Monday morning session: Bill Medlin

[John Sheldon]
Friends, today's programmed worship will proceed in this manner. You already know about the hymns we will be singing and after those we will have Bible readings in English, Spanish and French and then the second hymn Breathe on Me Breath of God followed by Bill Medlin our Indiana Friend on the theme of his Triennial. This will be followed by a time for open worship and we will have a closing hymn In Christ There is no East or West, followed lastly by announcements.

Our first hymn is Spirit Song and if we can have the words.

(Spirit Song sung)

(Reading in French, Spanish and English)

The reading is from Luke, chapter 4, verses 16 to 21.

Jesus came into Nazareth where he had been brought up and as was his custom on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue and he to do stood up to read. There was handed to him the book of the prophet Isaiah and having opened the book he found the place where this is written. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor and he has sent me to announce release to the captives and sight to the blind and to send the oppressed in freedom and to announce the jubilee year of God”. Having closed the book and given it back to the attendant he sat down and the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened upon him and he began to say to them "today in your hearing this scripture has been fulfilled."

[John Sheldon]
If you would turn in your song books to page 12, Breathe on me Breath of God, and we will sing all four verses.

(Breathe on me Breath of God sung)

Bill Medlin:

Good morning, Friends.

A prophetic word is not an isolated thing.

It never begins with a prophet, but always with the living God.

After all, a prophet is just one who is called by God and directed by God to deliver a message from God.

That message might be to an individual, to a church or gathering for worship such as we have today, or to some other group. It might be to a community or a people, to a nation or its ruler or government or even to humanity itself.

It can be a message about most anything, as long as it’s God's message and not the message of the prophet. The prophetic word is always a word given by God.

Among the recurring themes in recorded prophetic messages of our Judaeo-Christian tradition, some stand out strongly - social justice, idolatry, the present and coming Kingdom of God, and obedience to God. But an even more frequently recurring theme is the assurance of the steadfast loving kindness of God, in Hebrew called Chessed.
Closely connected to it is the theme of covenant.

Many prophetic messages in scripture confronted God's people about injustices or other intolerable sin against God, or against fellow humanity. These usually included a warning about the consequences of continued sin and disobedience. Sometimes there was also an encouraging word, a word of promise of God's blessings that would follow repentance, the turning that was described yesterday.

Sometimes the prophetic word was a direction NOT to do something that looked tempting, as when God sent Jeremiah to warn the king not to go to war against Iraq. (The consequences of disobedience that God warned and then imposed for the willful disobedience of this king should have given some of the world's present day leaders pause to reflect before they acted.) I believe we are experiencing some of the consequences of that disobedience and it falls heavy upon us.

In these recorded prophetic examples from scripture we can see an emphasis on how patient and gentle God has been because of His loving kindness towards His people. This loving kindness does not end just because human defiance causes painful consequences. Watching His people suffer from the promised consequences of their disobedience brings sadness and suffering to God. His heart aches for his beloved, even as they betray Him.

Sometimes the prophetic word was to give a hopeless people hope, as in the many Messianic prophecies that should have prepared people for the coming of Christ and of his Kingdom of Love, Peace, Joy, Light and Life. It is nothing short of amazing that religious leaders still miss the nature of His Peaceful Kingdom that is so clearly and beautifully described by the prophets. They also give us some insight into the heart of God and the values God considers most important. Most of those values were opposite to the values of that day in which the prophet first spoke and they are also opposite to the prevailing values of our own day.

That should also give us cause to think. As previous speakers have said, the purpose of most Biblical prophecy seems to be God's loving desire to restore His people to faithful relationship with Him. It is unfortunate that usually this comes only after a lesson painfully learned by suffering the natural consequences of disobedience.

Few of the prophets are very eager to take on this task of being God's messenger. They’ve heard of past experiences of other prophets and usually things get pretty messy, especially for them.

No one applies for the job of prophet at least if they really are a prophet. The man or woman God calls is anointed by God's Spirit and sometimes also by someone God sends to confirm their call. At the right moment God places His own words in the prophet's mouth. God initiates the prophetic relationship and sometimes meets stern resistance from the prophet. I get very uneasy with self-appointed or self-proclaimed prophets, especially if they claim some special status that entitles them to recognition and if they claim the right to exercise authoritarian power over any church or group. There are other warning signs to notice. The false prophets of the Bible are the ones that usually agree with the government and the establishment and the prevailing values of the day. They are the ones who attack the critics of the status quo. We call these false prophets 'court prophets' because they like to hang out at the royal courts of the Bible. We have our share of these court prophets today. They have today radio and television shows where they sing the praises of the powerful and brag about all the great things God is doing through them. They are surrounded by wealth and glitter and seem to bask in what they call God's blessings of prosperity to them. I do not find that among the faithful prophets of scripture.

