2303 – The Word and the Prophets
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1 Listen to me, O coastlands,
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The Lord called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.
3 And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
4 But I said, “I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the Lord,
and my reward with my God.”
5 And now the Lord says,
who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
6 he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
Psalm 40:8-9 – 8 I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.”
9 I have told the glad news of deliverance
in the great congregation;
see, I have not restrained my lips,
as you know, O Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:3 – 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 1:29-31 – 29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace and Peace to each of you from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus the Christ, in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Today’s greeting is paraphrased from our Key Verse from the Epistles, 1 Corinthians 1:3 and includes the miraculous manifestation of the Holy Trinity at the moment of Jesus’ baptism as we read in Matthew 3:14- 17 – 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” For every earthling – past, present, or future – that moment was like a spiritual supernova! It almost carries as much weight as Genesis 1:3 – 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And the Word was the Light.
We can remember that in John 1:1-5 – 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The Light of the World is Jesus (↔ Music Link), the First, the Last, the Always Living Word of God. In the beginning there was only a formless void … and God! God’s Spirit moved over that void like a mighty wind tearing through the darkness. Then God spoke the Word as Light. There, in that moment, we see the Love of God who is the Lover of Creation, we see the Word of God who is the Belovéd of Creation, and the Relationship of the Community of Love as the Spirit of God, the Lord, the Giver of Life.
Then, the Lover of all Creation took a wad of clay from what he had created and formed it into Adam, the Man of God, so that God and Adam could love one another as Lover and Belovéd. This was because God had created Adam in his own image and likeness. God placed the man in Paradise and gave him wonderful gifts of plants, and creatures of the earth, the sea, and the sky. He made us for and out of Love which he deemed we would share with him. In my heart I hear a poem by James Weldon Johnson called “The Creation.” I memorized it in high school because it was so remarkable. It was from a slim volume of prayers and poetry called God’s Trombones [1](↔ Learning Link). It was quite a bit longer than works my classmates had memorized, and I loved sharing it because it spoke to the deepest parts of my heart. To this day it still give me goosebumps. It starts out with God saying “I’m lonely – I’ll make me a world.” It ends with this declaration:
“Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.”
He made us for and out of Love which he deemed we would share with him, and right from The Beginning, he made it possible for us to share his Love instead of merely receiving his Love. He allowed us to choose to return the love he had given to us. To top it all off, he created Eve from Adam so that Adam could Love Eve just as God Loved (↔ Music Link) both of them – expecting them to Love him even as he had loved (↔ Learning Link). God’s Gift of Love manifested his Perfect Integrity, Endless, Mercy, Everlasting Love, and Eternal Salvation through Christ our Lord. They were perfect for and in him as well as in and for each other – but they forgot about the pureness and completeness of God’s Love and decided to choose a love of their own in place of choosing to Love him. This poor decision cost them their place in Paradise – temporarily. It also cost them the ease with which they cared for the earth and its creatures. Eventually this first sin against the Love of God led to poverty, slavery, and oppression. In Genesis 3:15 (↔ Important Learning Link), God prophesied to Eve that he would provide a remedy for sin and the death it brought. In the Preface III for Mass in Ordinary Time we hear, “you [God] came to the aid of mortal beings with your divinity and even fashioned for us a remedy out of mortality itself, that the cause of our downfall might become the means of our salvation, through Christ our Lord.” The choices made by subsequent generations became more and more evil. God chose one man and his family to continue the race of earthlings and the rest he destroyed in a flood. The covenant God made with Noah preserved all creatures and humans that had been created. Still, evil once again disrupted history when God found it necessary to scatter the Peoples at Babel.
Eventually God chose a wealthy and intelligent military strategist of great Faith, named אַבְרָם – Abram – to be the Father of Multitudes dedicated to God as his Chosen People, the Children of Abraham. Abraham received a blessing from Melchizedek, and a covenant of lands, a kingdom, and worldwide blessings. The Absolutely Perfect Plan was running according to schedule – because it is Absolutely Perfect! It started with “Let there be light,” and came to fulfillment in The Light to the Nations the Christ of God, the Second Adam
ALL of this is because of Love. God created us for Love, in Love, and with Love to be Loved by him. He is the source of everything we should be, everything we should have, everything we will need, and everything he Loves. He does not, however, Love sin because sin is death, and death puts an ending on immortality. Because he does not wish for any of us to die, he sent Prophets to us to tell us about the Absolutely Perfect Plan, and gave us examples of how humanity can dwell with God. Abraham was such a Prophet. Around 7,000 years after Noah’s covenant with God, Moses was called to tell God’s chosen people they were to be delivered from their enslavement in Egypt. In Deuteronomy 18:15-19, Moses tells the Israelites 15 The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your own people; and at the end of that passage he says 18b I will put my words in the mouth of the Prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. 19 Anyone who does not heed the words that the Prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. We recently reviewed how The APP brings that prophecy to fulfillment in 2252AFC122322 – No Deposit. No Return. Here is an excerpt:
He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. It is HIS word that will be our judge. We will recall John 12:48-50 – 48 “The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.” Was John the Baptist the last Prophet? Honestly, I don’t know – if I did know then I, too, would be a Prophet. I recall in The Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: 1 Corinthians 12:28 – 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. These gifts must also be discerned and tested to be true.
The test of a true Prophet is that what s/he says proves to be true. Prophets do not speak on their own, and their words are not their own opinion, guidance, or warning. They speak what the Holy Spirit tells them, and therefore what they say is True. In the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 13 & 15), we have accounts of certain prophets such as Agabus, Barnabas and Silas, Judas, and Lucius. Who is prophesying today? I don’t think we really know, but I do believe that the Holy Spirit continues to work with men and women to convey to the World how God’s Absolutely Perfect Plan is unfolding, little by little, and helping to draw us closer to the words of the Angels spoken in Acts 1:11 to the Apostles at Jesus’ Ascension: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here] looking up into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven] will come back in the same way you saw him go into heaven.” (New English Translation (NET) NET Bible® copyright ©1996-2017 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. http://netbible.com All rights reserved. Used with permission.)
Jesus is our Light because he is a Light to the Nations. He is with us until the end of the Age. The authority of his Voice is heard throughout Scripture – yes, including the old testament – because , as it says in 2 Timothey 3:16-17 – 16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work. The Word became flesh and lived with us; he is alive in Scripture as well. That is why each of us can say –
8 I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.”
9 I have told the glad news of deliverance
in the great congregation;
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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[1] Johnson, James Weldon, God’s Trombones, New York NY. Viking Press. 1927 pp 17-19 please follow the link and read this remarkable and important book
