Marginalized Prophetic Voices Emphasize God’s Character | Lent Devotional Day 35

Exploring the Meaning of Jesus’ Death
March 24, 2026
Written by: Ryan Hebel
 
Marginalized Prophetic Voices Emphasize God’s Character

Scripture:

Take away the noise of your songs; I won't listen to the melody of your harps.  But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  
(Amos 5:23-24)

Reflection:
Black Theology centers God’s character by leveraging the prophetic voices of marginalized people, and in doing so reveals a God of solidarity and justice in the atonement.  God has a long history of raising up prophetic voices from the margins, and from places of suffering.  Sometimes these voices arise on behalf of suffering people.  Other times, the prophets themselves are suffering.  Either way, God consistently shows a lack of interest in those seeking to pay God lip service while ignoring or even perpetrating injustice. Instead, God raises up prophets who reassert God’s true nature and concern for those who are suffering and oppressed.  We see this pattern throughout the Old Testament, in Jesus’ life, and later through believers coming to faith in the New Testament.  Wherever there is suffering, there God is as well.  

But God is not content to let the marginalized suffer in silence.  God gives them a voice, and that voice is reaffirmed and reasserted repeatedly in the black theological tradition as modern-day prophets of the civil rights movement.  The best known of these modern prophets, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., echoed the biblical prophets in declaring God’s never-ending desire to, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”*  In the same way, Christ revealed these same aspects of God’s character by living in solidarity with the oppressed while leveraging the fullness of his divine power and authority to speak God’s truth to earthly power, in line with the prophets who had gone before him, and as an example to those that he knew would continue to follow after.  Whether written down in an ancient text, or shouted from the street corners of our very own neighborhoods, prophetic voices echo the voice of God.  It is the voice of Christ himself crying out on the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46), both in anguish and in victory.  And this voice exists in each of us.  Today we are invited to join in the chorus of prophetic voices to continue this same tradition.
 
*August 28, 1963, “I Have a Dream,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Prayer:
God of justice, in this season of Lent and time of turmoil, help me to find my prophetic voice in the places where you have granted me influence.  May my words reveal and reflect your character as I seek to support the marginalized.  In the places where I am able, help me also to create space for others who are ignored to their voices as well.  Thank you for your mercy, and for the ways in which you grant us courage and perseverance when we feel diminished in our ability to speak up, or to even find the right words for ourselves.  Amen.  

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