OUTLINE
WHAT / CONTEXT: Arc of the Narrative - Build Back Better
Rebuilding Jerusalem - what is Jerusalem?
Jerusalem as Physical
Jerusalem as Problematic
Jerusalem as Destroyed
Scattered and gathered / Post Christendom / Post Covid
Rebuilding Jerusalem - what is rebuilding?
Rebuilding as Infrastructure - Project Management, Discerning, Planning, Executing, a coordination problem
Rebuilding as Advocacy vs Opposition
Rebuilding as Influence - minority / exile position
SO WHAT / PASSAGE: King-Prophet relationship
Relationship of Prophet to State
Relationship of Prophet to Church (people and leader and place)
The Person of the King
Cipher
Power Peace
Questions
The Person of Nehemiah
Being Prophetic - hearing / discerning privately
COURAGE FOR SADNESS
Feelings
Prayer
Being Prophetic - speaking / acting publicly
COURAGE FOR ACTION
Favour and Asking
Wisdom and Organising
NOW WHAT / APPLY: Being Prophetic now
Hearing, Praying, Planning, Acting
Internally and Politically
How to influence
How to put yourself in the way of influencers
How to speak publicly
INTRO
Looking ahead, the next few weeks, we’re going to have a sequence of evening service sermons looking long at a construction project involving a complex group of people rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, and the incumbent external trials and internal conflict and the ensuing revival of a faithful covenant people.
They’ve been in exile, they’ve returned and now sit under conditions of Babylonian and Persian military occupation - the identity of a people group imperilled with extinction. We are looking at them at the kind of almost at the end of the Old Testament. In terms of the chronology where they've had various seasons of the Israelite people and here they are imperilled with extinction ~ they seem to be perpetually imperilled to the extinction, but here the remnant left in this shell of Jerusalem and the people far flung are in all whittled down to a remnant eeking out a living on the fringe of empire.
What does this mean for us? What could this as a book mean for us? How do we live into this? How does this speak to us? How is God offering us good news. How is he offering us a pattern book? What can we take away in our personal individual lives? And what can we take away from this in our life together that we could maybe practise and apply in the world and for the world so to enter into the real real and advance the cause of true truth.
There's a sort of low res analogy that we are also a “remnant people” and we are also “under occupation” but I wonder that there's more going on here.
We are rebuilding, we have things to build as Monty Hall, there is this church building, there are these literal built artefacts that we are the stewards of we can think of it in those terms.
We are rebuilding, proverbially, relationally, post-pandemically. The evening service has just been looking at Ephesians and what it is to be a unity, to revive and rebuild a unity - so now, housing that in a world and contending with a world where there are buildings and the need for practical facilities for ministry and the architectural display of God in the world,
Previously. We've read through Nehemiah receiving terrible news, Nehemiah going away and weeping for four months. And so now here we are at the point at which Nehemiah comes back into world-facing mode.
He is in my rubric a prophet, and wearing this hat we see him here speaking to a King, I think this is the junction in the narrative that springboards the whole - all the actions, all that unfolds in Jerusalem, all the rebuilding, all the conflicts, all sprung from this moment. This is the moment where it could all go wrong, it could never happen. Everything that we now take for granted in the entire Christ history of salvation. Just so, we're perpetually at d-day junctions, forks in the decision tree of life, high stakes gambles on outcomes for risk ventured. This perhaps more than many but perhaps in the tension you can relate your life to the question: how should prophets speak to kings?
[1] CONTEXT - Exile/Captivity - Then and Now
587 BC with the sacking of Jerusalem. During the time of Nehemiah, the Persian Empire had reached its greatest extent, engulfing nearly the entire Near East. In 539 B.C. the Persians under Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians and absorbed the lands of Israel and Judah (known as Beyond the River) into his empire.
Ezra 1–6 537–515 B.C.
Ezra 7–Nehemiah 13 458–433 B.C.
The next year he allowed the people of Judah (now called Jews) to return home and rebuild the temple of the Lord. Several waves of returning Jews continued to resettle in Judea, and Nehemiah was granted permission to rebuild Jerusalem’s ruined walls around 445 B.C.
