“How terrible it will be for you legal experts and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. You don’t enter yourselves, and you won’t allow those who want to enter to do so… Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you. How often I wanted to gather your people together, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that” (Matt 23:13, 37).
Right after Jesus’ most incisive indictment of the religious authorities, he moves toward the whole corrupt system with lament and solidarity: he goes to Jerusalem to die for those he denounces, and through sacrifice and solidarity save everyone caught in the thrall of sin and death.
Prophetic anger and denouncement must always be accompanied by prophetic anguish and weeping. Be wary of prophetic speech (especially your own) that is all anger and no anguish. All denouncement and no weeping. All fire and no ashes. All snark and no lament.
If you cannot find and feel the tragedy of the situation you seek to speak into, and weep on behalf of all who are caught in the web of injustice, your prophesying will turn in on itself and become bitter. Weeping purifies prophetic speech and makes it fruitful.
You do well to feel angry about injustice. Don’t suppress or bypass that vital and necessary emotion. But don’t get stuck there. Keep moving through the anger with God, and find the anguish. Then you’ll know what to say and how to say it.
