Tuesday after Advent 1
God of the prophets, who interrupts and makes new beginnings, we thank you for prophetic words that continue to sound among us. Give us attentive minds and hearts, that we may heed when addressed and obey when summoned, in the name of the living Word, Amen.
Psalm 5
Amos 3:1-11
2 Peter 1:12-21
Matthew 21:12-22
Jesus is in the temple, the citadel of entitlement and certitude. He himself is here located in the prophetic tradition. He deftly combines two prophetic utterances, a hope-filled word from Isaiah, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (56:7), and a word of judgment from Jeremiah (7:11) "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers." He does more, however than quote the prophets. He effectively performs their words that judge the temple as a venue of exploitation and that anticipate a revised temple of embraceive faith. His performance of prophetic reality is compelling enough that he evokes a confrontation which the "chief priests and scribes," managers of the citadel. They sense, quite rightly, that sometime dangerous and subversive is stirring around Jesus, specified by the messianic affirmation on the lips of the "children in the temple."
Prophetic speech breaks open our settled opinions, our treasured ideologies, and our uncritical social practice. Thus Amos condemned the "violence and robbery" of a systemic kind. And the Epistle reading presents prophetic words as "a lamp shining in a dark place."
Our world is "a dark place" of fear, anxiety, greed and violence. The prophetic light exposes such destructive practices and requires us to consider both the ideological rootage of our practices and their concrete overcomes from which we often benefit. Advent is a time for being addressed from "elsewhere" and being unsettled. It is a time to ponder exposés that we do not welcome. Sometimes we are like priests and scribes resisting the raw word of God's intrusion that shatters our citadels.
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