Reflection for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time by Executive Director, Stephen Schneck
This reflection was originally posted in our June 28th newsletter
Prophetic or prudential action? As an advocate and activist for faith-based social justice, I struggle more about means rather than ends. My formation in the religious, moral, and social teachings of our faith offers much clarity about ideals. What’s uncertain is the path for progress toward those ideals.
Sometimes this is a question of inside versus outside. Sometimes this is a question of pursuing incremental change versus radical change. Sometimes this is a question of the extent that ends can ever justify means. Ultimately, though, these questions boil down to how “prophetic” versus how prudential to be for making progress.
Take the ideal of racial justice, for example. How best do we make progress toward that end? Is it more effective to try to work within the existing system, or is the system itself too resistant to change for the inside path to achieve progress? To paraphrase the former President Reagan, is the system itself the problem? Similarly, will I make more progress toward the ideal by working for incremental changes that are more readily achievable? Or, am I compromised or even complicit by choosing incremental change when the ideal of racial justice holds out a vision that only radical, systemic transformation can bring about? And, how far can I go in the means to reach for that ideal? How does one judge when it is just and effective to break with friends, family, tradition, due process, the will of the majority, or even civil laws and sanctioned authority to make progress toward justice?
These are the questions in struggling with the balance between prudential and prophetic approaches to action. The readings for this Sunday, July 4th, speak to the limits to being prophetic, as well as the inescapable divine call to be prophetic.
In the First Reading (Ez. 2:2-5) the prophet Ezekiel recounts how the “Lord spoke” and “the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet.” Not really wished for, the divine call to prophesize comes powerfully and compellingly. Ezekiel is warned of the dangers all prophets face – ridicule, persecution, rejection, threat. For, the need for prophecy itself lies in our human complacency and resistance to justice. We sinful people are indeed “Hard of face and obstinate of heart.”
In the Epistle, St. Paul in Second Corinthians too speaks of both the power of being called to prophecy and the sufferings that prophets must expect. He writes:
That I, Paul, might not become too elated,
because of the abundance of the revelations,
a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan,
to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.
Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me,
but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Cor 12:7-10
And, the Gospel from Mark recounts how Christ returned to his beloved hometown of Nazareth and to the synagogue of his friends, neighbors, and family. Yet, Christ as a prophet finds little welcome and little openness. His words are rejected by the hardened hearts of those who knew him even most intimately. “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his kin and in his own house.” Mk 6:1-6
I here publicly confess that I seem constitutionally predisposed to suspect the prophetic and to favor the prudential. I’m inclined to think that the perfect is more often than not an enemy of the good. I wonder too often that those choosing prophetic action over prudential just want to dodge the hard, grey, and often boring work needed to make incremental progress within the system. It’s glamorous to shout through a megaphone outside the White House; yet, rolling up your sleeves behind the scenes to win a few small provisions for the homeless in a housing bill is real toil. How naïve, unhelpful, and holier-than-thou those who reject working within the system must be, I sometimes think. Yes, I also easily convince myself that the path of prudential action actually achieves measurable progress while prophetic action seldom does and can too often spark counterproductive reaction.
Sunday’s readings, though, bring me up short. They take my breath away. Unmistakably, the message is that the prophetic is imperative.
Prudential action can never be sufficient in itself. It risks getting lost in the trees and losing sight of the forest, confusing means as ends. Prudential action without the judgmental vision of prophecy can too easily settle, can too easily accommodate itself to the status quo, and can too easily become complicit and compromised in its deferral to the system, traditions, existing laws, and even to our natural desire to be liked and approved. I think Christ must have strongly felt that desire among his neighbors in Nazareth.
The readings make clear that prophetic vision cannot be simply set aside if progress is to be made. Progress requires keeping our “eyes on the prize,” as the Civil Rights Movement put it so well. Prudential action is in many cases – and perhaps most cases, more efficacious for progress, but the prudential must always be directed by the prophetic and in service to the prophetic. And, yes, there are genuinely moments of enormous inflection when norms of prudence have little role, moments when the voice of the prophet must be the only voice, moments when prophetic action is the only way forward. I vow to listen more for prophets.
Stephen Schneck
Executive Director
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