Prophets and Priests
This was written for the Church Times in January 2009.
The forecasters have been out in force for 2009. Predictably, what they see in store for us in the coming year is gloomy, whether we look at it on a national, global, or personal scale. Take the economic front. Not only are American car manufacturers, financial institutions and the dollar all forecast to be under great pressure, causing inevitable global ripples, but the UK will suffer its own further losses. House prices will continue to fall, savings will yield little income and 600,000 jobs could go this year, leaving many more people in acute financial hardship.
To drive the consequences home, we also hear from the country’s lawyers that they are expecting a considerable rise in the divorce rate. As money crises push relationships to breaking point, couples are not finding the emotional and spiritual resources to enable them to stay together. The forecasters even offer us a date where they expect to see a great rush of new separations: January 12 – the first Monday after return to school from the family Christmas holiday.
Finally, climate scientists are assuring us that 2009 is likely to rank in the top five years of the earth’s temperature rise, and that from the end of this year the rise will be more accelerated and less reversible. It will take enormous international political will to put into effect the measures to prevent this.
So what do we make of these predictions? Responses have varied from those who see them as inevitable and therefore unavoidable whatever we do, to those who dismiss them as the ranting of misery-mongers who simply hype incidents into trends. Yet accurate forecasts are neither mechanistic inevitabilities nor mere scaremongering, but are in a strong part predicated on human action and attitudes. In this sense we could see them as prophetic, and those who make them as linking us to the prophets of old.
The Hebrew prophets might have been speaking into different times and situations, but their warnings were for people and nations, and when their words were heeded, disasters were averted. When Joseph prophesied a famine after seven years of plenty, people took note, and made the kinds of preparations which got them through the long crisis. When the people of Ninevah listened to the predictions of Jonah they repented and the disaster was averted. Our present-day forecasters are not claiming divine inspiration – their predictions are not prefaced by ‘Thus says the Lord’. Yet, God can and does speak through the most secular of prophets, and the call for people to weigh what is said and respond with humility and wisdom is always there.
It is therefore the church’s responsibility to make a response, especially in the public arena and to policy-makers. In the messages of both Archbishops was a critique of the government’s failure to respond adequately to the financial crisis; five further bishops have challenged the record on poverty, policy and distribution. Their words are biblically significant. We have often privileged the rich. As a nation we have not used the seven years of plenty to provide resources for the seven years of lean.
Yet our response as Christians goes beyond speaking out. We also need to be there, in active compassion, for those who face unemployment, struggle with debt, and need help to plan domestic finances. We need to be around for those who whose marriages can no longer take the strain, and whose children may face the sorrow of breakup for years to come. 2009 will challenge the church too- not least to look beyond its own issues and reach out in love.
Cambridge
January 2009
