People! Wake up

It’s prophecy time

the flyer says

 

come and let us tell you what an angry and retributive God

has in store for this sinful world

and let us scare the hell out of you…

 

It’s prophecy time

come to the “prophecy center”

 

prophecy

it’s a good thing

really

when it is really prophecy

 

not when it someone telling you

what a prophet from long ago was telling

people from long ago

about the possible consequences of their actions

and challenging them to change

 

not when it is someone pointing to the “signs of the time”

Bible style

and suggesting that those signs

(meant to apply to ancient Rome) are happening “now”

and we’d better pay up our tithes

and answer that altar call

or burn

 

but when it is someone proclaiming

 

“Hear!  Hear O Children of God!”

that the same errors of yesteryear

are the same errors of today

and we really ought to change

 

Aquinas (in his Commentary of Jeremiah) suggests that a

“prophet has been consecrated to overturn, root up, destroy,

and again to build and renew”

 

a prophet is to stand up to injustice

and stand up for justice

and bring healing

 

a prophet is about transformation

not about scaring people into

buying insurance against an inevitable future

but about moving people into changing the future

 

prophets are people who must see

see what is wrong

prophets are people who must speak

who must, in whatever way they can

put a mirror in front of people and say

“This is us”

 

a prophet is a person who helps other people see

what he or she sees

that which is hidden

that which is forgotten

that which is denied

 

and a prophet says

because we are greedy

because we abuse power

because we neglect the poor

because we oppress

because we pillage and plunder

because

 

this is what will happen

this is what is likely to happen

 

unless

 

unless we see

unless we repent

unless we change

unless we turn to God

not in fear but in hope

 

and live life a different way

 

a prophet is less about what God is going to do to us

and more about what we are going to do to ourselves

 

it is not that God is unimportant

for in God, in Sacred, in Love

we find the power to change

 

but we cannot, we will not change

what we do not see

 

so let us hear it for the prophets

for Isaiah, and Amos

Micah, and Mary, and Elizabeth

for Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela

for Sister Chittister, and Shawn Clairborne

(and definitely not for Enlow, Locke, and Kerr)

 

let us hear it for the prophets

those who see

and stand

and speak

those who help us see what is wrong

challenge us to be better

and connect us with the Power

to change