By Rev. Maxwell Grant
There is a wonderful, though almost certainly imaginary story about The Rev. John Peter Muhlenberg, an Anglican-Lutheran pastor in Virginia, preaching a sermon in January 1776 on Ecclesiastes 3 (“To everything there is a season”). If you know that passage or remember the Pete Seeger song (or the even more famous Byrds cover), you’ll remember the part where it talks about “a time of war, and a time of peace.”
According to the story, Rev. Muhlenberg dramatically removed his clerical robe, revealing a colonel’s uniform underneath. “This is a time of war,” he said, then walked straight down the center aisle and out the church door, followed by over a hundred men sitting in the pews, who turned, kissed their wives, and walked out behind him to enlist.
It recalls the description of clergy found in Loyalist Peter Oliver’s early history of the American Revolution, “The Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion” (1781), written while the war was still being fought. He describes the clergy of New England – especially its Congregationalist pastors – as the “black Regiment” (referring to their clerical robes), claiming they had turned the people against the Crown by “unceasingly sounding the Yell of Rebellion in the Ears of an ignorant and deluded people.”
Such accounts have been preserved, of course, first because they are great stories, but also because so many of us recognize figures like Muhlenberg or the “black Regiment” as standing on the correct side of history.
But without the benefit of hindsight, passionate commitments and dramatic gestures can be harder to cheer. In the muddled middle of big events and challenging questions, the voices of dissent and resistance are often considered troublemakers rather than trailblazers.
Scripture itself is very clear about the hardship involved in being a prophet—it is relentless in its insistence that being right is frequently uncomfortable, sometimes lethal, and yet, always crucial. Prophets can offend existing religious sensibilities as part of their invitation to develop or renew different ones, calling a community to hear the voice of the divine leading us in new directions.
History bears that out.
Our traditions recognize that “sin” is a central concept, even if, used without care, it can be an inflammatory one. While each of us may be painfully aware of our failings, nobody appreciates being called a sinner. And as for being called to account for decisions we did not ourselves make (as was the case around slavery during the years before the Civil War), how is that on us?
Prophets and dissenters are the ones who say it is on us. Because we are called to seek God’s will, which is a will directed toward us and all of creation. Because we know that we are called to love our neighbors right to the point that the boundary between self and neighbor starts getting fuzzy. Because all life is a moral field, full of knotty problems and hard trade-offs, needing deep wisdom and care. Because there is no option for checking out of the common good. Because even though Ecclesiastes is right about there being seasons, conscience abides through every season.
This is where prophets are coming from and why their reminders are so important.
Not unlike an intervention for a beloved but troubled person who has lost sight of their behavior, someone needs to love the world enough to speak up when we have lost our way.
So many of our great heroes are those who were humbly willing to do that.
As we sit in the muddled middle of our own days, we need them more than ever.