These prophets may receive lots of praise and lots of money, but they are false prophets. Remember that a false prophet can be sincere, but misguided or deluded - even Friends have had some false prophets among us.

If they suggest that they alone have the answers from God or that they enjoy a unique relationship with God that no-one else can have, or that they somehow have God's ear uniquely, and can get God to do their bidding, then those so-called prophets sound very much like leaders of a cult. As someone said yesterday, a true prophet is not impressed with his or her own importance. Prophets demonstrate great humility if they are true prophets.

The New Testament teaches that prophecy is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that should flourish in the church's worship and witness today. Indeed, it seems to be one of the most important gifts. I believe it to be critically important today. As a spiritual gift, prophecy has a very specific and limited meaning, much more limited than the way we are using that phrase this week.

Using the understanding of prophetic word as God's message delivered through a prophet, I want to share with you a few examples of what looks to me like prophetic witness among Friends.

At a Triennial of Friends World Committee many years ago held in Kenya (I think sometime in the early 1960s) Friends World Committee received an invitation to hold a World Conference at Guilford College in North Carolina in 1967. Some of you were there. A great deal of preparatory work had been done by Friends prior to submitting this invitation for approval. Then out of the silence one Friend from Scandinavia rose with a deeply led, prophetic concern.

Guilford, like almost every college in the South at that time did not admit black students to its classes. How could FWCC meet on a racially segregated campus? Even if the college accepted Africans and other black Quakers for this conference, the college practiced racial discrimination in student admissions. This Scandinavian Friend made an important prophetic witness, for the college officials immediately contacted the governing board and obtained a commitment to end racial discrimination and begin admitting black students to Guilford on an equal basis. Friends approved the invitation. Today Guilford is a leading institution of higher education in the southern part of the United States with a strong commitment to racial justice and racial diversity. North Carolina Friends are very thankful from the prophetic word of a lone Friend from another nation enabled them to stake this historic stand for equality ahead of almost other southern colleges. God spoke through one Friend in FWCC and changed history.

A second example happened in my own experience in 1965. I had been attending a small unprogrammed Meeting that gathered for worship each week in a home in Philadelphia - a house church. I was not yet a Quaker. After a few months, one First Day morning I received a clear leading to speak in the worship. The leading was detailed, with specific words I was told to say. I was horrified. I disobeyed the leading by remaining silent. Within five minutes a young man named Russell Johnson stood up. He gave exactly the message to that meeting that God had directed me to give, including the specific details. We had never discussed anything about the subject together. Then, I was even more horrified, for I knew from many years of Sunday School lessons that it was not good to disobey God. God had given me a specific message to deliver to that group and I disobeyed him. It taught me a lesson, and confirmed that these Quakers must really be God's people, after all.

The third and last example is about a historic Quaker testimony. We are well known for Quaker leadership in the work to free slaves throughout the world. That witness began when George Fox wrote a letter to friends in Barbados, but it lay dormant. It began to really be effective when John Woolman made his gentle but persistent prophetic witness against slavery both at his preaching but also in his quiet words with slaveholders one family at a time. John Woolman, more than any other American, made a prophetic witness that provided the foundation for the antislavery movement in that country that eventually freed the slaves.

But Woolman is only half of the story. Slavery has raised its ugly head again in the world and more people are held as slaves today than before the American Civil War. Over 27 million human beings are owned, and their lives totally controlled by someone else who pays them nothing for their labour.

I became aware of this problem of modern slavery when helping young Friends prepare for a model United Nations. I immediately contacted Quaker social witness organisations in several countries to find out what they were doing to oppose this evil. I found they were doing nothing and did not seem even interested. Then I discovered one man named Kevin Bales. He was born in the United States and is a member of Britain Yearly Meeting though he now lives in Mississippi and teaches at Ol Miss, the site of racial violence. He is the leading expert in the world on modern slavery and has dedicated his life to abolition. He is a committed Friend who started a new Friends’ meeting in Oxford, Mississippi.

