Okay - before any green beer starts to flow, lets look at more of the life of the prophets in the face of empire.
The local tradition of the poetry of alienation and response to grief is so characteristically Jewish. It yields the prophetic and the liturgical voice of the sixth-century crisis of abandonment. It is a quite distinctive and treasured local tradition that shaped lived reality in a particular way. To appreciated fully that local tradition of prophetic poetry and liturgical response, we should contrast it with the empire's own liturgy. The empire's liturgy was all doxology all praise, all celebration, all self-affirmation, and all victorious confidence. The empire had no room for sadness, loss, or grief. Unwelcome poetry never found voice in the empire, for poets of unwelcome were all silenced. The empire permitted no cry, expected no response, engaged in no dialogue, offered no ultimate holiness - and so practiced an unrecognized despair and an uninterrupted denial.
I will not turn this into a critique of the empires of this day - although, it sure sounds familiar. Think about what is happening in some of the Arab world - this voice cannot be heard as it is frightens those in power. Even in the U.S. there is so much fear of losing what we have, voices of vision are called unpatriotic. Odd. Even in the church, we can see that too often, the empire of church (another way to look at church) cannot hear or see the reality of life that is outside of what is in place. The result - we never see a "real" new day. We simply override the new with louder voices or by silencing voices of abandonment. I suppose we must realize that we must not sing and dance to the tunes of the empires around us. Unless, of course, they are voices of freedom and grace and carry the incense of the welfare of all.
Connection: A simple exercise is to look at the shape of the empire(s) in which we live. What is the voice of something other that needs to be lifted up for others to hear? Or - what voice to we need to raise up, even if we are not sure anyone will hear it or want to hear it?
When the poetry of your Reign falls upon us, O God, help us hear its song and begin to sing along to the cadence of a new world. Amen
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