In his 1978 landmark book The Prophetic Imagination, renowned biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, whose specialty is the Hebrew scriptures, writes as succinctly and poignantly about who Jesus was and what he was up to as any Jesus scholar out there. I highly recommend it for anyone who self-identifies as a Christian. It would be an efficacious plunge for a small group to read carefully and reflect on together (maybe during Lent). Don’t let the words on the cover frighten you: WARNING: KEEP OUT! DANGER BEYOND THIS POINT! I’m kidding (sort of).

At this time in history, perhaps especially in this country, the very meaning, challenge, and implications of Jesus’ embodied message is threatened by people proclaiming the name of Jesus as their own, but who, in fact, have twisted, reshaped, and conveniently discarded aspects integral to the gospel of Jesus. Like children playing with Play-Doh, they have fashioned something to their own liking, but it bears little resemblance to the Christ-life as exemplified in word and deed by Jesus and his followers.

One way to distinguish false expressions of the gospel of Jesus from authentic expressions of it, is to see where its presiders, purveyors, and adherents stand in relationship to the values and vision of the dominant culture which characteristically favors the few over the many, the already privileged over the perennially poor, and those in power over the most vulnerable among us. By way of example, I submit it is impossible to give an honest reading of the four canonical gospels, and come away with any justification for what has come to be known as The Prosperity Gospel, let alone suggest The Prosperity Gospel has anything remotely to do with the person, teaching, actions, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

On the contrary, it is untenable to think anyone could honestly read the gospels and not come away with two unmistakable realizations: first, that the God whose love Jesus embodied is undeniably partial to “the least of these,” to the most vulnerable, exploited, oppressed, marginalized, rejected, and forgotten in our midst, and critical of and admonishing toward the power brokers of the royal or dominant culture. In the Hebrew scriptures “the least of these” are called the anawim, literally the bowed down (because someone or someones have their giant boot on these people’s backs).

Second, that the direction of Jesus’ life, and therefore the trajectory of anyone’s life who claims to be an apprentice to Jesus, was clearly one of downward mobility. In Jesus, God stoops to conquer, bends low to liberate the lowly by being with them where they hurt, by offering the good news of the basileia tou theos (the kingdom or reign or kindom or dream of God) to those forced to dwell at the bottom or on the periphery—(out of sight and out of mind from the upwardly mobile and those in power at the top).

Brueggemann’s book offers a perceptive commentary on how the “prophetic imagination,” tactics, and work of Israel’s prophets exposed and challenged the ideology and idolatry of the dominant culture. Similarly, the Christ-life is a for-prophet endeavor. Christians today are called to develop and live out this prophetic consciousness as announced and modeled by Jesus. Brueggemann writes, “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture.1

One aspect of this alternative vision as it manifests itself in compassion is offered in an excerpt (click here) from Brueggemann’s book. In the excerpt, Brueggemann shows how Jesus, “the compassionate face of God,”2 embodies a compassion that is not merely an emotional reaction but a form of criticism that cuts through the anesthetizing numbness cultivated and preserved by the dominant culture which seeks to normalize numbness among the masses.

Brueggemann offers an alternative consciousness beginning with the prophets of ancient Israel, then incarnated in the prophetic ministry of Jesus, and now left for those of us who take the name Christ-one to continue. And the prophetic instruments we will use to create and support a community of faith alternative to the dominant culture are not the weapons of war, Brueggemann shows, but grief, mourning, compassion, amazement, and hope.

I encourage you to read the book. If you do, you will come to understand what Brueggemann means by prophetic ministry and how we are called to it by virtue of our baptism. Each and every Christian is baptized as priest, prophet, and royalty. So we are implicated. By daring the alternative vision and way of Christ, we can do our part to insure that calling the church a “non-prophet” organization is a false statement.

1 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, p. 13.

2 This phrase comes from the late Catholic theologian Monika Hellwig.