Elijah in First Kings personifies this battle. It is the era of King Ahab, of whom we read (16:33):
“Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.” The prophet Elijah is not a friend of the corrupt king, and foretells a terrible punishing drought across the kingdom. He withdraws to the desert, the worst possible place to be in such times, but is miraculously fed by ravens. God then instructs him to go to Zarephath, and again he is saved from starvation by the never-emptying jar of meal and jug of oil that enables the widow of Zarephath to feed him and her son throughout the drought. In chapter 18 there is a great show-down between the power and self-imagination of King Ahab, his wife Jezebel, and the prophets of Baal on one side, and Elijah on the other, with nothing but his prophetic imagination that YHWH will act. Again, Elijah is saved, and in the name of YHWH he overcomes the great political and spiritual powers of Ahab’s kingdom. The drought then miraculously ends, but Elijah is forced to flee for his life. This is where we pick up the story in today’s Lesson. Elijah has fled to Mount Horeb, and is cowering in a cave. Defeated. Despairing. This is perhaps the greatest test of his prophetic imagination; battling with his doubts and inner demons. Was he wrong? Should he have stood up to the king and his cohorts in that way? Was it really God’s will, or just his own ego? Has God now abandoned him, as he abandoned Ahab?
But finally he hears that inner voice again, breaking the drought of self-doubt: “Go out and stand on the mountain … for the Lord is about to pass by.” There on the mountain Elijah receives his greatest lesson in prophetic imagination. God is not in the great rock-splitting wind; nor in the powerful earthquake; nor in the all-consuming bush fire. God is in the sound of sheer silence. A lesson for lockdown perhaps too, as we are all, as a City, as a world, stripped of the illusion of self-agency and selfimagination.
We cannot win this battle of the pandemic, for the time being at least. We are all forced to face or own fragility and powerlessness, to battle our own demons doubts and fears. It is a lesson from today’s gospel too. Jesus, the prophet of prophets, has left the disciples to cross the lake in a boat, while he goes up the mountain to pray. Giotto depicts the scene so beautifully and poignantly, as you can see in Francesco
Berretta’s painting of the damaged mosaic “Navicella” or “little boat” (1298/1628) on the front of today’s liturgy sheet, if you are able to view that now or later. The vulnerability and fear of the disciples in their little boat is captured so sensitively in the painting, as Elijah and the prophets look down knowingly and lovingly from the heavens.
St Peter is terrified, but adoring, as he reaches out to Jesus but sinks into the waves. Rather delightfully, the artist, Giotto, serenely contemplates the tableau from the safety of the shore, fishing rod in hand. This is a moment of revelation, foreshadowing Peter’s declaration in chapter 16, and the
Transfiguration that we celebrated this week: “Truly you are the Son of God.” Interestingly, Giotto’s mosaic was commissioned just at a time when the fight between competing “imaginations” was at its height in Europe, battling for the title of Holy Roman Emperor.
And soon after the mosaic was completed, the seat of Papacy moved to Avignon to escape the violence in Rome. The “little boat” tossed on the waters looks so fragile, but with the help of Christ, with the prophetic-imagination at its helm, it is unsinkable.
“Take heart, it is I” says the Christ, “do not be afraid.”
Our navicella, or little boat, here at St Peter’s Eastern Hill is in some peril, as the waves of the pandemic crash into the hull of our church; as are our own lives, quite literally. But, with our Patron, St Peter, may we have the prophetic imagination to see “the world as though [the Triune God] were a real character and an effective agent in the world.” And may we live out the prophetic imagination of that truth and that reality as a church and as individual Christians scattered across Melbourne.