The King Versus the Minority Report--October 17, 2017
"Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred of them, and said to them, ‘Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-gilead, or shall I refrain?’ They said, ‘Go up; for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.’ 7But Jehoshaphat said, ‘Is there no other prophet of the Lord here of whom we may inquire?’ 8The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ‘There is still one other by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me, but only disaster.’ Jehoshaphat said, ‘Let the king not say such a thing.’ 9Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, ‘Bring quickly Micaiah son of Imlah.’ 10Now the king of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes, at the threshing-floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the prophets were prophesying before them. 11Zedekiah son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron, and he said, ‘Thus says the Lord: With these you shall gore the Arameans until they are destroyed.’ 12All the prophets were prophesying the same and saying, ‘Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.’
When he had come to the king, the king said to him, ‘Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?’ He answered him, ‘Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.’ 16But the king said to him, ‘How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?’ 17Then Micaiah* said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd; and the Lord said, “These have no master; let each one go home in peace.” ’ 18The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything favorable about me, but only disaster?’
Then Micaiah* said, ‘Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. 20And the Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?” Then one said one thing, and another said another, 21until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, “I will entice him.” 22“How?” the Lord asked him. He replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Then the Lord * said, “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.” 23So you see, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has decreed disaster for you.’ " [1 Kings 22:6-23]
Maybe Jack Nicholson was more right than Tom Cruise ever gave him credit for--maybe we really can't handle the truth.
This is one of those weird, likely unsettling, but necessary-to-know-and-to-wrestle-with stories from the family album we call the Bible that I'll bet you didn't learn growing up in Sunday School. The story of Micaiah the Unpopular Prophet just doesn't translate well to flannel board and Sunday School songs... but it is an important reminder for us that Christian hope, for whatever it does mean, is not the same as saying, "God will make whatever I want to happen happen."
All due respect to Jiminy Cricket, but the Gospel ain't the same as "When you wish upon a star... anything your heart desires will come to you....." Because, sometimes, what my heart wishes for isn't good... sometimes what my heart wishes for is self-centered and short-sighted. Sometimes what my heart wishes for is unjust or unkind to someone else God loves. And sometimes my heart thinks it wants momentary "happy" when the only thing that will really fill it is enduring joy. That is the difference between baptizing my wish for instant gratification and the ultimate goal of God's good promised future.
It is true that we are a people formed by hope in God's future. But God's promised future is not the same thing as My Personal Wish List, or the American Dream, or climbing the corporate ladder.
It is true that we are nurtured by the hope of a day when everyone would get enough to eat, and where God's abundance makes all cups overflow so that no one needs to live ruled by fear or scarcity. But that hope does not mean that God is rooting for the Dow Jones to close at higher and higher records every day.
It is true that we tell stories of that promised day when all peoples are gathered at God's table and the unending Resurrection Party, under the shade of the Tree of Life whose leaves are, as Revelation says, "for the healing of the nations." But that hope for nations is not the same thing as saying, "God is on the side of my nation," or that God automatically wants my country to win the battle... or that God is under contract to underwrite our wars and give a little extra heavenly firepower to clinch the win.
It is true that we are taught to pray for leaders, elected and unelected, local and national, of our land and of other lands. But that is not the same thing as saying everything that happens in government is a sign that God supports the king.
That's a hard notion for us to get behind, or even to understand. We tend to think only one move ahead in life--we are playing tic-tac-toe while God is playing chess. We have a way of thinking only about the immediate, the right-in-front-of-us, the headlines of a win or a loss for today's news... and we assume that God must be in favor of our instant gratification, too. But hope in God's promised future is not the same as saying, "I want it all, and I want it now--the big car, the big house, the prestigious job... all the day after I graduate." Like the old line says, if you want crabgrass, you only have to wait a couple of days for it to grow; if you want an oak tree, you have to be a little more patient. God's promised future is a lot more like an oak, it turns out, and here we've got these shortsighted little crabgrass wishes.