But what is what is Jerusalem in this? There's a physical geography/urbanism to Jerusalem and as such it's interesting that it's practical. Further, it's symbolic and further, it's destroyed.
1.1.1 Israel/Jerusalem - physical geography - pragmatic
We live in cities. We have some sense of the physical, practical facilities by which we do our life.
let's start like applicate and less about geography, even there is geographical thing because God was about the way he has manifested himself to his people and their enemies.
At that time there was a sort of geographicity and now we are geographically distributed but there's still a witness.
And I think sometimes maybe we don't go, and we sort of take that for granted, there's a sort of vulnerability to like being a displaced. People, you no longer have the, the affordances of, a, of a physical home, of shelter of, doing the doing of, of life. And so, one thing that Nehemiah is is doing is sort of humanitarian, it's pragmatic.
~ interesting to think about Jerusalem more as a kit of parts in future weeks
if it's to say the church isn't like there's there's some artefact that's material that he is concerned about and I don't think we have in the new covenant entirely released from material existence and materials. Containing symbolism and kind of meaning like it is still a legitimate. Hopefully, all belongings, totally new, covenant Christians to have a emotional and urgent sense of just specific fixation around restoring, right?
Speak to your text like I calls presence with his people, etc. See it. Say it. But I think that's a, that's an uncomfortable thing to go hard for like in a, in a like, it.
It would seem like the more a more sanitised and more easily received application of any sermon or whatever would be to say, it is within your heart. Like God wants to restore something in, you kind of thing, rather than saying the, the fabric of the Church of England, which is in ruins, let us literally rebuild it because it literally is God's dwelling place.
And it is symbolically like infrastructurally within our kind of very practical embodiment. As a multi-personal group, how we have oversentries and could for centuries more? Do the doing of be a gods presence in conjunction with the physical walls. Bricks, mortar towers temples etc of of the doing all embodying and impresence in God in communities.
Vs you’ll own nothing and be happy, disembodied, virtualised faith
Maybe there is a case for zionism around actual jerusalem, but much much more urgent relevant and applicable - are the thousands of tiny jerusalems that we would establish sanctuaries, anchors of cultural production, displays of our hope, sharing of our abundance.
What land are we responsible for stewarding? Not just for an idea, but where are we responsible for a place. When would you petition for the restoration of a place.
Jerusalem as symbolic geography - problematic
As nexus of meaning, vessel, framing device,
A lens, a lightning rod
A banner
A signpost
Jerusalem as a touchy subject
first as news of a personal blow, not as a political issue. At whatever stage in the conversation the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres
~ personal is political
~ euphemising Christendom, depoliticising
~ vs culture war blocs and
What symbolic signage are we responsible for stewarding?
Where, by creating a domain that we control, are we able to display God?
Jerusalem as destroyed
The peace of liberal western hegemony is waning. More widely, disaster capitalism is itself in crisis. The barbarians are at the gate, the barbarians have breached the gate. The car’s on fire, there’s no driver at the wheel, the machine is bleeding to death. The end is not near, its here. The apocalypse has already happened
Society at large Zombieform people living on their devices; Fatherless geldings with no fertility
The church is destroyed - Balkanised by its own schismatic factions. Sanballat and Tobiah reign on an anglican internet of beefs.
Jerusalem-as-Destroyed - Destruction (before Rebuilding)
Long destroyed - Promised restoration.
141 years as a paradigm comparison - 1881
1881 Natural History Museum, London - Wikipedia
1887 Redcross Cottages
Israel-as-captive by enemies
Underdog slave religion heroism
Apprehend the what is devastation. What was lost in the fire? How bad things will get? In the coming dark age - Who will emerge to contend
Interesting to think in terms of where are we in this story?
What is our walls-of-Jerusalem?
What was broken down long ago? How did it happen? Who can help?
[2] King-Prophet relationship
How should prophets speak to kings?
Why did king respond?
Why does the king let Nehemiah go?
