Prophet: A Dangerous Vocation

(A painting created during the Prophetic Resistance Summit by The Sanctuaries, a community of artists whose mission is to ignite the sacred power of the arts for social change.)

Prophets are the ones who dare to dream; who have the nerve to imagine the alternative belittling the price they might need to pay for it. Since prophets are the spokespersons of God, speaking truth to power becomes their ethical mandate. For a prophet, preaching and praxis go hand in hand. Defining prophets as future-tellers is a kind of reductionism that nullifies the gravity of the vocation. The Future infringes the Present and thus Prophets are those who are all the more concerned about the perils of the Present for the sake of a renewed Future.  Eric D. Barreto opines;

Prophets are not prognosticators guessing at what the future holds. Prophets look at the world as it is and imagine its transformation through a God-infused imagination…The prophet does not guess what’s next. The prophet does not set her eyes to the future but plants herself in the present, in all its blessedness and mire, and says God is present here. She declares a new world and in this bold, courageous declaration God acts. In the very act of speaking a God-inspired word of consolation and hope, the prophecy comes to life in our midst as we lift our hands to serve our neighbour and move our feet to go to the most desolate places and discover there that God and God’s servants are very much alive, very much present. We find that those desolate places are not so desolate after all.[i]

There is no phenomenon so stagnant and stinky than a life deprived of imagination. The moment we start passively accepting anything without leaving a wiggle room for questions and change, we begin to reek of death. We need to comprehend that resistance, non-conformity and transformation are not sins but prominent spiritual practices. Graham Hill writes;

Our churches and secular and religious leaders give us the impression that we should submit and conform, and that this is our spiritual duty. Mutual submission and caring for the good of the whole community is, indeed, a spiritual act of service. But it must never be demanded of us through coercion and manipulation. It’s a choice we must be able to freely make; in a community that values mutual submission, genuine integrity, and respect for everyone’s dignity and freedom. Jesus Christ does not call us to be passive, conformist, and docile.[ii]

In a world impregnated with dead people, prophets are the divine beings who spread the fragrance of life. They constantly prick our consciousness making us realize the burden of our guilt. That could be the reason Walter Brueggemann articulated;

 “The task of the prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us”[iii]

Most of the time we find it comfortable to get co-opted into the dominant interpretative framework as it reaps benefits for us.

I am reminded of a fable where a mentally ill person daily comes to a parking shed imagining himself driving a car. He parks his imaginary car and then converses with the guard. Another person happens to see this and asks the guard why doesn’t he tell him the fact to which the guard replies, “Why should I? The man pays me the parking fee and weekly Rs.100/- to wash his imaginary car.”

The world that we reside is highly deceptive. Relationships are sustained on the basis of lucrativeness; morality is sacrificed on the pyre of enticements; freedom adorns the garb of fascism; religions trade God for luxury; nations exploit patriotism to legitimize the perpetuation of nationalism; commons are lynched and their blood is offered to political bigots; constitution is mocked by the bureaucrats and hence the world becomes precariously fragile day by day. In a world where dissenters disappear it is highly dangerous to become a prophet. Eric D. Barreto further remarks;

The prophet’s road is lonely because she is called to the most troubled corners of the world, places which existence we would rather deny or ignore. The prophet’s road is lonely because she must speak boldly to an upside-down world that doesn’t realize it is upside-down. The prophet sees the world as it really is while we see the prophet and marvel that she is walking on the ceiling… No one really wants to be a prophet. Their road is hard, and no one really listens to them. Their declamations make us profoundly uncomfortable. True prophets are dismissed as lunatics even as they point out the insanity of a broken world.[iv]

We must also bring to our minds what Philip Berrigan reckoned; “The poor tell us who we are. The prophets tell us who we can be. So we hide the poor and kill the prophets.”

