It has long amused me that prophet and profit are homophones.
These two words are linked, prophet and profit, not only by sounding the same, but in the Bible.
Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures were watchdogs for justice, equity, and inclusion (JEI?). They spoke truth to power, often at their own peril. Crying out on behalf of the poor, the disenfranchised, the foreign resident, the widows, and the orphans. In short, on behalf of those with little or no power.
This was never popular and always dangerous. It got many of them killed. Yet they were simply speaking out, appealing to the rulers and the people to honor and abide by the basic terms of their sacred Covenant. That of the Torah: to defend the widow, orphan, stranger--the most vulnerable--from exploitation, neglect, or harm.
What stood in their way? Profits. Whether money, power, land, prestige, or renown. Profits. Yeshua summed up this opposition in a sentence: What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and to lose one’s soul?
This is prophetic.
The prophet Isaiah had a vision. From it he spoke:
Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats.
When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more!
Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil;
learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.
In the context of that time, as well as in our own, this should read like nails across a chalkboard. Isaiah is not addressing Sodom and Gomorrah, but is accusing his own people of acting like those mythic/evil cities. Speaking for God, he says their worship, rituals, and sacrifices are detestable because they ignore the most basic thing.
All that matters, according to our most holy human covenant of mutual existence (expressed across traditions) is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19.18). If that does not extend to the stranger in our land, the widow, the orphan--in short, to the most vulnerable among us--we are at odds with Love.
No matter what we imagine it profits us.
Let’s not leave it there, however. What the Prophets are attempting to remind us of with harsh language is nothing more than our true nature. For no one’s heart is transformed by threats and accusations. It happens from within. It happens by grace. When we are released from the prisons we make for ourselves that we thought were palaces and fortresses.
The true prophets can speak for God because they speak to and for all of us. They do so from the perspective of the lowliest and least powerful among us. It confronts, but more importantly it reminds us of what we are made to be.
Otherwise, why would Yeshua have declared, “I was in prison and you visited me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you cared for me?” It is both judgment and invitation. Grace.