Why does the King help?
[2.1] Who is the King? - Being a King, being under a king
Cipher for national interest
Understanding the world as powers, and God’s providence within that
Centurian - in authority/under authority
A person of peace - humane example of a archetype
The Chosen scene: John 3:16 Caiaphas speaking with Jesus
The Chosen Season One: Episodes 7 & 8 Caiaphas hiding (1:30:35)
Archetype of King - Cipher national interest
Power and the nation state
Not all power is only tyrannical - it is cathartic, when one lacks power to think of power reductively as-mere-tyranny, but I don’t think it is conducive to productive reform and certainly not to productive reconciliation. King as personal instantiation of the total political process and imperial machinery. How should we relate to our leaders, politicians, bosses, elders..
I consider that asymmetric disparities in power are inevitable. To him that has, more will be given. 80:20 principle. Pareto principle. Now, I believe that more stable and resilient forms of life can be achieved if and where we can reduce wage gaps and gini coefficients, but there will never not be hierarchy even a perfectly just society will have domain specific status hierarchies.. I believe the question for us, as socially/politically concerned Christians to solve for is how you make the radical goodness of serving the least and last plausible to an elite. An aside maybe.
How should we defer to Kings?
Positions toward authority
Reject and overthrow it - revolutionary
Reject and wait it out - anabaptist
Accept and assimilate - syncretism
Accept and operate to create subversive mutual benefit from under it
Nehemiah in context
We understand Nehemiah returns in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I - Artaxerxes I in 445 B.C - he was the fifth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, from 465 to 424 BC. Artaxerxes had serious problems when he ascended to the throne. There was a revolt of his brother, Hystaspes, in Bactria at the beginning of his reign. In Egypt a nationalistic revolt under Inarus broke out in 460 B.C. This uprising was supported by the Athenians, but it was put down in 455 B.C. In 448 B.C. Megabyzus, the satrap of Trans-Euphrates, rebelled. He was reconciled later to the Persian king. This historical process of revolts shows the instability of the Persian empire at that time, and especially its instability in the neighbourhood of Egypt. Judah and Jerusalem formed part of the province Trans-Euphrates. Judah was situated close to Egypt and was therefore an important buffer state. From a political viewpoint it is clear that friendly relations between the Persian king and the Jews were expedient. In the light of this political situation the attitude of Artaxerxes toward Nehemiah must be understood.
Buffer state
The situation - in very low resolution - is perhaps made vivid by considering the parallel with Ukraine. Nehemiah here as Zelensky before European leaders, asking for defensive armament at the fringe of the European empire, against rogue states causing instability at the periphery.
The macro political parallel here is stark although lifestyle application on that basis is far from clear to me.
Ditto, in life generally - the King here represents the sort of co-belligerent that Christians might engage with - not only for our mutual benefit, but towards causes of stable stewardship for the benefit of a wider world.
How should we engage Kings in mutually beneficial projects of peace making?
Archetype of King - Persons of peace - Humane via Questions
How could Kings speak to prophets?
Can we think King as an actual character rather than mere NPC foil for Nehemiah’s faith journey. The King as agentic, and beneficent also - wise, humane.
The king has made a threefold inquiry about Nehemiah’s health, namely, an inner experience which is reflected in the outward appearance; illness of his body; and sadness of heart; in other words, unhappiness about something.
It shows that Artaxerxes was a keen observer. It also indicates that the king took an interest in the disposition of his servant, a reflection of his humane character.
Lk10v6 - And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.
King asks three questions
Why sad?
What do you want?
How long will it take?
Jesus Heals Bartimaeus - Mk10v46-52
Next, they came to Jericho. And as Jesus and His disciples were leaving Jericho with a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, was sitting beside the road. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Many people admonished him to be silent, but he cried out all the louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
So they called the blind man. “Take courage!” they said. “Get up! He is calling for you.”
Throwing off his cloak, Bartimaeus jumped up and came to Jesus.
“What do you want Me to do for you?” Jesus asked.
“Rabboni,” said the blind man, “let me see again.”
“Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.
The Request of James and John - Mk10v35-38
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and declared, “Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask.”
“What do you want Me to do for you?” He inquired.
They answered, “Grant that one of us may sit at Your right hand and the other at Your left in Your glory.”
“You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus replied. “Can you drink the cup I will drink, or be baptised with the baptism I will undergo?”
How should behave as Kings in those roles where we have worldly power?
What is it to be attentive to and to care for those over whom you rule?
What questions do you ask to/of those under your care/rule?
What questions achieve clarity of ruler-ruled relationship positively and quickly?
[2.2] The Person of Nehemiah
How should prophets speak to kings?
Why did Nehemiah do this?
Why then?
Why rebuilding?
Why like this?
Why Jerusalem?
[2.2.1] Being Prophetic - hearing / discerning privately
COURAGE FOR SADNESS
Feelings
Patience and Prayer
[2.2.2] Being Prophetic - speaking / acting publicly
COURAGE FOR ACTION
Vs Fear
Skills - Diplomacy, decisive, Wisdom and Organising
Favour and Asking
[2.2.1] COURAGE FOR SADNESS
Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.”
How should prophets speak to kings?
I am struck that Nehemiah feels.
1 - Private Sadness - vs apathy / numbing
The bible has said, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Have you known this? When waiting on the Lord becomes just waiting for the heartaches to come. When bleak calls to bleak. When you get what you want but not what you need.
I spend a great deal of my private time actively not-feeling, distracting myself, numbing. So I preach to myself, that Nehemiah, exemplary, feels. He feels at length and at depth. He feels privately and publicly.
When do you allow yourself to feel sad? You as Nehemiah, what moves you?
2 - Public Sadness - vs gagging / over-realised
Nehemiah sadness is noticed because it is a breach of etiquette—for a servant’s private feelings are usually best kept to themself, the court of the King is a happy place. So too the work place today - shiny happy people living their best life.
I spend a great deal of my public time actively not-feeling, presenting a face, preferring impersonal chat about the obscure meta phenomenon of grief. Rather than to allow you in to the granularity of my pain.
Sorrow is so widely impermissible in church contexts. Struggle needs to be spoken in the pluperfect tense, my messy life needs to be aestheticised for tumblr - we have all had our moments, but now, we. are. ok. Real paralysing sorrow is known to be contagious and so euphemised. It is still paralysis if bedaubed with the faux religious drapery of charismatic enthusiasm - sorrow gagged by sorrow is still sorrow. I consider people I have known, externally effusive, but internally static and emotionally opaque, leading their meat robot through the motions of a puppeteer faith - paralysed from making actual choices and taking actual risk because they have fallen outside of time.
vs everything-is-awesome’s over realised eschatology
like Inside Out’s sadness contribution
what can sadness do that joy cannot
knowing things are not as they should be
doing that in public
when are we allowed to be sad
When do you allow others to feel sad? You as someone who sets a culture in your household etc, where do you invite vulnerability?
send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.”
3 - Sadness - with an answer defined by hope/desire
Courage defines a difference between grieving that things are not as they should be and the gnawing sense that there is no should-be. It would not be unproductive to consider - always be ready to give an answer for the sadness that is in you.
Can you articulate the hope, the desire, the passion that is in you?
Can you similarly articulate the sadness?
This is not to pragmatise all melancholy, but to think about how we steward emotions for our own good and for public good. hope that we are going somewhere - in a comedic universe that things are getting better, that this ends well, presumes that things now are not as they will be then. There is a controversial sense in which we are not living our best life,
Isaiah 61
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendour.4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins
and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ruined cities
that have been devastated for generations.
I observe that all of Nehemiah that will follow has come from a springboard of sadness engaged. I say this super cautiously - notallsadness.. Some sadness is a prophetic word that sees the unseen, that sees the world as it could be and asks why not. Some sadness is a call to culpable agency, a summons to prophetic doing.
There are some feelings that you should go to discuss with your therapist.
There are some feeling that you should, upon 4 months reflection, go to discuss with your King.
