Are You a Prophet? You Should Be.

Are you and your church prophetic?  Are you stopping oppression and doing justice?

See the January 2018 Sojourners magazine for an article titled, "relentless hope: prophetic imagination in a time of despair." by Kenyatta Gilbert.  This article is about Walter Brueggemann's 40 year old book titled The Prophetic Imagination.  Kwok Pui-lan asserts "Rarely would you find a classic that speaks so poignantly to today's political situation as it was published 40 years ago."

Will Willimon, Duke Divinity School writes:

"Languishing in a forlorn inner-city parish, in despair at the lack of movement [progress], God gave me Walt's book.  I read it cover to cover at one sitting.  When I finished, I was born again [a second conversion].
Walt showed me that what my church needed was not my carping criticism, but God's gift of prophetic imagination.  This book gave me the guts to work with God in raising the dead through nothing but [prophetic] words.  Compromised, too-eager-to-please me, got to be Jeremiah."

From the pen of Gilbert:

"In the Bible, this consciousness echoes through the despair-penetrating hope that Jeremiah and Isaiah offered to exile-weary Israelites.  Today, this consciousness reverberates through people such as William Barber II [and John Perkins] who speak out against white nationalism, police violence, and corporate greed to remind us another way is possible.

"The ideological opposite of the prophetic tradition is imperialism. . . . "

Today, we need a church that preaches a 'justice-to-hope' message and practices a 'release the oppressed' gospel.

Pope Francis was speaking prophetically to the Catholic Church when he exhorted it to "leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets."  I would paraphrase Pope Francis with the following amplification:

"After worship, take the spirituality of the sanctuary with you as you enter into the suffering on the streets where the church becomes flesh---an incarnation of kingdom justice that releases the oppressed and then rebuilds their communities."