The Second Sunday of Advent brings on the prophets, and the Collect of the Day advises us to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, to listen to the messengers of God who are calling upon us to repent.

The great Old Testament prophets guided Israel throughout her history, and recalled her to faith and mission and ministry when she went off the rails. Israel usually didn't like her prophets, often as not didn't listen to them, but she was lost without them. So are we. The ancient Israelites and contemporary Americans, need, always have needed, always will need, the prophets among us, both the ancient ones we read, and the modern ones we hear among us. And, as the Collect reminds us, we need very much to heed their warnings. These warnings, like the prophets who issue them, come in two types: obviously accurate ones, where the awful things do happen as predicted, and apparently inaccurate ones, where the awful things predicted do not happen.

Isaiah and Jeremiah are arguably the most well-known prophets, but there were others, sadly called by Biblical scholars the minor prophets, though they were just as critical to the religious community.

Jonah, from the belly of the whale, was one of these minor prophets, but with an astounding significance and crucial example. Jonah himself felt humiliated, and was angry with God, so angry that by Jonah's own account, he was angry enough to die. He had been humiliated, because he apparently got it all wrong. He predicted the worst for Nineveh, "that great city", and the worst did not happen, and he was not happy about it -- made him look unprofessional, he felt. Why this turn of events? Because the people listened to Jonah in a way they did not listen to Isaiah and Jeremiah. And so nothing happened -- big embarrassment if you have a vested interest in correctly calling catastrophe. But the people of Nineveh listened to the unpleasant message, the nasty truth about themselves, and they did something about it. They repented. And the disaster never came.

Isaiah and Jeremiah told the people: "certain tragedy will befall you if you don't change your ways." The people scoffed a them, or ignored them. And catastrophe ensued. As Jeremiah predicted, the entire nation was overthrown and the survivors carried off captive to Babylon for a generation.

The prophets remind us that our behavior makes a difference. Prophets remind us we are responsible for much of what happens to us -- surely innocent victims sometimes, but also, often enough complicit in the catastrophe. Prophets want us to acknowledge our sin, recognize our faults, shortcomings, mistakes, and sins, and then take responsibility for our lives, our words, our deeds, our thoughts, and apologize where necessary, and then amend our lives and turn to God. May seem like a tall order to us, the prophets doubtless think it's not too much to ask.

I think we have gotten very far away from this sort of personal accountability - any sense of responsibility for our actions, much less for our words, and probably not at all for our thoughts. We do not think that there will be a reckoning, nothing will ever come of our misdeeds, our mean thoughts, our thoughtless words. Prophets remind us that will have to answer for what we have done and left undone, what we have said, and why and how, for our motives and our feelings and our judgments. We will stand before the throne of God, being judged by his Christ. The prophets will not let a person, a nation, a Church, ignore or adjust the will of God to suit our own mishmash of fears and insecurities, personal prejudice or perpetual sin.

The prophets, the ones in the Bible and the ones in our own day, individuals or members of task forces or study groups, are all prophets in their own way just as much as their more famous cousins in the Bible. Wise and courageous, these clear-sighted men and women, today' prophets, ask us to consider if there are behaviors, attitudes, inclinations, we need to forsake, turn away from, so that destruction does not come upon us, and those we love, or even those we have never met but would not want to hurt.

The prophets promise, the prophets insist, that we can stop what we are doing, we can change. It may take a huge effort and a long time, it may take completely re-ordered priorities and reduced expectations and changed attitudes, it may mean the willingness to make major shifts. If we hope to be like Jonah's wise and modest Nineveh, and not like Jeremiah's foolish and arrogant Jerusalem, we need to listen, to heed as the Collect says. Listen first and foremost and finally to what the prophets say to us ourselves. We are tempted to cheer on prophets when they seem to be correcting others whom we think need truth spoken to them forcefully. We may be less willing to pay close attention to what the prophets say to us. We need to hear and heed as they warn us: "Don't you see what you're doing? Don't you see where this will lead? Don't you see how it could be different, better.

For us, as for Israel, the voices of the prophets are full of warning, serious warnings. But theirs is not a nasty or judgmental voice, it does not scold or hector in order to condemn. Rather, prophets call us, all of us, to a new way foreword. The prophet's warning is not a verdict, a judgment, or a sentence. It is warning of a way out. The prophet always insists: It can change, you can change, you can grow, it can all get better if you want it to, and then do something about it -- if we will just "heed their warnings, and forsake our sins."