Thinkage [updated]

“I believe we have found a most clever way to honor the prophets into insignificance.  They're really harmless when we make their message simply, ‘They foretold the coming of the Messiah.’ “Prophets step in to disrupt the usual social consensus--"How wonderful our group is!"--and say, "It's just not entirely true!" So you see why the prophets are all killed (Matthew 23:29-39).  Prophets expose and topple each group's idols and blind spots, very often showing that we make things into absolutes that are not absolutes in God's eyes, and we relativize what in fact is central and important. As Jesus so cleverly puts it, ‘You strain out gnats and you swallow camels’ (Matthew 23:24).

“This tendency in religion to ‘absolutize’ things comes from a deep psychological need for some solid ground to stand on, and I understand that. But what the prophets keep saying is, "God is the only absolute!"  Don't make the fingers pointing to the moon into the moon itself, as it were.  Jeremiah said, ‘The Temple, the Temple, the Temple of Yahweh! Don't you recognize it has become a robber's den?’ (7:1-11) and this is the very line that Jesus quotes (Mark 11:17). But of course he was talking about Jerusalem, and surely not our parish church, Salt Lake City, Washington, DC, or much less, St. Peter's in Rome.” -- Richard Rohr, "Archetypal Religion"