Rooted in the Christian contemplative traditions, the Daily Meditations offer reflections from Richard Rohr, CAC faculty and guest teachers to help you deepen your spiritual practice and embody compassion in the world.
Week Forty-Two: The Prophetic Work of Jesus
Week Forty-Two Summary October 12 – October 17 2025
Saturday 19 October 2025 The Prophetic Work of Jesus
Sunday
We are free to understand Jesus as more than a prophet, but we should never understand him as less. His prophetic tradition should form the core and the baseline of our understanding of Jesus.
—Brian McLaren
Monday
The prophets honor the tradition, and they also say what’s phony about the tradition. That’s what fully spiritually mature people can do.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
Prophecy comes to life as love. Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world.
—Barbara Holmes
Wednesday
To say that Jesus was a political revolutionary is to say that the message he proclaimed not only called for change in individual hearts but also demanded sweeping and comprehensive change in the political, social, and economic structures in his setting in life: colonized Israel.
—Obery M. Hendricks Jr.
Thursday
Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.
—Walter Brueggemann
Friday
Let us be carriers of the gospel. The gospel of the revolutionary, brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who made it very clear that he didn’t come to be status quo. He wasn’t a chaplain of the empire but a prophet of God.
—Liz Theoharis and Charon Hribar
Week Forty-Two Practice
Let This Silence Become a Bridge
Poet and CAC staff member Drew Jackson offers this poem, praying to find the courage of the prophets:
I wake in the morning and sink down into the quiet Center.
Before the news and the heartbreak.
Before the world becomes all fire and brimstone.
Tell me, is this salvation?
I could stay here, alone and away.
I could place my life in the company of the undisturbed.
But if I do, I will surely lose You.
Friend of Sorrows. Acquaintance of Grief.
Let this silence, then, become a bridge.
Let me walk it to where Love is.
At the edges. Amidst the rubble.
Trudging among the bones
Where the prophets call to the four winds
And a Voice cries out saying Live! Live!
Let this silence become a forgotten thing
If it does not lead me to the hill
Outside the camp.[1]
[1] See Hebrews 13:12–13.
Drew Jackson, “Let This Silence Become a Bridge,” ONEING 13, no. 2, A Living Tradition (2025): 127–128. Used with permission. Available in print and PDF download.
Friday 17 October 2025 Carriers of the Gospel
Let us be carriers of the gospel. The gospel of the revolutionary, brown-skinned Palestinian Jew who made it very clear that he didn’t come to be status quo. He wasn’t a chaplain of the empire but a prophet of God.
—Liz Theoharis and Charon Hribar, We Pray Freedom
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Dr. Charon Hribar describe crises as opportunities to work for justice, as Jesus did:
As our society continues to be engulfed by crises, the time for complacency has passed. From the lack of health coverage for tens of millions of Americans to the tragic death toll of endless wars and environmental disasters; from the assault on democracy to the glaring inequalities laid bare by the pandemic, it is clear we stand at a generational crossroads. This is a kairos moment—a time of crisis and opportunity. In biblical terms, it is a moment when the foundations of injustice are exposed, prophetic voices call for change, and movements for justice take root.
Luke 4:14–30 is known as Jesus’ first sermon, delivered in his hometown of Nazareth. It marks the beginning of his public ministry during a kairos moment not unlike our own…. Jesus announces his mission of societal transformation [quoting the prophet Isaiah]. He proclaims: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19).
Too often, the Bible’s good news is reduced to matters of individual salvation and detached from Jesus’s goal to transform the world. But a close reading of the Bible, including the teachings of Jesus, reveals a vast antipoverty program and social justice mission, which call on us to resist unjust economic practices and build a society in which everyone’s needs are met.
The Freedom Church of the Poor provides resources to empower prophetic and hopeful movements for justice:
Drawing strength from these biblical principles, the Freedom Church of the Poor tradition teaches us to stand up for one another, care for the least of these, and dismantle laws that perpetuate injustice. If we believe that God stands with the oppressed and that Jesus preached liberation, then collective action by those most impacted by injustice is imperative. By taking collective action with and as poor and dispossessed people, we bridge our spiritual convictions and our hunger for transformative change….
