Your Daughters Will Prophesy

I make it to Atlanta a few times a year for various reasons. This time, I was staying with a friend while I had plans to speak at a college in the area. But a tropical storm had violently blown through the region the night before I was supposed to speak. The college asked if I could delay my speaking engagement for one day while they cleaned up some damage on campus. I now had an open day to spend with my friend and visit one of my favorite spots – the burial site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King.

When I arrived at the site, situated between the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the original Ebenezer Baptist Church – the house of worship that in decades past had echoed with the righteously ardent sermons of Dr. King, the city was eerily quiet from the storm the evening before. As far as I could see in all directions, I was the only person walking in this part of the city. Tree limbs and plant debris littered the sidewalks and streets. The sun had yet to appear from behind the remnants of the clouds trailing the storm. I was alone, and the stillness of the place felt holy.

I had come to pray here and to pray about something specific. When a large number of people from your church eventually leave your church over many years, you get pretty good at telling when people are about to make their exit. And it was happening again. Some people I loved were about to transition. They hadn’t told me yet, but I could feel they would soon. They had never been oppositional or disrespectful, but their recent silence signaled to me the sadness in their hearts. They felt they couldn’t call The Gospel Tabernacle home any longer.

As I walked near the cascading fountain that surrounds the Kings' tombs, I reflected on all the changes I had helped to lead in the last decade or more. They were many, but some particular changes occupied my mind. Over the years, our conviction from the Scriptures and our attempt to follow the Spirit had led to three noticeable changes at our church among others.

First, we were discovering Jesus in the margins of empire - in the places where we could learn from those experiencing poverty and injustice in mutual friendship. Second, we had embraced a fuller understanding of the Holy Spirit, observing in the Gospels and the Book of Acts a kind of divine power that we had not experientially known and become hungry to witness. Third, our emphasis on being on mission with Jesus in the world had led us to reconsider how women had been limited in ministry and leadership in our church. Women were now preaching and leading in ways that had not been present in recent memory because we felt we were impoverished without them. All of these newfound emphases had been grounded in our leadership’s collective, careful, prayerful study of the Scriptures. We knew there were those who disagreed with us, but we couldn’t help but lead from our current biblical convictions.

As I walked on the streets of Atlanta that day, I reflected on all the difficult conversations with individuals in our church – people I loved and respected – that had centered on one or more of these changes. People were disoriented to find we were preaching from the Scriptures a God who confronts the oppression of empire with His love and justice, seeking power and manifestations from the Spirit as the early disciples experienced, and blessing women who were leading in our missional movement. I remember engaging many thoughtful conversations, listening to concerns, reasoning from the Scriptures, and shedding tears as people’s consciences led them away from us.

And now, in Atlanta, I was wondering if I had just messed it all up. On one hand, I was firm in my convictions. I knew where God had led us. I felt reasonably confident in my understanding of the Scriptures. On the other hand, I had led much of this change in my 20s. Had I been young and foolish (but I thought we had heard and followed God’s voice)? Was it too much too fast (but hadn’t we taken well over a decade to incrementally lead these changes)? Would everyone eventually see this would fail (but would God lead us here and then let it fail)? And it wasn’t over. Now more were going to leave. Our church had made it over 100 years through the Great Depression, a World War, the decline of the steel industry in the Pittsburgh region – would it now end with my leadership? Would enough people leave to make our church financially unsustainable? Had I hurt too many people? Had I missed God’s voice?

The thoughts were swirling.

I opened up a prayer resource on my phone as I walked in circles on the grounds of Ebenezer Baptist, and I prayed from the prophet Habakkuk, “The LORD is in His holy temple; let all the earth be silent before Him.” It was time to be quiet and listen.

Just then I rounded the corner of a building on the grounds and saw ahead of me the first person in at least half an hour of walking. She was walking away from me, long dreads down her back with a slight limp. She appeared to me to be homeless, pulling some of her belongings with her in a cart. I was walking in the same direction as her from behind.

I was feeling pensive and moody – self-pitying, even – so I really didn’t want to talk. I went to cross the street so I could pass her at a distance and hopefully avoid contact. Then I remembered. I was in Atlanta to speak to college students, and I had chosen Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan as my text. Hadn’t religious leaders in that story passed by the man in need? My conscience couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t pass by this woman and preach on that text the very next day. So I stayed on the same sidewalk as her. If she spoke to me, I’d engage.

She did. “Excuse me, sir, could you give me a few dollars?”

Standing face to face now, we could see each other clearly. Her face carried the wrinkles of age that had perhaps been accelerated by a hard life. She smiled when she asked, and she was holding a pink rose.

I almost never carry cash, but on this day I had the remainder of money I had withdrawn from an ATM for the tolls as I drove to Georgia. There was $7 in my pocket, a $5 bill and two $1s. I handed her the $5.

