I’ve been hearing it again lately. Those words that baffle me when I consider all that the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures said, what Jesus said and did, and what his disciples said and did. They named, called out, and engaged the broken social systems around them that oppressed and marginalized God’s children (here, defined as “all human beings” because all human beings are created in the image of God, and are, therefore, children of God). They challenged the status quo that attempted to keep people in whatever status they were born into.
I hear conservative evangelical preachers calling out government policies left and right: people like Pat Robertson, the Rev. Mike Huckabee (yup, he’s a Baptist minister), and even some of my friends and colleagues in my own denomination. Yet, in a liberally moderate church, even a whiff of “politics” and the emails and letters start coming the preacher’s way: “Politics doesn’t belong in the church” (subtext: “politics with which I disagree doesn’t belong in MY church from MY pastor in MY pulpit”).
It’s funny how the same sermon can be prophetic to some (those who agree with the premise) and too political to others (those who disagree with the premise, or the consequences it may have on their own lives). In my church, preach about equal rights for women, and I get emails about how wonderful my sermons are. Preach about our nation’s obsession with guns, brace for the onslaught. Preach about LGBTQ rights or inclusion, blast the white supremacists, badger the bullies who want to deport anyone with dark skin, and the accolades come pouring in. But talk about the challenges of abortion (regardless of which direction), and you’ll hear from both and all sides to just stay out of it.
But we are the Church. Our entire system of beliefs is based on a moral platform that names all people as children of the living and loving God, created by God out of love, and deserving of compassion. Who else has a better base from which to engage in the social politics of society? We aren’t necessarily trying to peddle our theology (our doctrines and beliefs about God) so much as trying to advocate for the values and morals we glean from our understanding of God’s values, which we get from scripture, history, and our lived experiences. And we need to understand that politics is merely the way communities negotiate on how to order ourselves and manage competing interests in limited resources. The Church steps in and can help be the conscience of our community, working to make sure our most vulnerable neighbors are not ignored or forgotten. For when even one suffers among us, we all suffer in some way.
When we see injustice, Jesus demands that we speak up on behalf of those who suffer under its weight. When black people are getting shot and jailed at rates that far exceed any other color of skin, we need to challenge our assumptions about the so-called “justice” system. When the President of the United States bullies people and calls them names, spews lies and untruths regularly, or uses tax payer dollars to speak at rallies to promote his “build the wall” campaign, we can’t just sit back, complain, and pontificate about it. We need to follow in the footsteps of Jesus into the fray, be willing to mess up a little in order to learn more deeply what our neighbors endure every day (every one of my black friends tells me about how often they get pulled over for a DWB, “Driving While Black”). When people fleeing violence in Central America, only to be stopped at the border of the very country that has funded and fed the violence through our foreign policies, domestic subsidy programs (making our products so much cheaper in some countries that it puts their own people out of business), let alone our history of arms dealing around the world, can we not see the sad, deadly, and frightening irony of all that? Can we not see the racism and class discrimination at work in our immigration policies?
The Church has a MORAL OBLIGATION to speak up, get involved, and even put our own lives on the line in order to try to protect and advocate for those getting hurt. We need to reach out and listen to those who are being rejected and push ever further into the margins of our communities, and ask them what they need. As one of my friends recently shared with my congregation, we need to learn to be better allies to those the Hebrew prophets constantly lift up as deserving of extra attention. And we need to remember that Jesus wasn’t crucified for preaching love and grace. He was crucified because the a, grace, and compassion he taught and practiced was a threat to the domination system of the state (both the Roman and Jewish state). Are we willing to really follow Jesus?