As we witness the heartbreaking escalation in violence throughout the world, Gaza, Syria and the Levant, the Ukraine– just about anywhere and everywhere– we realize how the worship of might and power has threatened to rob us of our humanity.
Yet, just a few weeks ago we read in the Torah of an individual who was willing to stand up to power and to use his voice to turn back the will of tyrants.
Moses, who is not the person I’m talking about, was described as a prophet whose strength was solely in his mouth. He had the near compulsion to speak the truth – the painful, scary, threatening truth – even directly to Pharaoh – into the very face of power.
Balaam, whose story we read at the beginning of the month , demonstrated that same compulsion. When Balak, the King of Moab, saw Israel massing at its borders, he hired Balaam to curse Israel and to send them away. Three times Balak ordered Balaam to curse this people, and three times Balaam refused to do so and directly into the face of the powerful king. Furious, Balak commanded Balaam to flee for his life back to his own home.
Even in our own time there have been those whose strength is solely in their mouths. One such individual was Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.
He wrote:
This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that will one day grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing they hold the future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something and do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
An opportunity for God’s Grace to enter and do the rest.
We are prophets of a future not our own.
Moses, Balaam and Archbishop Romero all demonstrated that the strength of the prophetic vision lies not in power or miraculous acts, but in the mouths of those who refuse to speak other than the truth.
Moses boldly confronted Pharaoh — Balaam boldly confronted Balak, the King of Moab. And Bishop Romero boldly confronted the brutality he witnessed in his native El Salvador. Bishop Romero had the compulsion to speak as he saw it, fashioning his Sunday homilies into the country’s “oral newspaper”. Broadcast over the archdiocese radio station, Romero’s sermons detailed the many instances of torture, disappearance, killing and assault that had been perpetrated each week.
On Sunday, March 24, 1980, as he was celebrating Evening Mass, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated.
We truly need more prophets whose strength lies solely in their mouths.
B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern