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]
References:
[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.
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.
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.
