NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Prophecy is not about gazing into the future. It's about passion for a better world right now, speakers at a celebration of preaching stressed in Nashville, Tenn.
While many think of the prophets of the Bible primarily as predictors of the future, that prophetic proclamation is mostly a critique of social evil and a call to justice, they said.
The speakers addressed as many as 2,000 church leaders from across the nation during a “Celebration of Prophetic Preaching,” sponsored by the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment. The one-day celebration was part of a longer “Festival of Homiletics,” an annual event aimed at promoting good preaching.
During the one-day celebration, some presenters approached the theme of prophetic preaching directly, identifying its key characteristics. Others held up visions of what a world shaped by the values of a prophetic faith could look like.
Author and activist Jim Wallis spoke of longing for preaching that links faith with real problems. An evangelical Christian, Wallis edits the Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners Magazine.
“The two great hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice, and the connection between the two is the one the world's waiting for,” Wallis said. “There's a whole generation out there waiting for a different kind of message. I think prophetic preaching is meant to clear up the confusion, clear up the confusion of what faith means.”
Pastors who speak prophetically must go beyond dissent and critique, the Washington activist explained. “Prophetic preaching says a clear ‘no,' but prophetic preaching also has to have a strong and clear ‘yes.'”
Citing an Old Testament example, Wallis said the prophet Habakkuk pointed to the injustice around him and demanded that God do something about it. But the text doesn't stop there. “Somebody's got to write a vision and make it plain,” Wallis said, echoing the response God gave Habakkuk.
Preaching that links faith to society may be the only hope for fundamental change, Wallis suggested.
“When politics fails to even address the biggest issues, what normally happens is social movements rise up to change politics. And the best social movements have spiritual foundations,” he said. “We won't even get to social justice without a revival of faith.”
Joseph Lowery, a United Methodist pastor and co-founder with Martin Luther King Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, underscored the role of faith in the struggle for racial justice.
Lowery said that even in the days of slavery the church had served as a source of spiritual strength and a center for organizing resistance to oppression. He told the story of slaves who would signal an opportunity to escape to the Underground Railroad by singing, “Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus.”
The words of the hymn symbolized the double role faith played, Lowery explained.
“Jesus meant two things: he meant liberation from sin, and liberation from the sin of slavery — personal sin, social sin.”
A key participant in the Civil Rights movement, the 85-year-old Lowery stressed the motivation behind the non-violent approach of King's generation of prophetic leaders.
“It was a movement that was rooted in love, faith, hope, and love,” he said. “We preached that black people cannot love themselves and hate white people, and white people cannot love themselves and hate black people.”
Yvette Flunder, senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco, called the audience to a broadly inclusive prophetic faith.
With roots in Pentecostal fundamentalism, Flunder said, “I believed that the essence of religion was to find the right way, and once I found the right way, of course, all the other ways were wrong.”
Her path led her from an “either-or” faith to eventual trust in a “both-and” God. While a more narrow understanding of God offers certainty, Flunder said she finds evidence for a more accepting view in scripture.
“Paul told the Galatians that in Christ we are neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,” she said. “How about straight or gay?”
The San Francisco minister closed with echoes of the modern “prophet” John Lennon, encouraging her listeners to imagine what the reign of God would look like if, as prophetic preachers, they proclaimed a “both-and” kingdom.
“Can you imagine if the Table of the Lord … was really open to everybody?” she asked. “Wouldn't it be something if we could stay together until we got with one accord? [T]o determine that we have more in common than we have as our differences?”
-30-