She thanked me and then said, “Look at this rose. I got it from over there.” Across the street from where we stood was a rose garden dedicated to the memory of Coretta Scott King. It was filled with blooming roses of all colors.

“I never would have picked this rose,” she went on, “but the storm blew it onto the ground. Isn’t it beautiful? Would you like to smell it with me?” I leaned in to smell with her. It was fragrant.

There we stood together on the storm-littered streets, sharing in this simple moment of delight as we admired this rose.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Mary. What’s yours?”

“Joel.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m praying.”

Her eyes closed and a wide grin opened on her face as if she knew exactly why I’d be drawn to this place. “Ah, this is a good place to pray. I like to pray here too.”

Then her eyes opened and she leaned in closer to me. She spoke, quietly and slowly.

“I think God wants you to know that sometimes you just have to keep doing the thing you’re doing. Just keep doing it.”

I don’t know if my jaw actually dropped but it must have. Was God really speaking to me in this moment? Was His affirmation coming this specifically through Mary, the woman with the rose I wanted to avoid? Her words hit me with emotional force.

Suddenly I was aware that I hadn’t given her all the money in my pocket. I felt the gentle correction of the Spirit. “Here,” I said, “you can have this too.” I handed her the two remaining $1 bills. It felt small and silly to give it to her, but I just knew I couldn’t withhold it.

“Thanks,” she said. “Here, I want you to have this.” And she handed me the rose. I received it and twirled it between my fingers. I thanked her. We said goodbye, and she walked away.

As we parted, I had such a sense of God’s Presence. What had just happened? It felt like God was speaking.

I don’t know who Mary was, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. But it seemed to me she represented the places and people God had been bringing us into relationship with for the last decade. She seemed to be poor. It sure felt like she was prophesying to me. And she was a woman. There it was. The margins of empire. Experiencing the Spirit. Women following Jesus as God empowered them by His Spirit.

I don’t think it was a mistake there was $7 in my pocket that day (a number representing fullness in the Scriptures), and I think it was purposeful that God wanted me to give it all to her. For years, I had been leading in certain directions that I was afraid would come at too high a cost. At times, this caused me to negotiate between trying to keep people happy and going to the places I felt God was leading us. I was trying to follow His leadership, but I didn’t want to seem too radical. I was taking the steps, but I was too often afraid of what people would think. At times I had given $5 worth of my leadership to the places He was taking us, but I had often kept $2 back.

Most significantly, Mary gave me a rose. In giving what I had to her that day, she gave what she had to me. It was mutual and reciprocal. There was a blessing in the giving and the receiving. It felt like God was asking us to give everything we had to the things He had called us to be. There would be loss – I didn’t get the $7 back. But there would be rich blessing in return. I arguably got something better from Mary than anything I had given to her – a beautiful rose, a prophetic word, her leadership.

And Mary’s words had been clear, “Just keep doing it.” Maybe I hadn’t done it perfectly. Clearly, I hadn’t. But that was no cause to doubt that God had spoken to us by His Word and by His Spirit.

Does anyone really fully know what these experiences mean? But it felt like it meant something.

I spent the next few hours pacing the lonely streets of Atlanta lost in prayer, holding the rose in my hand. Something got settled in my heart that day. No matter the cost, no matter if I looked like a failure, no matter what people said about me, no matter what I could or could not understand about those who disagreed with me – I had to be obedient to God’s voice. Just keep doing it. All $7 to this, no holding back. It would be ok if that meant releasing people to the next thing God had for them. It would be ok if that meant financial hardship for us. It would be ok if it meant we’d be misunderstood.

When I returned to my car, I texted the Leadership Team of the Gospel Tabernacle: the next few months may be hard, maybe another wave of heartache is coming, maybe there are more tears to shed, maybe there are more hugs to give in saying goodbye - but we have to abide in Him and remain obedient.

As expected, the next few months were painful. Another round of change was coming to our church and to the stories of people we loved. It seemed there was pain all around – pain for those who stayed and pain for those who left. There was so much I didn’t understand.

But Mary’s words rang in my years, “Just keep doing it.” There’s a quiet plodding in obedience. A simple waiting and trusting.

In the coming months we unapologetically gave all $7 to the thing I believed God was making us to be. I stopped negotiating to save my reputation, my job, or even my happiness. I had to be all in. I really believe even if that had meant utter failure, it would have been the right thing to do. I don’t think it’s possible to be fully obedient while calculating risk and hedging our bets. Even if Jesus calls us to our deaths, He’s worth our obedience. Isn’t He always calling us to our deaths?

But then the rose started to bloom. Somehow God provided. Somehow catastrophe never came. The losses were irreplaceable, but like Coretta Scott King’s rose garden, a whole family of diverse missional leaders and expressions of the Kingdom started to grow. A regional network was born. A new fragrant story came to life. Tears mixed with delight.

Let all the earth be silent. The Lord is about to speak. On the streets. Through His daughter, Mary.