That difficult lesson is at the heart of this strange story about a little-remembered prophet named Micaiah. Micaiah lived during the days of the rotten king Ahab, who was--as the book of Kings will be quick to tell you--greedy, self-absorbed, corrupt, and easily persuaded to do whatever other people told him was a good idea (ask his wife Jezebel about that). Ahab surrounded himself with yes-people, including a whole official system of palace-approved, government-sanctioned prophets, whose job was basically to tell the king that God approved of whatever he wanted to do. Raise taxes to build a new palace? Sure, said the prophets, God would want you to have a nice place. Seize property violently from one of your own citizens illicitly and cover up your shady dealings so no one will find out about it in the papers? (His name was Naboth, and the cover-up didn't last long.) The prophets all promised to look the other way and give their implicit blessing on it... and to give the impression that God was okay with it, too. And then here in today's passage, King Ahab has gotten into saber-rattling and is debating about whether or not it's a good idea to go to war and pick a fight at a place called Ramoth-gilead. And once again, the official court prophets all nod sycophantically: "Oh, yes, Your Majesty, Oh Great One! God will give you the victory!"
And the scariest thing of all in this scene is that everybody actually thinks that God wills for Ahab to lead this battle, and that God has promised a win for Ahab. Every one of the official court prophets truly believed they had God's official stamp of approval on this battle plan... and it didn't hurt that it's what the king wanted to hear. It's so easy to take the idea that God "makes all things to work for good..." and twist it into sounding like, "God wants my bright idea right now to succeed, on my terms," regardless of what it does to anybody else. That was Ahab and company--they took the true and right hope that God will be victorious in the end and twisted it to sounding like God would grant Ahab victory on any given day.... because, of course, God must be on Ahab's side... and God must always be in favor of "winning."
Except... not.
Eventually Ahab worries that maybe his yes-men, court-prophets, and administration-approved religious spokespersons are only telling him what he wants to hear, and he goes to the one voice he knows will not pull punches with him. Ahab goes to Micaiah, the prophet who never has anything positive to say about Ahab. (Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn't fault Micaiah for that, or accusing the prophet of unfair bias--the Bible just acknowledges that there was nothing good to say about Ahab, the greedy, self-centered, short-sighted, buck-passing charlatan.) And at first, Micaiah is just going to let Ahab hear the party line again--"Oh, sure, your highness... I'm sure you'll win big today in battle. You'll win so big we won't be able to believe it." But Ahab pushes the cynical prophet... and Micaiah pulls back the curtain with a minority report. "Yep, you're right, Ahab--the other prophets were just telling you what you wanted to hear, and they had convinced themselves that God was speaking. They fell for a lying spirit and willingly bought into the deception, because that's what court-appointed, administration-approved prophets do. Yep, you're right, Ahab--I'm here to tell you that you're gonna go into battle anyway because you're a moron, you're gonna lose, and you're gonna die."
See why nobody invited Micaiah to their parties?
Of course, he was right. The problem wasn't the truth--the problem was that a giant ego like Ahab couldn't handle the truth. Ahab wanted to co-opt the assurance of God's ultimate victory and tell himself that God was giving him the short-term win on the battlefield. Ahab wanted to assume that God's promised future meant he could get what he wanted...today. And Micaiah said, "No."
Like I say, this isn't an easy story to hear, or to think about. But it is an important one. It is vital for us to know the truth in this story, because otherwise we will sell out the good and solid hope of God's real promised future and trade it for the counterfeit of our own personal wants and whims. And when we discover--as we surely will in this life--that everything on my personal wish-list doesn't come true, we will need to know in that moment that it isn't the failure of God's strength or the faultiness of God's promises. God's promised future is real and sure--but it is not the same as me getting whatever I think I want, and it is not the same as my town having a boom in business, or an uptick in my state's economy, or even my country's national interest. Saber-rattling Ahab was sure that because he was supposedly leading "God's nation" that God must want him to "win" all the time... and that was a lie. God's promised future is always bigger than just me-and-my-group-first. Micaiah's story, rough as it is to hear, reminds us of that.
Today, the challenge is for us not to sell out the good and wide and spacious hope of God's promised future, which is good for all creation and all peoples, by trying to trade it in for our short-sighted, self-centered wishes. Don't settle for less than God's real promised future. Don't sell it short. And don't let court-appointed prophets just tell you what you want to hear.
