I recently posted on Facebook an extract of a speech given by Neil Kinnock in 1983 on the eve of the General Election. This is a fuller extract of that speech:
If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance – when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can't pay. I warn you that you will be cold – when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don't notice and the poor can't afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work – when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don't earn, they don't spend. When they don't spend, work dies. I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quiet – when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. I warn you that you will have defence of a sort – with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding. I warn you that you will be home-bound – when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you that you will borrow less – when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.
Speech in Bridgend, Glamorgan, on Tuesday 7 June 1983. Thursday 9 June 1983 was polling day in the general election. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Kinnock
In response to my posting a friend added the comment “Are you sure that is not a quote from 'Revelations?'" And another friend added “Wow sounds like a Biblical prophet.”
And there is indeed something about an Old Testament prophet in Kinnock’s words. Maybe his time at Vale Terrace Methodist Church youth club in Tredegar (where he was a contemporary of my dad as it happens – *sound of name being dropped there*) had an influence even if Kinnock would now claim to be an atheist.
Were those words spoken 31 years ago prophetic? Was Kinnock a prophet?
My copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1973 edition given to me by my grandfather on my 18th birthday in 1981 and a treasured possession) gives several definitions of prophet
“One who speaks for God, or for any deity, as the inspired revealer or interpreter of God’s will … In a non religious sense the accredited spokesman, proclaimer or preacher of some principle, cause or movement. … One who foretells what is going to happen;”
Now applying those definitions there is something prophetic about Kinnock’s words. (Prophetic being – again according to my dictionary – “Pertaining or proper to a prophet; having the character or function of a prophet”) Kinnock would not have thought of himself as speaking for God. But he certainly foretold some things that would happen.
Last Sunday was the third Sunday in Advent and the Old Testament reading in the lectionary was from Isaiah 61. The passage contains these words:
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
They are words Jesus uses (close on 500 years after Isaiah) in setting out his ministry. The words are clearly important then. They are a mission statement for how followers of Jesus Christ should seek to be and how we should seek to challenge the society we live in if those values are contrary to these words.
If there can be any doubt about the importance of these words, later on in chapter 61 Isaiah proclaims these words:
For I, the LORD, love justice;
I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
Years ago, a wise teacher of preachers advised prepare your sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. His point was that sermons had to be relevant to the day-to-day lives of people, and the best way to ensure that would be to focus on what is going on in the world. That is good advice.
Our newspapers and televisions and radios and internet regularly contain stories of people being oppressed or poor or broken hearted or prisoners. I freely admit that it is a challenge for us to look at our world and see injustice, oppression and poverty and think “Wasn’t this supposed to change with Jesus?”
Well yes at one level it was supposed to change. God sent his son Jesus into the world to be a light. God sent his son into the world to save the world from sin and transform the world into the Kingdom of God. God sent his son into the world to show how we should live. To show that people should care for one another.
And Jesus did do all those things. But sinful people ignored his teaching and turned away once again – just as they had done in the time before Isaiah incidentally.
At Advent then we are reminded we are now living in an in between time. A time after Jesus came in to the world and a time when we wait for Christ to come again and restore this broken world. Advent is a time of waiting, and hoping and preparation for God to transform the world through Jesus Christ.
Which brings us back to Isaiah’s prophecy. For Isaiah’s words tell us that this transformation is not an empty hope but it is a sure promise. Christ will come again!
So what about the in between time? What about now in other words?
Transformation is happening now. Christ’s transformation is happening today. But where? Where is God’s transformation revealed today? What is God doing today in the lives of the people that offer hope and restoration to our broken world?
At this time of year there are signs of transformation all around us. But these are signs of the secular world being transformed as Christmas lights go up and Christmas music is played. Our schedules are transformed into tireless activities leading to near exhaustion and fatigue. Somehow in the secular world at this time of year many people are transformed into monsters who wish to consume everything. Monsters who want to buy everything.
Even amid the Christmas trees, Advent rings and crib scenes in our churches it is often difficult to see God’s transformation springing up. So Isaiah’s words come as a real challenge to those of us in church, let alone to those outside of church.
We do not need to look far to see the injustice of poverty, abuse, hunger, oppression and war. Yet our Christmas distractions often speak louder to us than Isaiah’s call for God’s transformation. Our eyes tend to stay focused on the pretty nativity scene rather than looking beyond it to what Jesus’ birth really means for this world.
But Isaiah’s words, as spoken once again by Jesus in Luke 4, remind us that God’s transformation will alter our personal lives and the world in which we live.
An important question for Advent to reflect on is this.
“What are God’s people doing in the world to bring God’s good news of transformation?”
In places where there is growth then it is easy to see how God is at work transforming lives. But what about here? With our churches in decline surely God must have given up on us?
Well he hasn’t. For just as Isaiah spoke his message to the people of Israel exiled in a strange land so he speaks to us, for in a sense we are now a remnant, exiles in a strange land. The words are a reassurance to us but they are a challenge to us too. For whilst God loves us and cares for us he still reminds us that we are to be the transformation around us. We are to be the prophets speaking truth to power. Shining the light into the dark world of greed and corruption and oppression.
So was Kinnock a prophet? Yes his words have proved to be prophetic I believe and the values he espoused in that speech seem very Biblical to me. God can use all manner of people to proclaim his word - including atheists!
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