Lutheran Day at the Legislature

Lutheran Day at the Legislature

Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Colorado

February 27, 2020

As part of my teaching around our ELCA identity called Claiming Our Gifts, I speak of the 14 markers of our ELCA DNA. One of them is our call to be public church, including our ministry of advocacy. It’s not a stretch to think that Lutheran Christians consider advocacy central to our ministry. It’s rooted in our theology of grace – God’s expansive, cross shaped love for all people, without exception, in every circumstance of life, without fail. God’s grace frees us from the illusion that our life must somehow be spent pleasing God so that we can turn our time, attention and energy to loving and serving the neighbor. Part of our love of neighbor is direct and concrete – if my neighbor is hungry, we do what we can to feed them. Part of our love of neighbor goes to the deeper issues: why is my neighbor hungry and what can I do to change the circumstances that keep my neighbor in that situation? Enter advocacy – our work together as church to change systems for the well-being of all my neighbors, towards the establishment of sacred justice.

In the midst of this deep commitment to a ministry of advocacy, this year we are also focusing on what it means to be a church becoming. That is to say, what are the necessary changes, adaptations and evolution we must and will experience in order to live into God’s ever-faithful, ever-unfolding future and be more fully fashioned into the kind of people the Spirit needs us to be for the life of the world?

What I’d like to address specifically today is the question of what our ministry of advocacy might look like on a journey a Church Becoming? I’d like to highlight six ways in which our commitment to advocacy might rightly evolve as we become more fully the church and people of faith we are needed to be for the life of the world.

1.    First: for us to become the church the Spirit needs us to be for the life of the world, advocacy will need to move from the margins of our Christian life and witness to the center. Our commitment to recognizing and publicly addressing the systemic forces that keep some of our neighbors in positions of chronic need or challenge, unable to flourish while others enjoy the benefits and privilege of society, this commitment to do the deep work must become a matter of everyday faith and discipleship, not a matter for occasional study, conversation or action.

For too long advocacy has been seen has a specialized ministry, where those who were inclined “to be political” participated. All this, while the social ministries of our congregations flourished. Turns out that serving the needs of the neighbor in concrete ways not only makes us feel good, it’s pretty risk-free, especially if I can offer my neighbor charity without actually having to encounter them.

Now I’m not saying our call to serve the neighbor in really tangible ways is unimportant. Obviously, it’s not. I’m deeply grateful for our collective commitment to this good work of caring for those in need. I'm happy to report that I've never been to a congregation that didn't have some form of serving the neighbor in hands-on concrete ways.

But I can't say the same of the ministry of advocacy. And yet from a Lutheran perspective and arguably from a Christian or faith perspective, advocacy is simply taking the next faithful step into our care of the neighbor by looking beyond symptoms or impact to the root causes of our neighbor’s suffering or need.  Why is it so difficult for us as people of faith to look at that deeper dimension of the problem, to address the systems at work and not just the symptoms? In a church becoming all we must be for the life of the world, advocacy must lose its marginal status and move to the very center of our life of faith and witness, hand in hand with our commitment to address the tangible needs as we find them.

2.    Secondly our advocacy ministry in a church that it still becoming must continue to be shaped by our commitment to accompaniment. Accompaniment is less about the what and more about the how of our ministry. Accompaniment is ministry engagement from a posture of humility and mutuality. It is about doing with instead of doing for. As we advocate for more just systems, the voices of those who are actually impacted by the unjust systems we seek to change must be side by side with ours. To walk side-by-side in our efforts to be agents of change means developing real relationship as we seek answers for complex problems.

Our commitment to accompaniment in advocacy not only includes a commitment to developing mutual, respectful relationships with those whose struggles we seek to address, it also includes our commitment to be in right relationship with those who serve the public good through their leadership in government. Regardless of the party we must walk with lawmakers in a way that recognizes their full humanity and honors the differences of opinion we may encounter.