Someone mentioned yesterday that our lives should be a prophetic word. Kevin Bales seems to do that. I hope some of you invite him to speak at your Yearly Meeting and begin to make a prophetic witness against this evil of slavery. I believe it is one of the things that cries out for prophetic word today.

George Fox and early Friends certainly had profound prophetic witness in their day. Many people believe that had Fox may have had a spiritual gift of prophecy, but what Fox emphasised about prophecy in his day was the biblical teaching of Christ as the great prophet of all time. Of course Christ was much more, the saviour of the world. The same Christ indeed has a prophetic role if we allow him to work within us. It is Jesus Christ today as the prophet Who still preaches and proclaims the prophetic word of life through the silence of the gathered Meeting for Worship.

George Fox asks “why should we not sit under Christ our prophet, shepherd, bishop and priest and hear him?” In another document he is referring to Jesus when he declares that “we can hear our prophet in [the] silence” of worship if we really listen.

God does speak today and He speaks a prophetic word to His people to deliver directly as He commands. The spirit of Christ is alive and well and still frees people to be His vessels to carry His light, to shatter the darkness of our present world.

Listen for the still small voice within you, perhaps confirm it with the witness of Christ in scripture, and obey the call to prophetic witness if it is given to you.

Not everyone is called to be a prophet, but we all have received in the Gospel the call to be peacemakers, to give generously to the poor, to free the oppressed, to oppose evil and to share the Good News that Christ indeed has come and is at work in our midst and is the answer ultimately to the world's problems.

Let the world around you know that there is today indeed a Living Light that can free them from darkness and give them the hope and joy of new and everlasting life.

Let the nations of the world know that the people of God called Friends have arisen to the call of their Great Prophet, Lord and King and will not rest until the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and peace does reign.

Maranatha!


Speaker: The Kingdom of God was the first priority in Jesus' teaching and in many ways he demonstrated what that meant: inclusiveness, compassion, spiritual power, a way of life that embraced people of all kinds, no boxes to shut people out. Our hearts burn for the Kingdom of God. We might call it the realm of God, God's vision for the world, but Jesus taught the Kingdom is among you, the Kingdom is within you.

I realised a few months ago I am not going to see the end of poverty and injustice in my lifetime. I wept.

It must sound naïve when we look through the whole course of history that we are called at least to work faithfully towards the growth and establishment of that kingdom and by the very fact of our burning desire we are a prophetic community.

New speaker: I am a pastor from Uganda, Africa. I want to share with you a scripture taken from the letter of Hebrews, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. “God has spoken and asked by his son whom he has appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the worlds.” I believe the speaker has shared with us and that God has spoken through him.

We are witnessing to this prophetic voice and I particularly am grateful for Friends having witnessed this prophetic voice before we came here. The privileged countries who contributed towards less privileged countries and enabled us to share together in this Triennial. Therefore, Friends, let us not ignore the gift in each one of us. He has helped us to be obedient. What are the qualities of being obedient to God and what are the qualities of being disobedient to God?

(Song)

Lee Taylor: Good morning, Friends. I just have a few notices. First of all, could the people who volunteered to help with the transcription meet with John Fitzgerald briefly now after this session. Secondly, I wanted to remind you that the craft and book shops are open, both at lunchtime and at the supper break; and to thank the friends who have set those up.

In your bulletin you will find it that it says Reflections are in sections, actually we are all going to be all together for Reflections tonight in the chapel.

If any Friends are finding it a little chilly today and would like to take advantage of some warm clothes, the office has some spare warm clothes which you can have!

Some more office-related notices: First of all, could people check their volunteer assignments; there was a note in your registration envelope if you had offered and had been assigned a volunteer role. Would you mind just checking those and please turn up if you said you would do it and had been assigned.

There are some frequently asked questions turning up in the office now. First of all, wi-fi and computer access. We know that the computer rooms are going to be open once again at lunchtime and at supper time and that will be all week. We will put a notice about wi-fi access on the flip chart which is outside the hall going towards the dining room, that's the best place to look out for few announcements.

Another key announcement is going to be about laundry facilities. Something will be in the daily bulletin tomorrow and we will also put a note up. If Chris in the office is finding she is getting a number of people asking about a particular item I think that flip chart is the place that we will try and stick up the particular information.

Thank you, Friends.

Nancy Irving: Friends, we have a very full schedule and it is essential that you arrive on time and be in your seats so that we can begin on time and end on time. So please anticipate, don't be in the coffee break until your worship and sharing group should start - be at your worship and sharing group when it should start and do that for everything please. Thank you.