The word to be, is first to unnumb feelings, and then, by prayer to consider which feelings I should take to the King?
[2.2.2] COURAGE FOR ACTION
How should prophets speak to kings?
Courage that moves through Fear not around it
Courage that pays the cost for Wisdom
Courage that extends God’s Favour
[2.2.2.1] Courage for action - through the FEAR (not around it)
Then I was very much afraid.
Types of Fear
Core Anxieties for those prone to general anxiety,
1) fear of abandonment 2) loss of identity 3) loss of meaning 4) loss of purpose 5) fear of death, including the fear of sickness and pain
Those don’t feel like Nehemiah is elsewhere characterised by fear, this feels like a contextual amplification of the d day point distinct from generalised anxiety, crypto FUD, a phobia of spiders
What is going on here,
Fear of death - punished by the Persian tradition of court etiquette.Fear maybe that he would die by picking the wrong moment with a Capricious king.
Fear of shame - saving face / embarrassment, being caught out. Fear in a sort of performance anxiety - vomit on his sweater already sort of anxiety.
Fear of failure - to achieve Jerusalem. Linked to a prophetic sense of the unseen possible.
Fear as symptom of how much this matters
Fear as a right and visceral reverence
Proceed anyways, but chastened
Fear apprehends the real - not a foregone conclusion
Having framed the possible strategic good of arming/securing/enfranchising Israel as a buffer state against instability at the fringes of the Persian empire - it is notable that there is nevertheless fear. It is not a foregone conclusion. There is a blythe Christian faith that presumes that the security in God excludes that electric adventure of venture.
It is a severe thing to contend in the real. Every day is d day, the day of judgement, fear is the right response to the gravity of a situation, awe and reverence for what is not a tame lion
I often feel that fear and retreat - as if fear means I’m doing something wrong
Vs Nehemiah feels that fear and prays and perseveres - as if the fear means he’s doing something right.
When do you feel that fear?
Where is the edge of your comfort zone - pushing the envelop, trusting God into the unknown?
Qua prophecy - what sense of the possible, the not yet, of the future?
[2.2.2.2] Courage for action - SKILLS/WISDOM
Wisdom as the costly substance and future fruit of applied courage
Prepared and so Decisive
Plausible - as Embedded
Wise in Diplomacy
The cupbearer (the same word as the ‘butler’ of the Joseph story, Gen. 40:2ff.) was a high official in the royal household, whose basic duty of choosing and tasting the wine to demonstrate that it was not poisoned, and of presenting it to the king, gave him frequent access to the king’s presence and made him potentially a man of influence. Myers draws attention to a statement of Herodotus on the honour in which the Persians held this office, and to the portrayal in Tobit 1:22 of Ahikar as not only the cupbearer but the chief minister of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon.
The courage of costly prep / Wisdom and Organising
“If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.”
Courage as non-spontaneous - long pre-courage
Courageous in the ring, because of being first courageous in the gym
Courage - in season and out of season
This sermon is Quick thoughts
Are you ready at a weeks notice for preaching to give an answer for the sadness that is in you?
Discernment and decisions
Serenity prayer
Wisdom to know the difference
Vs prophetic what never was
I wish more was said in the text about how Nehemiah did what he did, what did it feel like to desire xxxx, what was involved in the research to put forward so detailed a vision. We see later that he undertakes extensive surveys, we see later that he coordinates and all-hands lay-person building-crew. But before that, in the feasibility study stage. What did Nehemiah do to prepare, what did it cost him, what skills and knowledge did it need? I say this from a place of pain, because I had thought I knew this, and I had thought I had faith for this. But I was naive. What did Nehemiah do?
Qua prophecy - anticipating the not yet, paying it forward. Medium to long term contingency planning.
The courage for the cost of plausibility
Nehemiah-as-cupbearer - Somewhere between Woodhouse’s Jeeves, Shakespeare’s court fools and Richard Madden in Body Guard
Prophet as plausible influence and credible jesters - how do you inhabit that role if you find yourself there, adjacent to the c-suite, a civil servant serving
don't want safety delegate's mind to wander.