In the Freedom Church of the Poor tradition, we envision a world where every life is sacred and every need is met. This vision challenges the normalization of injustice and the valuing of profit over people. Through nonviolent, moral direct action—marches, boycotts, sit-ins, and more—we reject the status quo and reclaim the moral narrative. We create spaces where justice is reimagined and a moral revolution of values becomes irresistible.
Thursday 16 October 2025 Prophetic Solidarity and Compassion
Old Testament Scripture scholar Walter Brueggemann (1933–2025) witnesses Jesus’ prophetic role in his solidarity and his compassion for those on the margins:
Among his other functions it is clear that Jesus functioned as a prophet. In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal [empire] consciousness…. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience. [1]
Jesus’ prophetic actions were motivated by his deep solidarity and compassion for those who are suffering:
Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement. Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context.
Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual. Thus compassion that might be seen simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt. Jesus enters into the hurt and finally comes to embody it. [2]
At the end of his book The Tears of Things, Richard Rohr identifies characteristics of those he calls “true prophets” who follow in the footsteps of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets.
Prophets embrace religion as a way of creating communities of solidarity with justice and suffering.
They look for where the suffering is and go there, just as Jesus did.
They speak of solidarity with one God, which also implies union with all else.
The prophet learns to be for and with, not against.
They are for those who are suffering or excluded.
They are centered not on sin but on growth, change, and life.
They know that the best teachers are reality itself and creation.
They do not reject the way of the priest—they have just moved beyond it alone. [3]
Story From Our Community
Minister Elle Dowd’s meditation about “niceness” certainly rang true for me. I grew up in the far northwest corner of the country, and being nice was the norm. If anyone disrupted this norm, they could become ostracized from family and friends. The reason was simple: They didn’t conform. Anyone or anything that didn’t live up to the expectations of society was considered disruptive, even if they were standing up for justice. They were expected to be “nice” at all costs.
—Dave A.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 40th anniv. ed. (Fortress Press, 2018), 81–82.
[2] Brueggemann, Prophetic, 88–89.
[3] Richard Rohr, The Tears of Things: Wisdom in an Age of Outrage (Convergent, 2025), 162–163.
Wednesday 15 October 2025 Beyond a Gentle Jesus
Theologian Dr. Obery Hendricks Jr. describes the Jesus he was introduced to in his church communities as a meek and gentle Savior:
I was raised on the bland Jesus of Sunday school and of my mother’s gentle retellings, the meek, mild Jesus who told us, in a nice, passive, sentimental way, to love our enemies, and who assured us that we need not worry about our troubles, just bring them to him. He was a gentle, serene, nonthreatening Jesus whose only concern was getting believers into heaven, and whose only “transgression” was to claim sonship with God.…
Yet for all my trust and love and fervor, something in the portrayals of Jesus and his message did not seem quite right; something just didn’t make sense. Was this meek, mild Jesus the same Jesus who defiantly called the Pharisees “a brood of vipers” and described them as “whitewashed tombs full of every unclean thing”?… And if he was so meek and mild, how could he get anyone’s interest in the first place…? And what did Jesus mean by sayings like “I have come not to bring peace, but a sword”? I tried my best to understand, although questions like these were frowned on by my parents and every believer I knew as evidence of weak faith or, worse, of the devil’s confusion.
Outside communal worship, Hendricks came to know a prophetic and revolutionary Jesus:
I have been blessed to experience the adoration and worship of Jesus in every aspect of his person and grandeur … except one: Jesus the political revolutionary, the Jesus who is as concerned about liberating us from the kingdoms of earth as about getting us into the kingdom of heaven. Yet the Gospels tell us that is who Jesus is, too. And what he was crucified for. This is the Jesus that called me back to the Church—the revolutionary Jesus.
