In February, as part of my series exploring the history and structure of the Bible, I included a sermon on the prophetic books. You may recall that Miles Overn joined us and performed Kris Kristofferson’s “Beat the Devil”, which gives one account of the meaning of the word prophet. Kristofferson pointed out that prophets speak to “the people who don’t listen to the things that [they] are saying” yet they keep “praying someone’s gonna hear” because they “don’t believe that no one wants to know.”

The text I used in February is the same one that we heard read this morning from the prophet Jeremiah – the story of his call, that moment when God spoke to him and declared that henceforth Jeremiah was going to speak so that someone would hear and heed God’s word. Jeremiah’s reaction, to protest that he was too young, echoes the reaction of several other prophets – Moses, Isaiah and Jonah among them. They were similarly reluctant when God thrust this dangerous and lonely office upon them. “Get me out of here,” they cried, “I’m not qualified.”

As Heather and I talked about this text, it was Jeremiah’s objecting that kept speaking to us – “I am only a boy,” he said. Prophets speak truth to power. Biblical prophets are responding to a call by God to demand that the rulers and the ruled live in right relationship with God: by caring for the widow, the orphan and the stranger in the land and by worshipping no false gods, such as money, power and status. How can a mere boy take on that role?

But as we thought about the nature of prophets in our own time, it struck us that often it is children who are speaking to the people who don’t listen, it is children who are saying what needs to be said, and what many adults are refusing to hear. Consider the story of a boy named Iqbal Masih.

Iqbal Masih was born in 1983 in an impoverished small village outside Lahore in Pakistan. When his family needed to pay for his older brother’s wedding, they went to a local carpet manufacturer to borrow the equivalent of $6. To repay the debt, Iqbal was sold into bonded slavery at the age of 4. Iqbal learned to weave carpets and for most of his short life that is what he did, 12 hours a day, every day. When he was ten years old, he discovered an organization called the Bonded Labour Liberation Front and learned that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had outlawed child labour.

Iqbal went to the local police for help and was quickly returned to the factory owner, who put him in chains in front of his loom once again. A second time, he escaped, this time making his way to the offices of the Labour Liberation Front, who took him in and supported him as he pursued an education for the first time in his life.

It was at this point that Iqbal discovered his call to be a prophet. He found ways to speak to other bonded children, letting them know their rights and thereby empowering them to escape. More than three thousand children found freedom as a result of his speaking truth to power.

Iqbal was invited to the United States and to Sweden, where he spoke about conditions in his homeland and told the story of his escape. By carrying his message abroad, he inspired wealthy westerners to act to save children from slavery.

Iqbal was fatally shot at the young age of 12, but his legacy continues even now. Another 12 year old, a Canadian boy from Thornhill, Ontario, read of Iqbal’s life and his murder. Craig Kielburger, a middle-class kid from a suburb north of Toronto, was moved by the fact that Iqbal was the same age as he, and had accomplished so much in his short life. He was inspired to enlist the efforts of his fellow students to petition for children’s rights. In 1995, Kielburger traveled to India and Bangladesh to see the conditions of child labourers for himself. As it happened, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was traveling in India at the same time and Kielburger was granted 15 minutes to speak with him and solicit Canadian governmental action to combat child labour.