28 April 2005

We continue with "The Prophetic Imagination."

If the groans (of the hurting ones) become audible, if they can be heard in the streets and markets and courts, then the consciousness of domination is already jeopardized. ...Jesus had the capacity to give voice to the very hurt that had been muted and therefore newness could come. Newness comes precisely from expressed pain. Suffering made audible and visible produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving it voice.

"Entering into the pain and giving it voice." This is not voice to my pain - a in a complaint about the conditions of my life that are not as I want them to be. This pain within the history of Jesus is the pain of those who have been left out and made into "nothing at all." To give voice to this pain and this side of the reality of life is dangerous because the dominant society would rather stay numb to that part of reality. Like Jesus...like Ghandi...like Martin Luther King, Jr.,...like Bishop Oscar Romero - when people rise up to give voice to the pain that has been ignored, the powers that have tried to stay numb will do whatever is necessary to stay numb. But as we have learned, those voices that lift up the pain of the world do not die. They give life again and again and from age to age to those who are the disinherited and those who have the courage to hear those voices and stand with them. The difference between this kind of prophetic voice and that which claims to be a righteous voice in much of American Christianity today is that these "Christian" voices are merely being the voice for those who have everything and want to keep it the way they have it. There is no threat to their lives - really. It is nothing more than anxious hearts that do not want to give voice to the real pain and suffering of our world. Instead they build on sentimental views that are easy to draw in people's hearts and money with fear-filled scenarios that are all self serving.

Connection: Be patient. The voice of the Lord of Life will be heard...here and there. It will never be the dominant voice...for if it becomes that, we can be sure it is not the Lord of Life...it is the Lord of the Life that is. Be patient and listen for the voice of the compassionate Lord who longs to awaken us all.

Come among us, O Breath of Life, so that we may be drawn into fellowship with those who long for the opportunity to live without the constant terror of hunger and illness and homelessness and oppression of all kinds. Pinch us so that we will not become numb to the pains of our world. Amen