Prophets are the church’s immune system.
Without prophets, we are left to the mercy of whatever sicknesses we’re exposed to from season to season. The prophet, like an oncologist, inflicts a kind of communal pain which, when received, brings healing. Their hard words bring a better world. Perhaps more than ever, prophets are in great need to revitalize the American church. For truth-telling is the language of a Christ who so proudly spoke of Himself as “…the Truth.” (John 14:6)
Yet, in recent times, I’ve lamented a growing trend. Through various mediums of social media, blogging, and podcasting, a virtual cottage industry of self-proclaimed prophets have steadily produced a stream of, at times, vehement, virulent, and venomous words toward the church that, while often bearing truth, is not always delivered in a spirit of generosity and hopefulness.
Again, their words are often truthful. But, more or less, I’ve grown unconvinced that the prophetic role as such is being done in a way that does not respect the Bible or the body of Christ.
I often sit perplexed, particularly as a pastor, as to how to engage and learn from these voices without simply abandoning the Internet.
While I’m the first to agree that truth telling is what the church needs, I’ve also come to believe that it requires a class of prophets who are bold enough to stick around and iron out their truth in the community.
A prophet must remember the absolutely irreplaceable role of relationship in the economy of truth telling.
Tunnel vision
So many of my pastoral heroes are or were pastors of very large churches. I’ve heard many-a-story of creative ways my pastor friends of large churches have sought to escape the crowd after a big church service. I’ve heard of secret passageways, hidden offices, and unknown hallways that the preacher might duck out without being inundated by the mob of the adoring audience. I was first captured, nay awed, by this image in Bible College. I had heard the founding pastor of my church had to do this because his fame had grown to the point that he didn’t have a choice. His ministry was so powerful, it seemed, that he had to escape the crowds.
Now, pastoring a small church in an urban setting, I realize that those days are largely over. My life isn’t one with secret passageways, hidden offices, or unknown hallways. And I’m kind of glad about it. The best preaching is when the preacher has the chance of getting punched after a really bad sermon. And I increasingly believe in a pastoral class that is in relationship with those to whom they preach.
Within many of us, I believe there’s an unhealthy lust for bearing our message without having to deal with the outcome, or the people, to whom we’ve delivered it. We want to speak truth, but, we don’t want to have to do the dishes afterwards.
We all have our escape tunnels.
Sadly, we live in a time when prophets have been marginalized by the church. But nothing is new about that. Of course, many would say that they have to resort to using social media, blogging, and podcasting because they aren’t welcome in any church any longer. And for that, the church must repent. A church minus prophets is a church with no immune system. By moving to these mediums, however, the voice of the prophet has become disconnected from localized, personal, relational community where those voices are most needed and effective.
But I grow afraid that the internet has become the escape tunnel for prophets from doing truth telling in community.
Truth telling minus relationship is not only absent from the Bible, I would argue it is incredibly hurtful, dangerous, and unhelpful to the church. Jesus was widely viewed as a false prophet in his own time, guilty, like other apostates, of seeking to undermine the faith of Israel. There were stipulations for such an instance—in most cases, the Sanhedrin would put someone to death by strangulation or stoning (Deut. 13:5). Japanese writer Shasaku Endo long ago surmised that the accusation that Jesus was a “glutton and a heavy drinker” (Matt. 11:19) were part of the Pharisees attempts to connect Jesus’, in their mind, illegitimate birth to his eventual treason and heresy.
The incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, truth Himself, the prophet above all prophets, was interpreted by the world as a heretic.
So they killed him.
Activist and priest Phil Berrigan long ago said that is what we do to true prophets. The poor, he said, tell us who we are. The prophet, however, tells us who we could be. Berrigan said that is why we hide the poor and kill the prophets. But it is telling that God, the incarnate Lord, himself brought truth by bringing Himself. He embodied truth. He didn’t write a blog post about the sin of the world.
The relational prophet
The price a prophet will always have to pay in the church is that they are misunderstood, but, never, should they be marginalized, ostracized, or killed. It is normative that they are seen as weird, but it is a sin to see them as being against God.
In our collective imagination, we often envision the prophet as one preaching a one-way diatribe of harsh, but needed, truth to a sinful people. But is this picture accurate?
Old Testament scholar John Goldingay has written quite a bit on the prophet, the one who “has seen something, and has seen something because Yahweh has made the seeing possible. It is as if God opened a window in heaven.” Goldingay points out that many Hebrew prophets, such as Jeremiah, practiced a form and method of prophetic ministry that was inherently conversational.
As was often the case in its history, Israel’s disobedience led to arrogance, sin, and outright idolatry. In most cases, God intervenes. In one particular instance, God not only confers upon Jeremiah a divine message for the people, God offers him a script (Jer. 13:12-14). Yet what’s unique is God’s awareness of Israel’s responses, as well as what Jeremiah is to say in response. Point being: the Hebrew prophets could be prophets only because they lived in relationship and dialogue with those they sought to infect with their message. Being prophetic assumed there was a relationship with those who needed the message.
Keep in mind that the prophets spoke truth to power—kings, magistrates, and people in authority. But in every instance, they spoke truth to people in power that they knew. They earned the right to speak to those in power in relationship.
The biblical prophet spoke truth to power because it had a relationship with those in power.
I know that in many cases, non-relational truth telling is our only option. Especially for the prophet who has been ostracized. And that is not only unfortunate, it is detrimental. When the prophet is disenfranchised from the church, the church is the biggest loser—we lose the voice of the Lord.
We need the prophet in our community to hold us to the heart of Jesus. Theologian Johannes Kritzinger reminds us of the relationship between prophecy and that of challenging power structures: “Christian prophecy is the power of weakness that unmasks the weakness of power.”
We need prophets in our communities. Often, we think of a prophet as one who rides in on a horse from the desert to deliver a message only to leave the next morning. But it is very clear from the Old Testament narrative that the prophets were a community, a group, who travelled and worked together. That is, prophets were people in community.
Pick up a shovel
What does this look like?
Years ago, I read of the Rev. William Holmes, who—the week following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas—preached a message of strong correction to his own city of Dallas by arguing that it had become prime environment for such violence to occur. He received death threats. He was hated. He spoke a hard word.
But he stayed.
For the next forty years, Rev. Holmes pastored in Dallas, seeking to iron out his conviction amongst those with whom he lived. History determines a prophet, not the prophet themselves.
Again, the story of Ezra comes to mind. The Israelites, after a long journey of travel to their Promised Land from exile, encounter a small but motivated group of discouragers of their efforts to rebuild the temple. Led by Tattenai, a governor from their community, the locals offer a sustained, critical voice in seeking to inhibit the work of the Lord being done by the newly re-established Israelites. Speaking before the discouraged and distraught people, they tell the Israelites that, despite Tattenai’s discouragement, the time has come to build. Ezra tells us that the “prophets of God were with them, supporting them” (Ezra 5:2). The prophets, given the task of hearing from God, put down their prophetic messages and pick up their shovels and hammers to help the work. Or, to be more precise, their hammering is their message.
Listen, don’t be too quick to call yourself a “prophet” if you’re not willing to pick up a vacuum and clean up a little, or shovel a little, or pick up a hammer. Or just stick around.
Because a prophet minus love isn’t a prophet.
When you’ve got a message but don’t pick up your shovel, you cease being God’s gift to the church. You cease being an immune system that attacks viruses and bacteria and turn instead on the body itself.
Words without a shovel is truth without love.
“Let’s start my journey to becoming a V3 church planter today!”
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