Intimacy - It is notable that it is noticed - you have to have a known resting happy face for sadness to carry the meaning of relevant/proportional sadness
You steward your face. Signal to noise
The King had to know
Nehemiah’s normal face vs sad face
Nehemiah’s threshold for such
Nehemiah’s
Trust - he must be a trusted person - joseph and daniel,
eunuch option - has precedent, suggested by the presence of the queen and access to this likely private domestic hearing
how does a prophet become a trusted person- risking his life for the King
In authority and under authority
How to conduct yourself as an underdog without self pity
How to give them the win in a win win
Credibility - He must have been a contextually credible person
necessity of a theology of alcohol
If jesus has been the caricature of jesus,
master of ceremonies and the character of plausible prophecy
Jesus drank with tax collectors and sinners
It is no small thing to have a fluency to be the drinking buddy of bankers and prostitutes,
One does not simply walk into mordor
Where are you, or where could we, be situating ourselves in the long game - fluent in being credibly where you are?
Skill in diplomacy - the honed craft of speaking to Kings
It is not as if there is no craft in how you say a thing - as if bare gospel truthing trumps empathy and etiquette. I preach to myself.
Diplomacy - Jerusalem euphemised / tell a story sideways
Some scholars regard this as a masterstroke of diplomacy. The name Jerusalem could have reminded the king of his earlier inquiry into the history of that city (Ezra 4:8–23). But it must be asked, Was the king not aware that Nehemiah referred to Jerusalem? It would have been indeed strange that the king would send his cupbearer to rebuild an unknown city in an unknown country. But at the beginning of Nehemiah’s negotiations it would obviously have been expedient not to mention the name of the city.
Like telling a story sideways on
~ Nathan confronts David about his sin - 2Sm12
~ Esther/Mordecai - playing by the rules of the court
~ solomon dividing baby
~ jesus draws in the sand.. him without sin cast first stone
Subtext
How should prophets speak to Kings? ~ obliquely, skilful in that code.
[2.2.2.3] Courage for action - FAVOUR
Favour and Asking Audaciously
Vs squeamish about ambition
What do you want - jesus etc
Do you want to be healed
Ask and you will receive (vs christianised defeatism)
Wise as serpents Mt10v16
Parable of the unjust steward - make friends for yourselves.. Lk16v9
Favour - King as Cobeligerent sympathetic collaborator Vs enemies
The difficulty of facing opposition - sanballot etc - But what about facing support. The difficult pro-movement
The word for friendly unbelievers - people of peace
Like jonah when people actually repent
The fear of getting what you prayed for.
Vs too heavenly minded
Why - Nehemiah as a decisive leader but how? How do you decide?
n: The true truth of how power works
Influence people. Use the power you have for good, for symbolism,
n: For nation building?
How should prophets speak to Kings? ~ audaciously - with a sense of God’s abundance and the potential to find win-wins.
[3] Being Prophetic now - Prophets speak to kings
How do we apply this?
Imitate Nehemiah, yes, in your private life
Those with the gift, inclination/call etc to prophesy
Those with the strengths, position/mandate to be king
FEELING - Hearing, Praying, Planning, Acting
ACTION - Internally and Politically
How to influence
How to put yourself in the way of influencers
How to speak publicly
There’s not a formula, but I wonder, in reverse, ways we can prevent prophesy
1Th5v20 - Do not despise prophecies
~ as if, prophecy is happening, don’t not do it
Ways to avoid being Nehemiah
Never do xx
Never outside if my comfort zone
Never at risk
Never undistracted
Not truly alive to my emotions
Not hearing,
Not doing
That the walls hadn’t been rebuilt - why did it matter?
Vs fatalism - it is inevitable
Vs rationalisation - cost/benefit - other options to solve for
Modes of Prophecy - Prophetic as seeing the unseen
Seeing into the unseen detail - 3-legged pregnant woman
Seeing in the unseen in salience - hiding in plain site
Seeing into the unseen abstraction - themes and trends
Seeing the unseen in time unseen temporally - you will meet a dark stranger
Seeing the unseen specificity of potential - right option of many good options
to see that which isn’t
to see that which could be
to see things being other than they are
Some people see the world as it is and ask why, some dream things that never were and ask why not?