Listen for the truth from the minority report voices like Micaiah's, the truth that may be harder to handle, but is what we need to hear.
Lord God, don't let us settle, and keep putting honest, good voices around us to tell us what we need to hear, even if it is not what we wanted to hear.
Micaiah Predicts Failure
The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, ‘Look, the words of the prophets with one accord are favourable to the king; let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favourably.’ 14But Micaiah said, ‘As the Lord lives, whatever the Lord says to me, that I will speak.’When he had come to the king, the king said to him, ‘Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?’ He answered him, ‘Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.’ 16But the king said to him, ‘How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?’ 17Then Micaiah* said, ‘I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, like sheep that have no shepherd; and the Lord said, “These have no master; let each one go home in peace.” ’ 18The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ‘Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy anything favorable about me, but only disaster?’
Then Micaiah* said, ‘Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, with all the host of heaven standing beside him to the right and to the left of him. 20And the Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?” Then one said one thing, and another said another, 21until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, “I will entice him.” 22“How?” the Lord asked him. He replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Then the Lord * said, “You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.” 23So you see, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has decreed disaster for you.’ " [1 Kings 22:6-23]
Maybe Jack Nicholson was more right than Tom Cruise ever gave him credit for--maybe we really can't handle the truth.
This is one of those weird, likely unsettling, but necessary-to-know-and-to-wrestle-with stories from the family album we call the Bible that I'll bet you didn't learn growing up in Sunday School. The story of Micaiah the Unpopular Prophet just doesn't translate well to flannel board and Sunday School songs... but it is an important reminder for us that Christian hope, for whatever it does mean, is not the same as saying, "God will make whatever I want to happen happen."
All due respect to Jiminy Cricket, but the Gospel ain't the same as "When you wish upon a star... anything your heart desires will come to you....." Because, sometimes, what my heart wishes for isn't good... sometimes what my heart wishes for is self-centered and short-sighted. Sometimes what my heart wishes for is unjust or unkind to someone else God loves. And sometimes my heart thinks it wants momentary "happy" when the only thing that will really fill it is enduring joy. That is the difference between baptizing my wish for instant gratification and the ultimate goal of God's good promised future.
It is true that we are a people formed by hope in God's future. But God's promised future is not the same thing as My Personal Wish List, or the American Dream, or climbing the corporate ladder.
It is true that we are nurtured by the hope of a day when everyone would get enough to eat, and where God's abundance makes all cups overflow so that no one needs to live ruled by fear or scarcity. But that hope does not mean that God is rooting for the Dow Jones to close at higher and higher records every day.
It is true that we tell stories of that promised day when all peoples are gathered at God's table and the unending Resurrection Party, under the shade of the Tree of Life whose leaves are, as Revelation says, "for the healing of the nations." But that hope for nations is not the same thing as saying, "God is on the side of my nation," or that God automatically wants my country to win the battle... or that God is under contract to underwrite our wars and give a little extra heavenly firepower to clinch the win.
It is true that we are taught to pray for leaders, elected and unelected, local and national, of our land and of other lands. But that is not the same thing as saying everything that happens in government is a sign that God supports the king.
That's a hard notion for us to get behind, or even to understand. We tend to think only one move ahead in life--we are playing tic-tac-toe while God is playing chess. We have a way of thinking only about the immediate, the right-in-front-of-us, the headlines of a win or a loss for today's news... and we assume that God must be in favor of our instant gratification, too. But hope in God's promised future is not the same as saying, "I want it all, and I want it now--the big car, the big house, the prestigious job... all the day after I graduate." Like the old line says, if you want crabgrass, you only have to wait a couple of days for it to grow; if you want an oak tree, you have to be a little more patient. God's promised future is a lot more like an oak, it turns out, and here we've got these shortsighted little crabgrass wishes.