We all know that walking together with those who share our values and perspectives isn’t so difficult. It’s when we encounter significant differences that a posture of accompaniment matters, tempering our inclination to self-righteous indignation and inviting us to dig deeper in order understand first-hand what informs the perspective of those with whom we disagree. Accompaniment is a helpful antidote to the dehumanizing of our opponents that is so prevalent in our time.

In a church becoming how we approach the work of advocacy is as important as the work itself.

3.    A third way in which advocacy will continue to evolve as we become the church we need to be, has to do with vulnerability, our own willingness to hold up a mirror to our role in the very systemic issues we seek to address. Many of us who engage in the work of advocacy on behalf of our faith communities do so from a position of privilege in our society. It's ironic but true that we can be passionate about advocating for a change of law without ever actually asking how we have benefited from the very system that has created the injustice for my neighbor. Until and unless we are willing to change ourselves, until and unless we are willing to set aside the privileges that we enjoy, real systemic change is simply not possible. Advocacy in church becoming can and should lead to a personal journey of becoming on our par as well.

4.    Another dimension to advocacy becoming is that it will by its very nature become more and more ecumenical and inter-religious. I see this happening already on Faithful Thursdays: people who share faith commitments joining hands and voices to seek the changes that are necessary.

As Lutheran of the ELCA variety, our advocacy work has always been rooted in our church’s social statements, which has provided a solid theological foundation and compelling rationale for the issues we choose to address. As we live in the ever-changing landscape of advocacy, one of our tasks will be to navigate how we maintain this commitment to our foundational values while also embracing other issues of justice brought to the fore by our ecumenical and inter-religious partners. One thing is certain: any notion that we can do this alone is a vestige of the past.

One particular challenge in the ecumenical realm rests in how as a church becoming we might seek common ground with churches or faith communities whose advocacy agendas tend to revolve around significantly different issues from our own. There is this notion that progressive and conservative churches are at odds with each other when it comes to the changes we hope to see in our communities and world. While there may be some truth to that notion, how do we nevertheless overcome our own assumptions that we are somehow working at odds with one another, and look for those places that might become meeting grounds?

5.    Fifth: even as our advocacy ministry becomes more ecumenical and inter-religious, in a church becoming I believe it must also cast a wide eye to connect the dots with our national and global realities. Turns out that systemic issues of injustice are not confined by borders. I understand that our advocacy must have a local dimension in order to make an impact. How might we frame our local advocacy ministry within a larger picture, so that the changes we seek locally automatically reflect the changes we desire within our entire nation and indeed for the whole world. Sometimes seeking justice in one place can actually create injustice somewhere else. We must look at the global scheme of life and tailor our advocacy in ways that do not neglect to understand the broader picture in which we live.

6.    Finally, as our advocacy continues to mature in a church becoming we must give urgent attention to issues that underlie the issues. I am grateful to voices like that of Dr Larry Rasmussen who remind us that global climate system change impacts every other issue around which we raise our voices. If we do not also seek changes that stem the impact of global climate system change, we are again only dealing with symptoms and not the root causes of the problems that vex us. Even as we deal with the everyday bread and butter issues faced by our neighbors, we must be willing to tackle the larger, underlying issues that threaten our lives and our very world. Not an either/or but a both/and.

My friends and colleagues: Church Becoming is not just a theme or a thought. It is what is already happening. It’s what has always been happening. The community of faith has always been a work in progress in the hands of a God who knows how to use messy raw material for beautiful outcomes. The question is not whether the Spirit will continue to be at work to redeem, reform, reconcile reshape us and this world into the divine vision, but whether we will be active participants or stubborn resistors. Church becoming invites us on as journey together with what I believe includes lots of other dimensions of “becoming”, like “government becoming” – opening us a new kind of future, to new possibilities for working together for the good of all God’s beloved people, for the well-being of creation itself. May we be blessed as we journey together in faith and hope into the Spirit’s ever-faithful, ever-unfolding future.