The Prophet

Last year we learned about the prophet.  Many years ago, the man had been a witch doctor, but saw the growing influence of the Christian evangelists, the esteem and power that was granted to the pastors.  He changed his title to prophet and changed his language to religious words to maintain influence among the Maasai that were embracing the religion of Christianity. 

 It worked. Nearly everyone in the region and the church still consults the prophet.  If you have a family curse, he may tell you to buy some blankets and goats and give them away so as to disperse the curse away from your family.  He likes to predict the weather.  A year ago after the biggest long rains in 17 years, he predicted that a spring would come in a certain place and that it would have healing powers.

A couple Sundays ago, another prophet came to church. This man had recently been trying to establish himself as a prophet in mimic to the established prophet of the region. He began to wear a certain bright color of suit in order to be recognizable. 

Currently, he is influential enough to scare the church chairman. The prophet made public announcements that if people oppose the pastor, they will go crazy, foam at the mouth, and run naked in front of their own children.  The church chairman had been in sharp disagreement with the pastor for at least a year. His daughter became sick right after the prophet's pronouncement and he became afraid. He began to make amends in order to avoid the curse of the prophet.  

The prophet and the pastor teamed up to call for a repentance service on that Sunday a few weeks ago.  Everyone in the church was to fast and pray that day. The gathering was held out under the trees. Both the prophet and the pastor gave sermons. 

Out beyond the church building, all the people packed tight under the uneven shade of three different acacia trees, cool breeze islands in a sea of heat and dust.  As the sun moved, individuals picked up their chairs, shuffled around and crammed into the edge of shade growing on the other side of the tree. 

Choir after choir came up to dance and sing in a different key than the electronic keyboard, in a different beat than the electronic beat, and sometimes in lip-sync to an mp3 of their favorite Maasai "gospel" song. Two long sermons ensued. 

Finally, after a long everybody-crowd-close-get-on-your-knees-in-the-dust prayer session, it was over. Lunchtime long gone, it was soon time for dinner.  

As often happens, we found out what happened at church in the next few days upon some investigation. We learned that the message of the prophet was that everything was bad these days- the cows weren't producing much milk, the land was bad from people burning charcoal, even all the children were acting up in the schools, division in the church, there was no rain on the horizon, everything was bad. He said it was because people had been sinning. God was not pleased. People had been in conflict. People were against the pastor. He said they needed to repent and to give another tythe (in addition to the 10% that was called for two Sundays ago), a cow, a goat, etc, as a sign of repentance. 

We have two friends who stand alone in their non-consultation with the prophets. They told us that they agreed with the pastor's call for repentance and fasting that Sunday.  But since the prophet was going to be leading the church service, they decided to hike into the bush and spend the day together under the shade of a tree, fasting and praying for the church, the community and its leaders, and repenting in complete obscurity. 

I live in this culture as a guest and whenever I see things that seem wacky, I look for parallels in my own culture to help me try to understand. I can always find them. There are hosts of things that we North Americans rely on besides God to try to ward off "bad" things that we don't want to happen.  We go all out trying to insure that we will be comfortable, safe, healthy, cancer free and have what we want when we want it. We try to control our lives, our health, our fortunes in case God doesn't quite cover all the bases.  Like the Maasai, we also struggle to grasp the relationship between God, us, and the events of our lives.