Yes, Jesus of Nazareth was a political revolutionary. Now, to say that he was “political” doesn’t mean that he sought to start yet another protest party in Galilee. Nor does it mean that he was “involved in politics” in the sense that we know it today, with its bargaining and compromises and power plays and partisanship. And it certainly doesn’t mean that he wanted to wage war or overthrow the Roman Empire by force.
To say that Jesus was a political revolutionary is to say that the message he proclaimed not only called for change in individual hearts but also demanded sweeping and comprehensive change in the political, social, and economic structures in his setting in life: colonized Israel. It means that if Jesus had his way, the Roman Empire and the ruling elites among his own people either would no longer have held their positions of power, or if they did, would have had to conduct themselves very, very differently…. It means that Jesus had a clear and unambiguous vision of the healthy world that God intended and that he addressed any issue—social, economic, or political—that violated that vision.
Tuesday 14 October 2025 Can We Be Prophets Like Jesus?
In a teaching for the CAC’s Living School, Dr. Barbara Holmes (1943–2024) invites the students to reflect on Jesus’ prophetic tasks:
What did Jesus the prophet do? As a prophet, Jesus performed miracles, exercised authority over nature and spiritual entities, walked on water, and turned water into wine. As a prophet, Jesus healed. As a prophet, Jesus fed the hungry. As a prophet, Jesus taught prophetically.… He sat at the feet of elders, but he also taught with his heart: he heard the whispers of the Holy Spirit and allowed it to speak through him. If teaching is not anointed by the Spirit, it is just the ego strutting and repeating information. Teaching prophetically goes beyond facts and material. It reaches into the unutterable and allows silence and Spirit to do the teaching.
Jesus also exercised spiritual gifts.… Prophecy is a spiritual gift. Paul wrote about the gift of prophecy in his letter to the Romans. He said, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us … prophecy in proportion to faith” (Romans 12:6). Although prophecy is mentioned more than any other gift in the Bible, it’s also stated that prophecy will pass away, and the only thing left will be love.… Prophecy comes to life as love. Jesus the prophet is love manifested. We also can be love manifested in the world.…
As Christians, Jesus is the prophet who guides us. This is what I want to share with you. You don’t have to eat locusts [John the Baptist] or lay on your side in rags [Ezekiel]. Perhaps all it requires is the willingness to offer your life as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God” [Romans 12:1]. All we have to do is recognize that the time has come to make full use of our gifts, and that we are the embodiment of a new order. We’re following the example set by the prophet Jesus. During his time, Jesus was the embodiment of a new order, he was a fulfillment of the prophecy of those who had gone before.…
Jesus has come and truly overturned and overcome the systems of the world, and he beckons us to do likewise. The system says things like, “It can’t be done. You cannot walk on water. Gravity wins.” The system says things like, “Religion is of no use except to placate the people, and you’d better put your money in growth mutual funds.” Jesus says there’s another way, the prophetic way. Even now Jesus beckons, saying, “Step out on the water, come.”
You may be thinking, “How am I going to walk on water? I don’t even know how to swim.” We offer our gifts to God and our neighbors—that’s how we walk on water. Your gift may be prayer or art or business or teaching, but the prophetic call will hone your gifts so that your very lives are a prophetic witness to the world.
Story From Our Community
Forty-eight years ago, I had a dream about the woman caught in adultery who was brought before Jesus. I had this dream three nights in a row. I knew that God was trying to tell me that I was forgiven. Over the years I have reflected on this scripture and why I dreamed it. I now realize that I was not only the woman to be stoned, I was also one of those wanting to cast stones. I now know I need to love myself enough to stop throwing stones at myself.
—Cheryl W.
Adapted from Barbara A. Holmes, “We Shall Also Be Prophets,” July 2022, CAC Living School curriculum. Unpublished material.
Monday 13 October 2025 Indigenous People’s Day Jesus the Prophet
In a homily Father Richard describes the tension between priestly and prophetic tasks—both necessary for healthy religion:
There are two great strains of spiritual teachers in Judaism, and I think, if the truth is told, in all religions. There’s the priestly strain that holds the system together by repeating the tradition. The one we’re less familiar with is the prophetic strain, because that one hasn’t been quite as accepted. Prophets are critical of the very system that the priests maintain.
