We have a racism problem, and, I believe, we have a prophetic problem. Our contemporary mainline church (and certainly most societies in the world now) are mostly on the receiving end of the words of the Biblical prophets. We would like to imagine ourselves being prophetic, but in fact, we may need to reform ourselves to the words of the prophets. Maybe we are the “them” the prophets preached against.
For example, the prophet Amos was an outsider, a freelancer in an age when there were lots of hereditary established professional prophets, who mostly reinforced the establishment’s line. Amos rather unpopularly reminded Israel that God was watching their behavior when it came to the poor and vulnerable and outcast and outsider. The rich were getting richer at the expense of the poorer by setting things up so the poor had to pay and pay, until they were so in debt that the rich could simply take over their property. The ethnic outsiders and resident aliens (the non-Israelites) were marginalized and penalized. Amos said woe to Israel for violating the laws of God protecting the vulnerable. Isaiah and Jeremiah also scorched Israel of their days for consolidating wealth and privilege and power at the expense of the small. Jesus refrains their words with great regularity, directing his words to the religious and economic establishment. The lovely Magnificat is Mary’s exultation that the mighty are toppled and the poor elevated by God’s new creation.
For most of our existence, the Christian Church has given lip service to the words of justice and right social behavior and fair distribution of wealth, presuming we are on God’s side. I fear that seems pretty hollow these days, and it is time to read those “Woe untos” as directed at us. The good news is that enough times the powerful and privileged in the Bible listened and repented and redirected themselves and reformed. Sometimes not, but I’m hopeful we can read and learn and apply the prophets to our day.
I have a systems approach. Vocationally, it is a good perspective for diagnosing and improving how congregations live. Theologically, it also gives me a perspective on social systems in general, and racism and police violence in this particular instance. Paul’s use of “principalities and powers” might well be useful again. Where the ancient Greeks used those words cosmologically about tiers of heavenly and infernal and earthly hierarchies, I would apply them to the big, impersonal, corporate and societal systems that have their own internal logic and way of perpetuating their existence by subtly inculcating their values and processes and structures into those participating in them. After a while, the structures are so strong and so invisible that no one even realizes that they are shaped by the structures, or, even, pushed into acting certain ways because “that’s the way it’s always been.” It’s even hard to step outside the systems you are within to see them, much less to change them.
That’s why we can have nice people perpetuating bad things unintentionally. We can have structural racism without being individually racist. And it is why things are so resistant to a solution. The powers and principalities are tough.
We have to read our Bibles from a different direction than we used to. We may need to read from the other side even. We have to dig into the prophetic polemic against injustice and harming the poor or unnoticed… the vulnerable. God has a powerful and persistent preferential bias for the least of God’s human children, a theme constantly throughout the Bible and Biblical prophets and throughout church history and succeeding generations of prophets, through Martin Luther King Jr. and those in the streets of the U.S. this week. WE may need to listen more willingly than ever before, but we are not unequipped. The liberation theologians and feminist theologians and urban theologians of the 20th and 21st centuries give us the tools to re-think and reframe our actions. Like Amos, they have warned us to get with God’s program of justice and righteousness, even in the face of privilege.
Mind you, we cannot romanticize this and pretend it will be easy or non-costly to us. Jesus constantly warns his followers how ancient Israel “killed the prophets before them” when they raised God’s preference for protecting the vulnerable. The deaths throughout the civil rights era are close at hand, as are the recent deaths. A difference in which I find glimmer of optimism is that the prophets and modern martyrs were one person at a time protesting unrighteousness; now we have the chance for many, many, too many to kill prophets to raise their voices and change their presumptions and reform the way we interact in society. Many can take the side of the vulnerable.
We are at another of those watershed moments in our common life. Do we choose to stand with the disenfranchised and demeaned and dying? Do we stand with Jesus who loves the least of our sisters and brothers? Or will the prophets’ woes fall on our deaf ears. Israel listened. In our best moments, the church of the past listened. Today, will we? Protests can be prophetic.
In Christ,
David
Texts For Sunday Worship:
Texts For Sunday Worship:
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