Beneath the surface of the sermon I'm working on about John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord is a discussion of the tripartite relationship between Prophet, Priest and King. I sat down this morning with a good old fashioned pen and paper and started diagramming and outlining how this these three identities relate to one another and after I filled up two pages with descriptive statements and scribbled lines, generalizations and anecdotal exceptions to those generalizations, I realized that this was getting hopeless.
To further complicate matters, I'm reading Robert Pirsig's follow up to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a novel called Lila, An Inquiry into Morals, which like ZAMM is half novel, half philosophical dissertation. The protagonist, Phaedrus, is grappling with metaphysics and the failure of the generally accepted subject-object scheme of understanding. About a quarter of the way through, he is expounding upon a "better" metaphysical frame of reference: static-dynamic tension. His primary illustration at this point in the book is an anthropological anecdote from Zuni tribal culture in the American southwest where what he calls a Brujo, to borrow the Latin American term challenges the authority structure of his tribe, is tortured and then calls upon the authority of the "foreign" European colonial justice system for redress, leading to the dethronement and incarceration of the "War Priests," of his tribe and eventually the succession of the Brujo, to the position of power, both within the tribe and within the now dominant colonial government.
It is an illustration of the static-dynamic tension in which one can see the moral ambiguity of the situation. The Brujo is not a hero in the traditional sense, in fact, he is somewhat of a troubling character. He does in fact overturn the status quo of the tribe, which was probably experienced as a trauma by the community. We know, of course, that the status quo of the community was going to be overturned soon enough by the ascension of European colonists and the upheaval of the aboriginal cultures that ensued, and in many ways the Brujo was able to keep his tribe ahead of the most disastrous implications of that shift, but only by kicking down the door, so to speak.
Pirsig has not specifically compared this story to the narrative of the Biblical Prophets, but I'm making that jump. Prophets are dynamic figures, they are agents of change, whereas kings and priests tend to be agents of the "way it is." For the most part, prophets have an adversarial relationship with kings and priests, even when the prophets happen to be priests themselves. Luke names the worldly rulers of the time and the religious authorities of the time in his introduction to John the Baptist. The Romans and Herod are the kings, Annas and Caiaphus are the priests, John is the prophet, "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness." Everyone except John is invested in the static condition of things. Sure Herod doesn't like the Romans, and the Priests don't like Herod or the Romans, and the Romans are no fans of the Priests, but they feel that they share a mutual interest in keeping the "peace." Which is famously the "pax romana," a peace maintained by military force and utter fear.
The Priesthood in the Temple and the rulers in Rome and Judea pretty much agree that it is best to keep the common people under their thumb. John the Baptist starts rocking that boat, most immediately by telling people they are forgiven for their sins, which if it is a message that is believed is going to cut into the Temple's business. He also (off screen as it were) says nasty things about Herod and Philip and some of the incestuous/adulterous stuff happening in their spots. Apparently John attended the Jeremiah school of prophecy, because he is pretty good at making enemies of the powerful. But people love him, because he's speaking to where they are, he's giving them an alternative to the impossible and desperate task of appeasing God through sacrifices and he's telling them that there's some authority over them that is even bigger and much more beneficent than Rome.
John is a dynamic force, and therefore is set in tension with the static forces of the age. This creates turmoil, because the static forces don't deal with that tension well and eventually get violent. From the perspective of the authorities John was a troublemaker. I have heard that label applied to Pope Francis, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi, and a host of others that would seem to indicate pretty good company..
Essentially, change is a defining characteristic of prophets: repent (metanoia, turning), maybe go back to what you used to know, maybe reach for something new, but don't just stay the course, because it's not the good way. Prophets don't always seem like the good guys, because sometimes, a lot of the time, they create a ruckus.
What I'm trying to do is get around to peace. But Prophets aren't usually about peace. They are about pointing the way to a better peace than what we have now. John the Baptist was not an agent of peace, he was a troublemaker. The traditional understanding of Jesus as a union of prophet, priest and king may be the part of this iceberg that sticks above the water. He is all three, and so is able to perfectly exercise the needed functions of all three in harmony instead of discord, but I think there still has to be tension in those relationships.
Tension is not bad, it's how you deal with it. Do you respond to tension violently? Do you allow it to pull you in a better direction? When they say repent do you get defensive? How do you hear a prophet?
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