If we have both, we have a certain kind of wholeness or integrity. If we just have priests, we keep repeating the party line and everything is about loyalty, conformity, and following the rules—and that looks like religion. But if we have the priest and the prophet, we have a system constantly refining itself and correcting itself from within. Those two strains very seldom come together. We see it in Moses, who both gathers Israel, and yet is the most critical of his own people. We see it again in Jesus, who loves his people and his Jewish religion, but is lethally critical of hypocrisy and illusion and deceit (see Matthew 23; Luke 11:37–12:3).
Choctaw elder and Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston considers how Jesus invited others to share in his prophetic vision:
Jesus … saw a vision that became an invitation for people to claim a new identity, to enter into a new sense of community.… Jesus offered the promise of justice, healing, and redemption.… Jesus became the prophetic teacher of a spiritual renewal for the poor and the oppressed…. Jesus was more than just the recipient of a vision or the messenger of a vision. What sets Jesus apart is that he brought the elements of his vision quest together in a way that no one else had ever done….
“This is my body,” he told them. “This is my blood.” For him, the culmination of his vision was not just the messiahship of believing in him as a prophet. Through the Eucharist, Jesus was not just offering people a chance to see his vision, but to become a part of it by becoming a part of him. [1]
Richard honors the role of prophets in religious systems:
The only way evil can succeed is to disguise itself as good. And one of the best disguises for evil is religion. Someone can be racist, be against the poor, hate immigrants, and be totally concerned about making money and being a materialist but still go to church each Sunday and be “justified” in the eyes of religion.
Those are the things that prophets point out, so prophets aren’t nearly as popular as priests. Priests keep repeating the party line, but prophets do both: they put together the best of the conservative with the best of the liberal, to use contemporary language. They honor the tradition, and they also say what’s phony about the tradition. That’s what fully spiritually mature people can do.
[1] Steven Charleston, The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (Morehouse, 2015), 72–73.
Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Lots of Priests, Not So Many Prophets,” homily, January 28, 2018.
Sunday 12 October 2025 Prophetic Love
Many Christians have tried to understand Jesus primarily through his spiritual descendants by asking, “What did Paul say about Jesus? What did Augustine say about Jesus? What did John Calvin or John Wesley say about Jesus?” If we only try to understand Jesus through what people said after his lifetime, we will miss how much more we could understand about Jesus by seeing him in the context of those who came before him—in the story of his ancestors and his spiritual lineage. Jesus waits to be rediscovered in the context of his history and story. Growing up as a Jew, Jesus enters the ancestral lineage of the patriarchs and matriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel. But Jesus also enters through a spiritual lineage of prophets and prophetesses beginning with Moses, the first biblical prophet….
He begins his public ministry with a prophetic proclamation [see Luke 4:14–30]. He acts like a prophet by doing all kinds of bizarre public demonstrations. Like the prophets, Jesus offers warnings and promises, blessings and woes. He also loves to quote prophets, especially Isaiah and Hosea….
Unfortunately, this rich prophetic understanding of Jesus became minimized in the Christian tradition. Instead, we talked almost exclusively about Jesus as the Son of God, … the savior from original sin, and the sacrificial lamb. We minimized his work and life as a prophet. We are free to understand Jesus as more than a prophet, but we should never understand him as less. His prophetic tradition should form the core and the baseline of our understanding of Jesus.
If we take Jesus seriously as a prophet, we take his incarnation seriously, because Jesus comes into a particular historical situation. As part of a society, he had to grapple with politics and economics. The crucifixion makes sense because prophets’ lives don’t usually end well. Very few have a comfortable retirement. His prophetic identity also requires us to take the story of the resurrection seriously as a prophetic demonstration and affirmation that the work of the prophet must continue even after he is executed and buried.
