03/10/2022
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Change Is Never Comfortable
Father Richard writes about the role of prophets and priests in the process of collective transformation. Prophets remove our illusions and help us see reality clearly, which for those of us in settled institutions often feels like a loss of security. Priests lead us on a path of returning to meaning and transcendence:
The role of the prophet is to direct and legitimate necessary deconstruction. The prophet’s path is of descent, and is never popular, nor easy. It is about letting go of illusion and toppling false gods. The prophets are often killed.
True priests talk of union, communion, love, transcendence, religion, connecting this world and the next world, and giving back a coherent world of meaning. Everybody usually likes the priests and they quickly become established and comfortable in almost all cultures.
But we’ve had too much priesthood and not nearly enough prophecy, in my humble opinion. The result has often been religion for religion’s sake. How can we envision a new world when we have never fallen away from the old? [1]
Religious scholar Diana Butler Bass writes of Christianity’s tension between the pastoral and the prophetic when it comes to upholding the institutional status quo:
Religious faiths struggle between the pastoral and the prophetic, comfort and agitation. In a very real way, institutions are inherently pastoral—they seek to maintain those things that give comfort by baptizing shared values and virtues of a community. They reinforce the way things are (or were) through appeals to divine or supernatural order. They are always slow to change. Institutions resist prophets. Prophets question. They push for things to be different. They push people to behave better toward one another. They want change.
The history of Christianity can be told as a story of the tension between order and prophecy. Jesus came as a prophet, one who challenged and transformed Judaism. A charismatic community grew up around his teachings and eventually formed into the church. The church organized, and then became an institution. The institution provided guidance and meaning for many millions. And then it became guarded, protective of the power and wealth it garnered, the influence it wielded, and [the] salvation it alone provided.
Many of the people in the church did not seem to notice, but some did. What the church taught seemed at odds with their experience of life or God. . . . They questioned the way things were done. They experimented with new ideas and spiritual practices. . . . They bent the rules and often broke them. The established church typically ignored them, sometimes tolerated them, often branded them heretics, tried to control them, and occasionally killed them. When enough people joined the ranks of the discontented, the institutional church had to pay attention. In the process, and sometimes unintentionally, the church opened itself up for genuine change and renewal. . . .
Organized religion fears such outbursts; but spiritual outbursts almost always precede real reform. Might spiritual discontent be today’s prophetic edge, needling institutions to listen, to change, to be more responsive and relevant? [2]
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2001, 2020), 196.
[2] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 88–89, 91.
