24th Day of Lent

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

Revelation 19:9-10, NIV

Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”

At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

Reflection - Pastor Taylor Walker, Zion Lutheran Church, Spring City

This is a fascinating image – the Revelator, when confronted with an actual angel of the Lord reciting the actual word of the Lord, is compelled to fall to his knees and worship. Immediately the angel says, “Stop! I’m nothing special. I, like you, hold to the testimony of Jesus.”

And then the angel says something so peculiar, almost an afterthought… “It is the Spirit of Prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

In other words… the prophetic spirit is what is able to carry the redemptive, life-changing, regime-shattering message of Jesus Christ. And the prophetic spirit is the only thing capable of transmitting it.

I have been thinking a lot about prophets these days. Prophets, I always thought, must be a special kind of person. It’s hard to be a prophet. They are rarely liked in their hometowns – they are constantly rejected because they act in Jesus’s name – they can be altogether uncouth and disorderly in their reckless pursuit of God’s justice and grace. Sometimes I feel like a prophet, speaking truth to power, and other times I think there must be someone else who could do this whole thing better. That perhaps I – or many of us – are not cut out to be prophets.

But isn’t it something, this passage from Revelation – this idea that literally only the prophetic spirit is capable of sharing testimony to Jesus?

And if that is true, that suggests that God wants all of us to be prophets. That it is not some unique job left to the best Christians with the best words… the charismatic, extroverted ones among us… the ones with lots of free time, who can easily, conveniently, fit God’s work into the rest of their lives… no, this passage suggests that God wants me, and you, and everyone we know, to do this work. And the time to start, if you haven’t guessed yet, is right now.

Prayer: God who called me, as I am, right here, right now: show me the people I am to serve and the work I am to do. Give me strength, because living in this world is just exhausting. Help me stay strong as a witness to your word and a proclaimer of truth, always. (And be with me when I stumble, cause God, I sure will.) In Jesus name I pray – Amen.