That difficult lesson is at the heart of this strange story about a little-remembered prophet named Micaiah. Micaiah lived during the days of the rotten king Ahab, who was--as the book of Kings will be quick to tell you--greedy, self-absorbed, corrupt, and easily persuaded to do whatever other people told him was a good idea (ask his wife Jezebel about that). Ahab surrounded himself with yes-people, including a whole official system of palace-approved, government-sanctioned prophets, whose job was basically to tell the king that God approved of whatever he wanted to do. Raise taxes to build a new palace? Sure, said the prophets, God would want you to have a nice place. Seize property violently from one of your own citizens illicitly and cover up your shady dealings so no one will find out about it in the papers? (His name was Naboth, and the cover-up didn't last long.) The prophets all promised to look the other way and give their implicit blessing on it... and to give the impression that God was okay with it, too. And then here in today's passage, King Ahab has gotten into saber-rattling and is debating about whether or not it's a good idea to go to war and pick a fight at a place called Ramoth-gilead. And once again, the official court prophets all nod sycophantically: "Oh, yes, Your Majesty, Oh Great One! God will give you the victory!"
And the scariest thing of all in this scene is that everybody actually thinks that God wills for Ahab to lead this battle, and that God has promised a win for Ahab. Every one of the official court prophets truly believed they had God's official stamp of approval on this battle plan... and it didn't hurt that it's what the king wanted to hear. It's so easy to take the idea that God "makes all things to work for good..." and twist it into sounding like, "God wants my bright idea right now to succeed, on my terms," regardless of what it does to anybody else. That was Ahab and company--they took the true and right hope that God will be victorious in the end and twisted it to sounding like God would grant Ahab victory on any given day.... because, of course, God must be on Ahab's side... and God must always be in favor of "winning."
Except... not.
Eventually Ahab worries that maybe his yes-men, court-prophets, and administration-approved religious spokespersons are only telling him what he wants to hear, and he goes to the one voice he knows will not pull punches with him. Ahab goes to Micaiah, the prophet who never has anything positive to say about Ahab. (Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn't fault Micaiah for that, or accusing the prophet of unfair bias--the Bible just acknowledges that there was nothing good to say about Ahab, the greedy, self-centered, short-sighted, buck-passing charlatan.) And at first, Micaiah is just going to let Ahab hear the party line again--"Oh, sure, your highness... I'm sure you'll win big today in battle. You'll win so big we won't be able to believe it." But Ahab pushes the cynical prophet... and Micaiah pulls back the curtain with a minority report. "Yep, you're right, Ahab--the other prophets were just telling you what you wanted to hear, and they had convinced themselves that God was speaking. They fell for a lying spirit and willingly bought into the deception, because that's what court-appointed, administration-approved prophets do. Yep, you're right, Ahab--I'm here to tell you that you're gonna go into battle anyway because you're a moron, you're gonna lose, and you're gonna die."
See why nobody invited Micaiah to their parties?
Of course, he was right. The problem wasn't the truth--the problem was that a giant ego like Ahab couldn't handle the truth. Ahab wanted to co-opt the assurance of God's ultimate victory and tell himself that God was giving him the short-term win on the battlefield. Ahab wanted to assume that God's promised future meant he could get what he wanted...today. And Micaiah said, "No."
Like I say, this isn't an easy story to hear, or to think about. But it is an important one. It is vital for us to know the truth in this story, because otherwise we will sell out the good and solid hope of God's real promised future and trade it for the counterfeit of our own personal wants and whims. And when we discover--as we surely will in this life--that everything on my personal wish-list doesn't come true, we will need to know in that moment that it isn't the failure of God's strength or the faultiness of God's promises. God's promised future is real and sure--but it is not the same as me getting whatever I think I want, and it is not the same as my town having a boom in business, or an uptick in my state's economy, or even my country's national interest. Saber-rattling Ahab was sure that because he was supposedly leading "God's nation" that God must want him to "win" all the time... and that was a lie. God's promised future is always bigger than just me-and-my-group-first. Micaiah's story, rough as it is to hear, reminds us of that.
Today, the challenge is for us not to sell out the good and wide and spacious hope of God's promised future, which is good for all creation and all peoples, by trying to trade it in for our short-sighted, self-centered wishes. Don't settle for less than God's real promised future. Don't sell it short. And don't let court-appointed prophets just tell you what you want to hear.
Listen for the truth from the minority report voices like Micaiah's, the truth that may be harder to handle, but is what we need to hear.
Lord God, don't let us settle, and keep putting honest, good voices around us to tell us what we need to hear, even if it is not what we wanted to hear.
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