A call to prophetic love

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Bishop Jim Gonia presented a reflection on January 31, 2017 at the New Mexico Bishop's Legislative Luncheon. Download the .pdf and read the entire message.

...As people of faith and specifically as those who understand the call to advocacy as a profound dimension of how our faith is lived out in this world, I’d like to suggest that in this new reality in which we are living, we as people of God are called to a posture of prophetic love. Prophetic love.

Now if that sounds like an oxymoron, or a paradox, you’re catching the sense of what I’m trying to say. You see one of the gifts of being a Lutheran Christian is that I can bring paradox to the table authentically – it’s part and parcel of my tradition that insists that we are simultaneously sinner and saint, that we are utterly freed from all obligation and utterly devoted to the neighbor at the same time, that we can see the Spirit at work in the mystery and wonder of the kingdom of God and experience the Spirit’s work in the mundane and broken institutions of our world, be the institution the government or the church. Today I’m going to draw on that gift of paradox and invite us to hold in holy tension this notion of prophetic love.

Now to be fair, all of us recognize that on their own, the prophetic call and the call to love, these are both part and parcel of a life of faith, and we could probably even talk about how they’re related. But when we’re honest, we usually deal with them independently, in silos, depending on the context. “Now’s the time to be prophetic,” we say. “Now’s the time to love.” Some of us, depending on our tradition, have a natural inclination towards one or the other way of expressing our faith...

 Download the .pdf and read the entire message.

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