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July 5 - July 8, 2019
“The prophet is one who speaks the truth to a culture of lies.”
It is the spirituality of awareness, of choice, of risk, of transformation. It is about the embrace of life, the pursuit of wholeness, the acceptance of others, the call to co-creation.
To opt for sacramental spirituality devoid of prophetic spirituality is to ignore half the Jesus message, half the Christian mandate, half the Christian life.
What it would mean to the world if both lay and religious decided to “live as Jesus lived” rather than simply go to church was beyond comprehension.
Our task is to be obedient all our lives to the Will of God for the world. And therein lies the difference between being good for nothing and good for something. Between religion for show and religion for real. Between personal spirituality that dedicates itself to achieving private sanctification and prophetic spirituality,
What this world needs most from us right now is commitment to a spirituality that is prophetic as well as private, that echoes the concerns of the prophets who have gone before us. Prophecy, in other words, is an essential dimension of Christian presence, a clear witness of the Spirit-directed life.
“If I give alms to the poor, they call me a saint. If I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
charity without prophecy can serve only to make the world safe for exploitation. As long as the poor are being fed, why raise the wages it would take to enable them to feed themselves? It enables employers to go on underpaying and overworking the very people who have made them their wealth.
The person with the soul of a prophet sees what the rest of the world either cannot see or does not want to see, and uses that vision as a compass through life.
The present-day prophets who follow such a One as this know that being unreasonable is the only reasonable way to the Gospel.
Today’s prophets of a prophetic gospel know that doing what the world calls “good” rather than what God calls good will do you little good at all.
Ask young people, like the students at the scene of one more major gun massacre, where being quiet, good, nice gets you when the powerful simply turn their backs.
From ancient times to the present, prophets in every society have been routinely vilified. Called strange. Called extremists. Called traitors. Called agitators. Called bizarre.
Who of us who call ourselves religious, in pursuit of a spiritual life, speak, teach, petition, or boycott companies whose greed is the root cause of these life-threatening policies?
We cannot see injustice and say nothing, do nothing. Not if we are really to be authentically spiritual rather than simply pious actors in the game called “church.”
The one who speaks a message other than the official one, in any institution, cannot expect to be loved by it.
Because to allow evil to flourish is the greatest evil of them all. Because, as the rabbis say, “To save one life is to save the world.”
The prophet is loud, clear, and nonviolent. There is nothing self-serving in the actions of the prophet.
we’re not racist but won’t talk about why our prisons are overfull of black men for things white men do and never get arrested for doing.
It is the birthright of every citizen to have guns of every kind, we contend, even though no case can be made for shooting deer with a military level automatic weapon.
You want to pay women and men the same amount of money for doing the same job? A ridiculous idea! You want to reduce the hold of the military-industrial complex on the soul of the nation? Maddening! You want “patriotism” to mean something more than willingness to go to war?
The agenda of the prophetic leader is peace and justice, justice and peace.
Prophetic communities do a great deal more than pray. They study; they teach; they organize others; they add something of the things of God to the situation.
As life got more comfortable from generation to generation, prophecy became reduced to Christian rituals, to public “witness” of our own private spiritual lives.
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” HELEN KELLER
It’s time to understand, with Moses, that the God who calls us to our responsibility for the world will also be with us as we shoulder our part in it. That same God will send the help we need, yes, but more than that, faith in that God will make the rough ways smooth.
“We can’t be afraid of change…Holding on to something that is good for you now may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.” C. JOY BELL
