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I’ve been struck this past week at how much I’m reminded of the ancient prophets of the Old Testament by voices I’ve been hearing in the public square: forthright ones, people wanting the rest of us to think again. Their behaviour is akin to that of the prophet Amos. He comes up from the tough, rough hills of Judea and travels to the more fertile north of Israel where it’s much easier to produce food. He makes a nuisance of himself by having a go at people, pointing out they’re doing all right while others aren’t, how they’re taking so much from the land. Among those who today are like Amos and won’t settle for the status quo are climate change protesters, especially Greta Thunberg, and the organizers of the so-called Umbrella Protests in Hong Kong. Rather than sit back and accept China’s decision to limit direct elections by only allowing candidates approved by Beijing, the Hong Kong protesters challenged the government with their protests which drew thousands onto the streets. Now they’re facing more than a year in prison. Prophets are less about offering solutions than pointing out problems when they believe things have gone wrong. Others have to decide whether to respond. Some might be inspired by their faith in God or their conscience. But it’s a challenge to hear an authentic call to action when there are so many voices today, demanding attention, and some alienate others because they’re so strident. Sometimes people instinctively turn away from youth, rejecting ideas they think are naïve and instead prefer to listen to someone older, believing age brings wisdom. Perhaps that was why people, irritated by the climate change protesters in London’s streets, seemed to prefer David Attenborough’s TV show on climate change. They heard the same message but it was expressed very differently. For some, though, prophets are such an irritant that it is only when they’re silenced that they’re given the credit they deserve. Dostoyevsky identified how this happens when he said: “People reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs”. Archbishop Oscar Romero was such a prophet who called out the oppression of the government in El Salvador. At the time the Catholic Church, his own church, did little to protect him before he was eventually assassinated in 1980. It took 38 years to make him a saint. More recently, it took Lyra McKee’s death for people to really sit up and pay attention to what the journalist had been saying about Northern Ireland and for politicians to come together at her funeral. What a price to pay to speak truth to power.