Lamentation - why?
Prophecy - why not?
Prophecy as move from Private-to-Public
Prophecy as Sadness - calibrated to a cosmic fall - spoken frankly because of hope, vs worldy sorrow sentimental affect
Prophecy as Critique - effective lamentation with repentance for our complicity vs bitter nihilist critique or mere crocodile tears and pearl clutching
Prophecy as Hope - plan public infrastructure in secret
Prophecy as action by Prophets
Prophecy as Bravery
Joshua after Moses.
Following a patriarch and fear
Boldness and Nehemiah
Vs cowardice of cynical status quo timidity.
How to go elsewhere than you are. To innovate other than you are
Contrast with apathy
Not honing a hope
Situation
Person / Motive
Because Nehemiah asks
Because Nehemiah is credible
Because Nehemiah is publicly sad
Because Nehemiah has god’s favour
Because a risk is a compelling story
Because it benefits the King somehow re buffer state
Could be magic - change of heart
Could be sympathy - it feels good to give to charity
Could be justice - i owe this person something
Could be trust - i like this person
CONDITIONS FOR EFFECTIVE PROPHECY
what is to be productively prophetic
Steps in Nehemiah's Action
?Three constitutent parts:
??? Is there a verse for prayer in each of those three
not just being strategic / planning
not just having a feeling / intuition
not just having favour / circumstance
Nehemiah has
Feelings
A plan
Favour
the instinct to pray under pressure
the skill to hear god’s voice in the moment, the motive, the sense of rightness, the intuition to intuit
he knows how to speak to the king
Role of the queen, eunuch, esther, abigail, herod’s wife - john the baptist
Role of ceremonial role, party MC and alcohol vs sadness
Role of character, trust, planning king-facing language API
How should Prophets speak to Kings
what does the king represent?
we know what babylon represents
who is the equivalent personal character
allowing emotions at work
sensing feeling intuitive types need to know how to cast a vision for a program that can be costed by teh regulating authorities
being unfiltered
different prophetic languages
How to hear God
he is not passive
having the jewish people on his heart
wept privately
How to look sad before the king
when the king say, why are you looking sad?
prepare what to say
prayer
How to speak a timely word
- partly having the gift of that insight in that moment
- partly having the formation before the moment
- partly being sensitive to the
What is the phenomenology of prophetic inspiration
Analogous to artistic inspiration?
feeling it in your bowels, in your gut instinct, fire in your bones
in your sensing being is attuned to
in some pre-rational way
of 10 good options
refining the sensitivity to a leading
there are different languages
some prophetic stuff -you see things a certain way
a sense of coalescing order
like a river running down a channel
an oughtness
things should gravitate to order
the sense of the which has not yet happened in imminent to my imaginative sensitivity - the glass is falling
Phenomenology is feelings - you have to feel feelings.
Whilst not being controlled by them.
Allergic to sentimentality, contemptuous of forms of hysteria,
nehemiah’s phenomenology- is sadness
to the extent that i numb sadness
if i don’t sit down and weep
the provocation and
excellence of response
excellence of reception
We don’t live
boundary could be cowardice around action
boundary could be un-tuned reception
in babylon
risky to speak
problem to solve for
why not just redeem the lack of jewish community and identity within the culture
why does he need to go far away
weird zionistic preoccupation with a patch of ground in the middle east
how things could be - can it be redeemed where we are
geographic specificity - now distributed
there is still a weirdness
there is some artefact
that is material
that he is concerned about
i don’t think in the new covenant that we have been entirely released from material existnce and materials containing symbolism
have an emotional and urgent specific fiation around restoring materials icon of his presence with his people
but that is an uncomfortable thing to go hard for
a more sanitised and more easily recieved Nh2 sermon would be to say, it is in your heart
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