The Prophets with Canon Rachel Young

Welcome everybody to this second Advent reflection.

Last week we heard Canon Chris introducing Advent.

This week we are focussing on the Prophets, and I’m aiming to speak for about 20 minutes,

I’d like to start with a quote from an article I read in the Church Times a week ago, that was entitled:

“Israel’s acts are not ‘genocidal’”

and written by a man called Nigel Biggar (a Rev and a Lord, no less!) who is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford.

He was responding to what the Archbishop of York had said the week before, that “Israel has committed ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza, and the situation in the occupied West Bank amounts to ‘apartheid’ and ‘ethnic cleaning’” – after he’d returned from a trip to the Holy Land.

The quote from Nigel Biggar is this:

“The Archbishop of York claims that Israel has committed ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza. Since the Archbishop is an expert neither in the ethics of war nor in Middle Eastern affairs, it is unclear why he thinks that his view should carry weight. Nor is it clear whom he is addressing, and why. I yearn for the day when, following the ancient Hebrew prophets – not to mention Jesus – the Church of England’s bishops speak incisive and important truths that no one else is already voicing. That would be genuinely prophetic.”

Now you may or may not agree with either the Archbishop of York or Lord Biggar, but what we have here is one definition of a prophet: that is, someone who is “speak(ing) incisive and important truths that no one else is already voicing”.

This morning, I want to consider Biblical prophets, from both the Old and the New Testament, and non-Biblical prophets (yes, there are many!); so that you have some information with which to consider this question:

Q: What is the impact of prophecy on my life, in Advent, here and now?

So first, who are the Biblical prophets?

Perhaps we could name some of the OT Biblical prophets, could we?....

Amos             Hosea           Micah            Isaiah            Zephaniah

Jeremiah      Nahum         Habakkuk    Ezekiel          Obadiah

Lamentations        Haggai          Zechariah    Malachi

Daniel           Joel                Jonah                        

Each book contains descriptions of the work of the prophet in question, and are usually the only source of information about them, although Isaiah and Jeremiah also appear in the known history of Israel, and some other prophets are briefly referred to (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p.1113).

But there are other people in the OT considered prophets – for example, Moses, Elijah, Elisha – whose stories are found in other OT books (Exodus, 1 Kings and 2 Kings).

And what about New Testament prophets? Can we name some of them? (rhetorical question)

In one sense, there are fewer – John the Baptist; and Jesus was considered a prophet by some (because he had been acting like a prophet. The healings and miracles had attracted the attention of King Herod, who was puzzled, because he thought he’d put the most recent prophet to death – why were these still happening? John the Baptist or Elijah must have come to life again.)

And then there are those members of the early Church who ‘prophesied’ as a gift of the Holy Spirit. In the early Church there was a sort of ‘democratisation’ of the gift of prophecy – it no longer only belonged to special people who received the Holy Spirit from God; the HS was poured out on everybody and so everybody could prophecy.  So, in fact, there are many more. And we still prophecy today – one group of people who can do this is preachers!

Old Testament prophets were around from the very early days of the nation of Israel – Moses, Elijah and Elisha for example. But separate biblical books about them don’t exist. From the eighth century BCE to the fifth, the prophecies of the foremost prophets were collected into books which have survived – hence, what we have in our Bible. (Drane, Introducing the Old Testament, p.151)

The earliest Old Testament prophetic books are Hosea and Amos, from c.760 BCE; and the latest is Malachi from c.440 BCE. Our Bible groups them into Minor prophets and Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Ezekiel).

Let’s turn now to what a prophet is.

We’ve already heard one definition of a prophet –  someone who “speak(s) incisive and important truths that no one else is already voicing”.

Looking online for a dictionary definition, the following seems to ring true: (but is it?)

A prophet is:

1. a person regarded as, or claiming to be, an inspired teacher or leader.
2. a person who foretells or predicts what is to come.

We do sometimes think of prophets as being fortune tellers, people who somehow can predict the future. But I think that’s too simple;  prophecy is more nuanced than that.

If we look in the Old Testament, there were a number of different types of prophets – and there are four different Hebrew expressions used for ‘prophet’ (Intro to OT, Drane, p.149) which demonstrates that prophets differed from each other and prophecy “was not just one social and religious phenomenon.” The word most used is ‘navi’, used over 300 times, and means ‘to announce’ or ‘to call’.

