In the narrative of Scripture, when injustice and ungodliness reign, God through his prophets speaks truth to power. Does this prophetic ministry persist in the life and witness of the Church? A reading from the Book of Acts would suggest so. When done well, it is a subversive, gospel-centered sociopolitical act of God’s people that offers a glimpse of the inbreaking kingdom of God and justice, even if it is fleeting, into the world that waits like a woman in childbirth for the coming of the Lord and his perfect justice. However, this same prophetic witness can be done poorly, striking a jarring note of condescension and moral superiority.
A Repeating Pattern in Scripture
There is a pattern in Scripture of speaking truth to power. It often involves confrontations, and while the content is expectedly uniform, so too is the context.
For example, when the prophet Nathan confronts David for stealing Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and murdering him to cover up this adulterous affair, one can hear Nathan’s words—“You are that man!”—echoing through the hallways of David’s palace.
Likewise, when Elijah confronts Ahab, he does so in a vineyard. This vineyard once belonged to Naboth, Ahab’s neighbor. It was Naboth’s inheritance, a sign of God’s covenantal and unfailing love with his people, passed down through the generations, from the time the Israelites possessed the Promised Land. Yet covetous Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, murder the innocent Naboth and rob his inheritance. After annexing this vineyard to his palace, Ahab stands in it marveling, as though it is his own. While he remains deaf to Naboth’s blood crying out for justice from the ground, one can hear Elijah’s call for justice ringing out loudly in this vineyard.
Daniel too confronts Belshazzar in his palace. During a long night of revelry, when God’s sacred vessels were blasphemed in debauchery and idolatry, a mysterious finger writes on the wall, rattling Belshazzar’s ego. Daniel speaks truth to power, saying, “You have not humbled your heart,” after being summoned into Belshazzar’s palace.
Similarly, Abigail confronts her foolish husband Nabal in their home, Mordecai confronts Esther in her palace, Esther confronts her husband, King Ahasuerus, and the wicked Haman, in the king’s palace, Jeremiah’s scroll confronts Jehoiakim in his winter palace, John the Baptist confronts Herod in his palace, Paul speaks to Agrippa, Bernice, and Festus in his palace, Jesus confronts a ruler of the Pharisees in his house, Jesus speaks to Zaccheus in his house, Jesus confronts Pilate in his palace.
Some Reflections on this Scriptural Pattern
I can’t help but wonder why these stories of speaking truth to power happen not in houses of worship, but rather in houses of power. Is it perhaps that it takes more courage to speak truth to power in houses of power than from the safety of our own spaces? Is it perhaps that by speaking truth to power in these houses of power that the systems and structures of power are uniquely challenged, in a way that would not have happened elsewhere? Is it perhaps that by speaking truth to power in these spaces that the Word, who is the Truth, is somehow made present in these evil spaces?
Yet, most contemporary examples of the Church exercising this prophetic vocation happen from the pulpit. I wonder if we as the Church preach truth to power from our pulpits because this is far more comfortable and safer than to walk into the palaces of the powerful and confront the powers of evil on their turf. Perhaps, though, this is why when we hear truth spoken to power it seems so jarring.
Then again, pulpits were not built to be free from controversy and confrontation. Peter’s Pentecost sermon happens in the vicinity of the Temple. Likewise, all the synoptic gospel writers describe Jesus preaching in his hometown’s synagogue, and his congregation is miffed (Matt. 13:54-58, Mark 6:1-6). Luke further notes that Jesus’ sermon was justice-based, and his congregation wanted to hurl him off a cliff (Luke 4:16-30).
Yet Jesus’ speaking truth to power is different from anything prevalent in contemporary circumstances. After Jesus preaches his sermon, he then does justice, such that his company and fellowship of disciples includes members from society’s mutually exclusive groups: sinful women and disenfranchised widows, and Pharisees; exorcised demoniacs, cleansed lepers, healed paralytics, and Jewish gentry; right-wing and left-wing revolutionaries and imperial collaborators; religious and irreligious Romans and Samaritans, the works.
If the gospels were set in modern-day America, Jesus’ troop would include both the guy with a rusty pickup truck and bumper sticker that reads “Hands off my guns” and the environmental lawyer who drives an EV and listens to NPR. Jesus’ troop would include both the single, overworked Hispanic mother and the wealthy socialite who has the luxury of not working; both the ESL migrant with expiring papers and the ICE-supporting member of Congress; both the tech/finance bro who idolizes Joe Rogan, and the abortion rights activist who believes Anthony Fauci saved the world. At the very least, we would have nearly equal numbers of both Republicans and Democrats sharing our pews. This is hardly true of any church that I have seen wearing its justice bona fides on its sleeves.
Rather, it isn’t a stretch to believe that churches that pride themselves on speaking truth to power often execute justice like the pagan world, such that just as many people are excluded than included. It’s almost as though we have not learned Jesus’ way of bringing about God’s shalom for all people. We only know the world’s way of practicing justice, resulting in a zero-sum game.
Loving the Unlovable Unjust
So, perhaps another narrative may help. When Jesus is the host, he extends unbounded hospitality even to Judas. Even though Judas is confronted as one who would betray Jesus, Jesus’ hospitality includes washing the feet of the “son of perdition,” and nourishing him with supernatural and immortal food. John notes that Jesus sacrificially loved his disciples to the end.
In other words, it seems that the biblical pattern to speak truth to power is to allow truth to first and foremost be enfleshed by hospitality, compassion, sacrifice, and love. We ought to sacrificially love the oppressor sitting in our pew. And I’ll be the first to admit, I am hardly willing to die for, barely even like, someone whose words and actions I deem destructive to the common good.
Thus, to love the unlovable enemy sacrificially requires me to have a special sensitivity to the heart of Christ. It requires speaking on behalf of the oppressed victim as belonging to Christ and made in his image. But it also requires me to see the oppressor as loved by Christ despite perpetrating injustice, while simultaneously also seeing the oppressor as an oppressed victim of the spiritual powers of darkness running amok in the world. The oppressed and the oppressor are both slaves of injustice, and Christ desires to liberate both.
More importantly, speaking truth to power requires another sensitivity, namely the personal awareness that we too once perpetrated oppression and violence, namely the unjust murder of a just man, Jesus. I murdered God. Yet when God in Christ confronted us with this truth, it did not feel accusatory, but somehow liberating. We were cut to the heart (Acts 2:37), as those first Israelites exclaimed on that first Pentecost, when they realized that they crucified Christ. And yet we still experience the tender embrace of the very one whose palms we nailed to the hard wood of the Cross. He loves us who crucified him.
What about Preaching?
Imagine a sermon preached from the pulpit to the powers that be that doesn’t deflect our moral culpability at our injustices. It might not be the same unjust words and deeds as some of the unlovable members in our congregation. But a Spirit-filled examination of the eyes of our hearts would reveal different unjust logs that nonetheless need to be removed. Even if it isn’t a log of any of the injustices of the world today, it is a log on which we crucified Christ.
Once the pierced palms of our Healer helps us dislodge this log from our eyes, he then gives us the words and means to join our hands to his, as he removes the speck of sawdust from our sibling’s eye. When done right, this is a subversive gospel-centered sociopolitical act of the Church that brings, again, a glimpse of the kingdom of God.
The Rev. John D. Sundara is Vice Rector at St John the Divine, Houston, TX. Previous appointments include St. Martin's, Houston and Church of the Incarnation, Dallas.
