"Prophecy without doxology is ideology."
This quote from Walter Brueggemann reminds us that the prophetic calls us out of selfish preoccupation, protective entitlement, and insensibility to the anguish of the world into compassion and reconciliatory practices. All good. But Brueggemann's aphorism also cautions that we must not divorce it from the priestly vocation given to all humanity. This vocation is a mediation of that with which we've been entrusted to the glory of God; both in humble adoration and raucous celebration. An unhealthy separation and preoccupation with either usually comes at the expense of the other. In either case, it can become a totalizing and narrow preoccupation that impoverishes our lives and leaves hurt in our wake. When the church loses the integration of prophecy and doxology, it becomes a leaning building, a danger to all who fall within its shadow. Listen to the prophets in this Advent season who call us to repent of our numbness, and to inhabit compassionate action and passionate praise in the power and joy of the Holy Spirit.