June 26, 2023
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A) on June 25, 2023 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69; Romans 5:12-15; and Matthew 10:26-33.
Today, we’ll make a deep dive into the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition. We often think of prophets as people empowered by God to perform miracles like Elijah. But no: in our tradition, prophets see the world from God’s perspective. Prophets speak God’s truth, often at great risk to themselves, as Jeremiah does in our first reading today.
As Jesus reminds us in our gospel passage, we are all called to speak God’s truth. But in today’s homily, I will argue that many of the actions we call “prophetic” fall short of the full Judeo-Christian understanding of prophecy.
Let us celebrate that through God’s mercy, we have each been baptized to share in the mission, the power, and the prophecy of Jesus Christ!
What does it mean to be a prophet?
The great 20th-century rabbi, Abraham Heschel, wrote: “The prophet is an iconoclast, challenging the apparently holy, revered, and awesome1. Beliefs cherished as certainties, institutions endowed with supreme sanctity, [the prophet] exposes the scandalous pretensions.”
In other words, a prophet is always in trouble with authority. Take Jeremiah, for example. He had many powerful enemies in the Judean aristocracy and the Levitical priesthood. We know that he survived at least one assassination attempt. Take Dorothy Day, as another example. Even though she was a pacifist, she was imprisoned at the age of 19, and she was arrested multiple other times, including at the age of 75, a few months before she received the Paulist Center’s inaugural Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice.
If someone claims to be a prophet but no trouble comes their way, they’re probably not a prophet. They’re not directly challenging people in power. Instead, they’ve surrounded themselves with likeminded people.
Let’s not call ourselves prophetic when we have signed the latest online petition, retweeted a call to action, or bought local and organic products. Rather, let’s ask if we have spoken God’s truth to those who might be upset to hear it.
And if we’re raring for a fight, eager to make people upset, that, too, may indicate that we’re not being prophetic. Almost every prophet in the Bible is reluctant to accept God’s call. Moses gave God many excuses for why he was no prophet. Jonah ran away. Even Jesus prayed that the cup would pass from him.
And even in the middle of harshly condemning political or religious authorities, all prophets take time to speak about the goodness and holiness of God. Jeremiah is a great example here, too. He tells of a future that can be predicted by anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear. The armies of Babylon are at the gates, ready to destroy an aristocracy consumed with protecting the powerful, a religious leadership preoccupied with empty ritual, and a nation renouncing the ancient Sinai covenant. Yet Jeremiah is the first to articulate many of the reforms necessary to create the monotheistic, universal religion we now know as Judaism. It is through Jeremiah that God declares: “I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people…. Everyone, from least to greatest, shall know me” (Jeremiah 31:33, 34b).
Jesus instructs us to speak in the light what we hear in the dark. But if we speak only in anger without expressing the joy of the gospel, that is a form of truth-telling or protest that falls short of prophecy.
Whenever I start favorably comparing my protests to those of Jeremiah or Jesus, I need to ask myself some critical questions. Am I advocating for policies that directly benefit me? Am I enlightened or judgmental? Do my calls for reform promote my own social standing, or do they carry risk? If other people cheer me on rather than denounce me, have I surrounded myself with too many likeminded people?
How often do we advocate for raising up marginalized groups and calling for the mighty to be cast down, without acknowledging how we ourselves – even if we are marginalized in certain ways – are among the mighty by other measures? For example: we may claim to be prophetic advocates for the poor… but do we oppose the federal mortgage interest tax deduction? Anyone who has a mortgage probably receives a much larger government benefit than anyone receiving SNAP benefits or a housing subsidy. And the bigger our mortgage, the larger benefit we receive. Are we truly prophetic if we want the poor to receive a less preferential option than we ourselves receive? (To be clear: I’m not being prophetic in saying this, because I don’t have a mortgage!)
So, how far are we willing to go for God?
How far are we willing to go in upsetting the powerful?
How far are we willing to go for those who are loved by no one else?
In the early first century, there were plenty of people named Jesus hanging out on Judean street corners claiming to be prophets. But only one of them was the Christ. Genuine vocations to the prophetic office are rare. Before we claim to be prophets, let’s determine whether we have sufficient skin in the game to make such a claim!
Notes:
- Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 12. ↩