What this implies is that prophets claimed to have a message from God to deliver to a group of people. Of course, in the OT this people was the nation of Israel.

Morality and ethics were part what the Biblical prophets were all about – the good and the bad. Prophets spoke out against the bad behaviour of the people they lived amongst and in particular, their bad behaviour towards God. Prophets were people who said it how it was – no beating about the bush: that if people continued to behave in this way, then there would be consequences.

This was part of God’s message to his people; the other part was that God would continue to rescue and save them from the consequences of their bad behaviour, and also from their enemies. Three themes are intertwined here –

1. Israel’s worship of God (based on the covenant with Moses and the 10 commandments)
2. their subsequent behaviour – which frequently fell short of the covenant’s demands –
3. and the result of that sinful behaviour, how God dealt with it. Would he forgive or would he punish?

Frequently the experience of being beaten in battle or overtaken by other nations was interpreted as a punishment by God. Which is why we read so much about God rescuing Israel from their enemies, saving them from the punishment inflicted on them.

It’s this theme of salvation and rescue that we hear about most during Advent. This is the prophecy that God would save Israel by sending a king, a Messiah to establish God’s kingdom on earth and to build up Jerusalem. We hear about this prophecy specifically in the books of Isaiah and Zechariah, but the promise of rescue and the future flourishing of Israel is also in the prophecies of Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; and specifically the rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem in Haggai. You may recognise some of these names from the readings that are in our Lectionary during Advent.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”

And of course, this is the passage that Jesus identified himself with in Luke 4.18-19.

Now let’s turn to non-Biblical prophets.

You may not have thought about this much before, but what we can do is turn the definitions of prophets which we have discovered, to apply to other people who have lived after the Bible was written, and (yes) to people alive today.

Remember, prophets are people who say it as it is – who speak out against immorality or danger where they see it, and then warn about the consequences if a change of direction doesn’t happen soon.

Sometimes these voices come from within the Church.

If you Google the words “Bishops warn..” then you can see all sorts of times when - even this year – bishops across the world have spoken out against situations they can see around them, and warned of the consequences.

For example,

• “Bishops in Puerto Rico warn of ‘possible escalations’ in a US-Venezuelan war” (1/12/25)
• “US Catholic Bishops warn of the Greatest threat we face: anti-Islamic sentiment” (3/10/25)
• “Korean Bishops warn against fake AI videos of church leaders” (17/11/25)

And what about in the Anglican church?

• “Anglican Bishops warn: Kenya drifting into crisis as leaders loot and kill (25/9/25)

And of course,

• There are, at the moment, warnings from more orthodox parts of the Anglican Communion about threatened consequences following the appointment of a female Archbishop of Canterbury.

There are voices within the Church of England who have expressed their dismay that our current bishops don’t seem to be speaking out against things in a prophetic way – bringing us back to my opening quote from Lord Nigel Biggar. There are examples of our bishops calling out some things prophetically, for example:

• In May of this year, C of E bishops (including our own +Andrew) joined with other senior faith leaders to urge the Prime Minister to rethink the rhetoric they were using to describe migration. (CofE website)
• And there are continuing to be voices, including among bishops, prophetically warning about the consequences of not getting our house in order regarding the LGBTQI++ community.

Although I think, on balance, that I would agree with those who complain that our bishops seem to be reluctant to stand up and be counted.

Sometimes – in fact, I think, possibly more often – prophetic voices come from outside of any religious groups.

• Think of those who, over the years, have warned of the consequences of abusing our climate – Greta Thunberg or our own King Charles among them.
• Or those who warn, every so often, about the results of going down a particular economic path, and who might suffer as a result. We have heard this voice loudly over the past week, with the government’s new budget being discussed by many on all sides;
• Or the voices who warn against one political viewpoint which might seem to most to be extreme, on one wing or the other, and what the consequences of power might be.

When Nigel and I attended Greenbelt one year (a summer Christian festival of arts and activism) we heard a very powerful voice warning of the far-right leanings of the not-then-President, Donald Trump.

Perhaps you can think of some more examples?

So, there is my submission about prophets, both historical and contemporary:

Who they are, what they say, and when they say it.

Let’s now have 10 mins or so for discussion and questions, beginning with turning to your neighbour or neighbours in a small group, to ask:

Q: What is the impact of prophecy on my life, in Advent, here and now?

Discussion and questions…