A Conversation: The Difference Between Being Prophetic and an Ass

Ask any of my staff at Billings First, and they will tell you that I am a huge fan of Christian writer, Rachel Held Evans.  She writes with a great sense of humor, relevance, humility, and honesty.  She works hard at her craft.  I am not near the writer she is and am profoundly jealous of her writing clarity and the way she seems to have a grasp on the pulse of Christian Church life in North America.  I am also excited by the goodness (as in virtue) of her writing, and how she seems to be growing right before our eyes.  Her writing is bending toward more and more of a theology of liberation.  My assumption is, because our culture bends so against that understanding and life, that when people grow into those understandings, they do so out of a rootedness in something or someOne transcendent.

Recently, I listened into a podcast Rachel was a part of in which she asked the question:  "What is the difference between being prophetic and being an ass?"  She said it so forthrightly that the first time I heard it I laughed and almost cried.  Rarely do I hear such true and important questions asked in church community life.  As I do often with Rachel, I experienced a profound sense of gratitude for putting that question out into the stratosphere.

I want to try and answer that question as best I am able.  At the least, continue the conversation and hope more people weigh in.  I do not claim to be an expert at prophetic speech.  I try my darndest to be faithful in working at it.

First, I think it's important to say that there will be people who forever think you are an ass by being prophetic.  It is much like some strong women who will be called the "b" word just for being outspoken and present.  And it's a fine line that often depends on context.  If there are people's lives at stake that rely on your voice to speak loudly and often to save them or bring the public eye to them, then we should be big and loud asses.

I think part of walking that fine line as a prophet is someone who seeks to widen the circle of kinship.   Father Greg Boyle does a great job describing this.  Rachel does that on a regular basis with the LGBTQ community.  She knows she has evangelical ears and eyes listening to her and reading her material.  I would bet that she also has people in the LGBTQ community who are important to her, near and dear, and she clearly sees it as her task to transform hearts so that the circle is drawn wider and others might see people in the LGBTQ community as kin.  

When one is not speaking prophetically, I have no sense of their kinship.  They are not introducing me to anybody.  They are not in relationship.  It appears to me that someone who speaks as an ass has more interest in being right than they are in building kinship.  When I am an ass, love is not at stake.  I am.

Again, it is often easy to accuse someone of being an ass if they are pushing all of your buttons.

For example, I am sure most people experience me as an "ass" when I share how important inclusive language is to me and to our wider community.  Every time I share, however, I relate that I know my daughter is out there listening.  Every week she hears the "Our Father" without many Sundays with any balance.  It is important because when she was younger, our strong and gifted daughter would argue with Tracy and me that God was certainly a man.  And she made it clear that it had to do with a form of male strength and intelligence over female strength and intelligence.  Repetitive church worship had taught her well.  I want people in my congregations in relationship with this powerful young woman that is my daughter.  After all, we named her Divine Wisdom (i.e., Sophia).

I still remember a pastor of one of our large UCC flagship churches coming to do an informal job interview with me for the Associate Pastor position that I later learned would be about replacing her.  I was honored and more than a little nervous.

Halfway through the conversation, however, she related to me that she was a little upset about a present colleague who had preached against the war with so many veterans within the congregation.  How could he do that?

In a way, I think she was saying, "Part of the role as pastor is recognizing your kinship with your congregation."  I agreed.

I also remember telling her that every time I stand to preach there is a pew reserved for Guatemalan refugees and people struggling for justice in Chiapas.  When I was in those geographical locations, with those people, I made promises to them of who I would be.  What I was trying to say is that I would betray them if I did not acknowledge my kinship with them.

So I remember those people when I sit to type or stand to preach.  As Guatemalan poet, Julia Esquivel might say, "They threaten me with their resurrection."  When I speak or act on immigration, food justice, or free/fair trade, I try to remember them as my kin.  I often do a piss-poor job with that.  So speaking prophetically is also about working on myself to be drawn further and further into relationship so that I speak from a place where my destiny is tied to the destiny of others.

I think that is the definition of kin.  Your destiny must be tied to the destiny of others.  So that even though they may not look like you, be of the same ethnicity, race, or orientation, you risk enough solidarity to be considered kin.  In other words, you are a real sister or brother.  Now the pulpit is yours.

Ok, that's a start.  I want to add as I go along.  How to be prophetic and not an ass: 
 1.  Draw the circle of kinship wider.