The understanding that is revealed through these is that it is certainly a matter of fear to be a Prophet. But there is absolutely no harm in being frightened because I believe faith is the courage to be afraid. Fear should not impede our journey but our hope in faith should strengthen us. Often we become obstinate to personally view the change we are striving for while we are alive. This urge to see the change by ourselves during our life time makes us weary, disheartened and at times impulsive. The change would occur at its own time predominantly at a slow pace. We are required to plant the seeds or water the seeds planted by our predecessors so that our children could harvest the yield. Selflessness is the greatest virtue a prophet ought to possess.

Is the vocation of a Prophet the monopoly of an adult? Certainly not. Today great radical changes in the world are spearheaded by kids. Greta Thunberg epitomizes one of the prophets of 21^st century.

Greta, is a 15 year old girl with Asperger’s Syndrome from Sweden who began a sole protest from 20^th August 2018 to draw attention to the aggravating climate change crisis. Thunberg had been sitting quietly on the cobblestones outside Sweden Parliament in central Stockholm, handing out leaflets that declare: “I am doing this because you adults are shitting on my future.” Gaining inspiration from her, as of December 2018, more than 20,000 students held strikes in at least 270 cities. 

Below is the transcript of the speech of Greta Thunberg at the COP24 in Katowice, Poland.

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 15 years old. I am from Sweden. I speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now. Many people say that Sweden is just a small country and it doesn’t matter what we do. But I’ve learned you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to.

But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.

The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes.

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself. We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people. Thank you.[v]

A Prophet needs to keep in mind that since s/he is the spokesperson of God, s/he is bound to ensure justice not only to humans but even to the tiniest matter of the cosmos; after all salvation is a cosmotheandric experience. As Eric Simpson opines;

The Gospel story emphatically declares: Christ, who as the discarnate Logos is the second Person of the Triune God, was made flesh, a fully material human being, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Through this act alone, all matter becomes subject to redemption and is now not only good because God declared all of creation to be good, but all matter carries the potential for purity, or holiness. The wood of the cross of Christ, Athanasius argues, is transformed from mere wood into the vehicle of redemption for the entire cosmos; it is therefore legitimate to value matter because it is through matter that we are redeemed.[vi]

Church is in dire need of true Prophets. Criticisms toward churches should never be grounded on hate rather love. One of the prime differences between a critic and a prophet is that a critic might not suggest alternative but a Prophet would not only suggest alternative but also be willing to put his/her life at stake to make people realize the reign of God on earth. The Churches have had many critics now it is time that we have few faithful prophets. I conclude with the words of Pope Francis

The Church needs prophets not critics to grow and move forward. The true prophet is not a prophet of misfortune but a prophet of hope, someone who helps to heal the roots, to heal the sense of belonging to God’s people so to move forward. The prophet is not a professional “reproacher”... No, they are people of hope. A prophet reproaches when necessary and opens doors overlooking the horizon of hope. But, the real prophet, if they do their job well, risks their neck.

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul

  

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[i] Eric Baretto, “You Don’t want to be a Prophet”, https://sojo.net/articles/you-don-t-want-be-prophet.

[ii] Graham Hill, “Recovering the Spiritual Practices of Resistance, Nonconformity and Transformation” https://theglobalchurchproject.com/transformed-nonconformists/?fbclid=IwAR3yJfU1tCRUvanDCpnnEAIuPXto-EstjqSW0QcB6an-CfsZnIrB3ih3oMo.

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 11.

[iv] Eric Baretto, “You Don’t want to be a Prophet”, https://sojo.net/articles/you-don-t-want-be-prophet.

[v] https://www.lifegate.com/people/news/greta-thunberg-speech-cop24

[vi] Eric Simpson, “On the Incarnation: The Value of Matter”, https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2018/12/08/on-the-incarnation-the-value-of-matter-by-eric-simpson/?fbclid=IwAR3-NcgStE1XS6bTnL20GioxMYzXS21FM1LjkYFet7SaTQC7wckakMW6WzU.