As we draw this year’s meditations on The Prophetic Path to a close, Richard Rohr reminds us of the loving heart of the prophets:

We need the wisdom of a “full prophet,” one who can love and yet criticize, one who can speak their words of correction out of an experience of gratitude, not anger. We have to pray to God to teach us that. I don’t know how else we learn it. We can’t learn it in our minds rationally. God has to soothe our angry hearts and spirits. God has to allow us to come to a place of freedom, a place of peace, and a place of fullness before we can speak as a prophet. [1]

A prophet must hold on to the truth of their anger, especially as it is directed toward injustice—but the danger of the anger is that when we let it control us, we’re not a help anymore. That’s why we have so many false prophets in America and in the world today. They are so angry. I want to sit there and say, “I agree with you. That situation deserves anger, but you’re not a good messenger because you’re only making me more angry. You’re feeding your anger by letting it become your ego.” Of course, in my early life that was me. I think what we see in the Hebrew prophets is autobiographical. My early social justice sermons at New Jerusalem just edged people out of the room. I’m sure many of them thought, “I don’t think we want to hear Richard today. He’s on one of his tirades.” They saw me at my angriest when I had just come back from Latin America and Africa. Anger is usually a necessary starting place, but it is never the full message. [2]

That’s why I always go back to prayer. It’s the only way for me. I rest in God, let God massage my heart for a while, cool me down and say, “I love you. You don’t have to save the world, Richard. You don’t have to ‘play’ the prophet and you don’t have to do anything except what I tell you to do.” The more I rest there with God, the next time the words come out so differently.

We’ve got to learn how to discern the Spirit. We have to listen to our own hearts and discern where the voices are coming from. Are they harsh, angry, hurtful, resentful, cynical voices telling us we’ve got to go out and do some righteous thing? Or are they coming from a place of freedom and a place of peace?

The prophet is the one who can be a faithful lover, who is truly seeking the whole and seeking the good, and not just seeking the self. We can tell after a while the difference between someone who is operating out of their own anger and compulsions, and someone who is operating out of the heart of God. [3]

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Jesus Gets Us….

Jesus Responded to the ever increasing volume of hate with quiet and deliberate acts of Love….

Listening to the world around us, we couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that the volume is rising day by day. If you listen to the news, you hear louder voices, stronger opinions, and harsher disagreements. If you scroll through your social feeds, you see arguments in the comment section of the most benign posts. Everyone wants to be heard, and collectively, we seem to be going to greater and greater lengths to be the one voice loud enough to be made out above the din.

But as we listened, we noticed that most of what gets amplified — most of the stuff loud enough to be heard — is rife with hate, anger, and discontentment. And when hate gets amplified, too often, we try to drown it out with even louder hate from a different perspective. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s one Jesus dealt with 2,000 years ago.

Everywhere he went, he was met with dissenting opinions, trap questions, and directed hatred. People were constantly trying to silence him, discredit him, or hijack his platform to amplify their own voices. It must have been infuriating, but he didn’t give in and add to the noise. Jesus used his voice, but he didn’t shout. He not only stayed on the path of preaching patience, selflessness, and love but more importantly, he also demonstrated them. He responded to the ever-increasing volume of hate with quiet and deliberate acts of love. And the result is evident in the fact that we’re still talking about it 2,000 years later: his love was louder, and it still is.

Proverbs 3:5-6New International Version

⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.^[a]

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