If we let Jesus as prophet be eclipsed by other understandings, Jesus is reduced, and so are we. Jesus wants his followers to become like him…. He says, “My movement is a prophetic movement. If you join my movement, you’re in that line of work, including its hazards.”
If we take Jesus seriously as prophet, it will help us in our multi-faith conversations because other religions take the role of prophet seriously. Muslims love and revere Jesus as a prophet. When we think about the white patriarchy and white supremacy that are so deeply embedded in many forms of Christianity, we realize that the revolutionary contributions of Black, eco, feminist, womanist, and liberation theologies take Jesus’ life and work as a prophet more seriously. When we can reclaim the understanding of Jesus as prophet and let that revolutionize us, we can rediscover prophets in today’s world.
Story From Our Community
As I read the daily meditation by Valarie Kaur, I thought of John 14:2 where Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus then says that he is “the Way.” I believe many religions practice Jesus’ “way”—loving God as they see God and loving their neighbor as themselves. There is a place for all of us.
—Bill W.
Brian McLaren, “Jesus as Prophet,” ONEING 12, no. 2, The Path of the Prophet (2024): 33, 36, 37–38. Available in print and PDF download.
Image credit and inspiration: Elijah Hiett, untitled (detail), 2017, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. As students of Jesus the prophet, we touch the soil of our time, recognizing suffering not in isolation but as a shared cry, and through His incarnation we are called to ponder, to speak, and to choose the path that heals.
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Reserve Your Spot at ReVision: The Webcast
Explore Christianity as a living path at our three-day online event, ReVision: The Webcast. Attend live Oct. 24–26 through a special interactive online platform where you can also watch the replay.
We Hope You Will Join Us
You’ve explored contemplation through our bookstore and other resources. Now, we invite you to deepen your insights and explore ways to practice at ReVision: The Webcast, our upcoming three-day conference, live online with replay.
Reimagine a Christianity that empowers us to meet this moment in history with clarity, courage, and compassion. Tune in to main stage panels and discussions, receive tailored resources, and join our interactive online community.
Friday, October 24 – Sunday, October 26
Live online with after-event replay
Featuring: Fr. Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, James Finley, Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Randy Woodley, Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Fr. Greg Boyle, Diana Butler Bass, and Carlos Rodriguez
Cost: $250, $175, or $99
ReVision’s Schedule
ReVision will take place from Friday, October 24, to Sunday, October 26, with programming occurring during 8 am to 5 pm MT, with ample time for breaks. Two sessions will occur each day, ranging from 90 minutes to 2 hours in duration. Online attendees can expect:
Friday, October 24
Session 1: ReVisioning Through Ancient Eyes: Choosing Contemplation and Action
Dr. Brian D. McLaren, Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, CAC Staff
Session 2: ReCentering Jesus as Prophet in an Age of Outrage
LIVE PODCAST RECORDING with Fr. Richard Rohr, the Everything Belongs podcast team, and Dr. Lerita Coleman Brown
Saturday, October 25
Session 3: ReRooting Christianity in Contemplative Wisdom and Practice (Love, Help!)
Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher and Dr. James Finley
Session 4: ReImagining Christianity as Cherished Belonging (Love, Helps!)
Fr. Greg Boyle
Sunday, October 26
Session 5: ReMembering Compassion as Revolutionary Action
Dr. Diana Butler Bass, Carlos Rodriguez, Dr. Brian McLaren, Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, and Dr. James Finley
Session 6: ReVisioning a Way Forward: Christianity as Action and Contemplation
Dr. Randy Woodley and Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Dr. Brian McLaren, Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, and Dr. James Finley
Questions? Check out the events details, which include FAQs at the bottom, and if your question remains unanswered, reach out to our Community Support team.
Please note that event details may be subject to change. You are receiving this email because you signed up for news about CAC’s faculty and events.
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James Finley on Being Salt and Light
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2025 Daily Meditations Theme
This year’s Daily Meditations theme, Being Salt and Light, invites us to reimagine Jesus’ timeless metaphors, exploring how to live deeply and with trust amid life’s unknowns. Watch the video.
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