What might a prophet say about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump?

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has elicited predicable responses from the right and left. I saw a post on Facebook that Saturday night claiming that anyone who had ever compared Trump to Adolf Hitler was responsible for the shooting. That post was bathed in irony the following Monday when Trump named J.D. Vance, who once called Trump “America’s Hitler,” his running mate.

Speaking of running mates, Kyle Gass, Jack Black’s partner in Tenacious D, said out loud on stage at a show in Australia what many on the left were thinking: “Don’t miss Trump next time.” Initially, Jack Black and the crowd laughed and cheered, but once the comment got out into the wider world, the outcry was enough to lead Black to try and save his career by distancing himself from Gass.

For our own Jim Bratt, the assassination attempt brought back memories of Watergate and the movie Chinatown.  

Was anyone surprised that MAGA supporting pastors climbed into their pulpits the day after the shooting and claimed that God miraculously protected Trump? Skeptics aren’t sure why God allowed the shooter to then kill and injure innocent people. Why wouldn’t God save everyone? I couldn’t help but wonder what those preachers might say about Charles De Gaulle. Hadn’t any of them ever seen The Day of the Jackal? There were reportedly 30 assassination attempts on De Gaulle, all of which failed. Apparently, God really liked Charles De Gaulle.

I also preached on the day after the assassination attempt, but didn’t claim God had protected Trump. I preached on the lectionary passage from Amos 7, where the priest Amaziah tells Amos to get lost. Like every preacher, the assassination attempt caused me to tweak my sermon the night before. I decided to attempt to answer the question, “What might a prophet say about the assassination attempt?” (I also have been thinking a lot about the psychological effect of having a piece of your ear shot off. I may still write “What might a trauma therapist say about the assassination attempt?”)

Earlier in the sermon, I noted that if a prophet was being faithful to their calling, no one wanted to hear what that prophet had to say. If someone claimed to be a prophet and said, “Everything’s going great,” that person wasn’t a prophet. Prophets upset the status quo, got under people skins—especially people with power—and were deeply unpopular. They were squeaky wheels, gadflies, and irritants. Prophets are basically unemployable—no one can consistently take prophetic stances and remain employed in an institution.

To be clear, I am not entirely sure what a prophet might say about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. I’m not a prophet. I am sure of this: it would be different from what American politicians are saying and would be something bound to upset everyone.

A prophet might say something like Malcolm X did after the assassination of John F. Kennedy: America’s chickens have come home to roost. Malcolm X didn’t think Americans—who covertly ordered political assassinations around the world—should be surprised when it happened close to home. A lot of people were offended by what Malcolm X said. So many were offended that I am left to conclude Malcolm X was a modern prophet.

After the attempt on Trump’s life, I heard politicians say, “This act does not represent America.” I’m guessing a prophet would say, “This is America.” As H. Rap Brown, another controversial figure from the 1960s, said, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” A prophet would remind us of Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield and William McKinley and JFK. A prophet would mention the shootings of Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Wallace. A prophet would remind us of Gabriel Giffords and Steve Scalise. A prophet would point out that there are more guns than people in the United States and that only three countries in the world have the right to bear arms written into their constitutions: Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States. A prophet would tell us to stop shooting each other and talk about beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.

That’s my guess about what a prophet might say.

And then I think a prophet might say to those on the right who feel they’ve got the presidential election sewn up and those on the left who are wringing their hands: “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.”

But I don’t know, I’m no prophet.  

I do know it’s a lot easier (and safer) to be Amaziah—a priest that works for the status quo—than to be a prophet. I have a lot of minister friends who are stuck because they fear losing their jobs if they say what God has put on their hearts. There is good reason to feel this way. I know pastors who have been forced out of jobs because they challenged the status quo. Plenty of pastors walk tightropes and try to follow Emily Dickinson’s famous model – to tell the truth but tell it slant—and see if they can slip in what they feel God has put on their hearts without getting in too much trouble. As Emily Dickinson said in that famous poem, “Truth must dazzle gradually / or every man be blind.”

A prophet would tell us we’re blind.

No one wants to hear that.