July 10, 15C (Amos 7:7-17)
The prophets God sends among us are often vilified, distorted, and silenced.
The church tends to have a problem with prophetic gifts. We want pastors to love people and rarely if ever to offer a word of rebuke, reproof, or correction. We see the prophetic as being too harsh, and we warn those who have a word of discipline for the church to temper it, to water it down, to include a spoonful of sugar. We hold them personally accountable for the rebuke or corrective word they bear.
Some people believe that the priestly and prophetic roles should stay separate and have no influence over each other; they put those God would use in a spiritual gift box. Some expect this separation to be upheld even by those who find themselves gifted by the Holy Spirit to operate in either realm. Others will accept a prophetic word as long as it comes from particular people with specific credentials who show up in ways they feel comfortable with. Still others like their pastors to be prophetic, but only a little and only occasionally.
Folks don’t mind being challenged in the ways they want to be challenged. This is the new standard of the church, or so it seems. But is this the standard that comes from God?
