Thoughts and Artings from the Junk Drawer

Richard Rohr said this in my inbox today:

“Walter Brueggemann says the job of the prophet is to free people from their numbness. That is also the task of the church. It is to wake people up, to bring them to consciousness, and not just to comfort them in their unconscious state. I am afraid a lot of soft piety and too quick religious comfort does precisely that. The giveaway is when one finds no attitude of service, volunteerism, or compassion for the outsider emerging from one’s attendance at church services.

“True prophetic religion allows us to hold, suffer, and also enjoy all that God holds, suffers, and enjoys – which is everything – the good and the bad of our histories.”

Adapted from Bias from the Bottom

I’m very troubled by the singular focus on pastoral leadership of the local church which (usually) by nature seeks to exclude the prophetic and the poetic. Prophecy is prickly and it makes people angry – specially those whose job it is to comfort and make things smooth. The pastor’s tendency to comfort, while obviously being something of which we need more, also serves to silence the voices of the prophets because they tend to undo this pastoral work. Prophets are often very much so not pastoral and therefore viewed as nothing more than shit-disturbers.

Imagine the incredible things that could happen if the pastor and the prophet could maintain their relationship with this tension.