Living Theology
in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church
In America
Vol. 7 No. 1
Summer 2002
Dan Schwick
At the installation of ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson,
the preacher, Pastor Heidi Neumark of New York City said
“The daily ravages of
injustice are less eye-catching than the events of September 11, but no less
devastating in their human toll.
Millions of dollars have been raised to ensure that every family facing
financial hardship or displacement due to this terrorist attack can be helped,
but what of the many poor, starving, sick and homeless already?”
In
my capacity as the Illinois co-coordinator of Lutheran Disaster Response, I am
often tempted to ask what magnitude of disaster is required before our caring
ministry kicks into high gear. We wait
for the train wreck, the plane crash, the flooding Mississippi or, “the big
one”—the movement of the New Madrid fault in Central Illinois. Meantime, the urban neighborhoods, rural
communities and whole systems of care for people in need are allowed to crumble
around us, or on top of the people trapped within them. What are we to do?
“[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and
what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6: 8)”
“Jesus” and “Justice” are
two words and concepts that are too rarely associated with one another. The first is often enough portrayed as a
compassionate healer of human brokenness.
Too often, however, the followers of Jesus are portrayed—and even
portray ourselves—as caring for souls alone.
Even when our ministries rise to the challenge of caring for people in
need (a.k.a. social ministry) we are too often focused on addressing the
immediate need, rarely on confronting the causes that lead to the neediness of
those for whom we show compassion. The
ministry of Jesus was about reorienting people's whole lives. The reorientation that Jesus accomplished, however,
was not primarily focused on the “clients” of his ministry—the people whom he
fed, healed and even restored to life.
Rather, it was focused primarily on changing the lives of those whom he
called to continue the ministry in his name.
The ministry of Jesus was aimed at his disciples. It was they whom Jesus called out of their
routine lives and commissioned to go into the world to teach, baptize and obey everything I have commanded you (Matt.
28: 20). In other words, Jesus
commanded us to live—not just to
believe—what he taught. In that vein, I'm struck by how often, especially in
Mark's Gospel, we read something like, “And Jesus began to teach them…” but
then, instead of recording any words of Jesus, the evangelist tells us of his
works, his deeds.
In
the contemporary church, we are tempted to focus on those programs and facets
of congregational life that show the greatest promise for church growth. Typically we reckon church “growth” by
relatively easy to quantify (though not necessarily easy to attain) measures:
worship attendance, weekly offering, number of new members received, number of
adult baptisms, etc. It's much more
difficult to account for the reorientation of people's lives to the things that
God has indicated as required of God's people—doing justice, loving kindness
and walking humbly with God.
So what does or what would
justice look like in the twenty-first century church, in the twenty-first
century world? Today's vision of
justice must still be informed by the ancient biblical vision of God's shalom—the whole cosmos in balance. Foster McCurley is fond of reminding his
readers and audiences that the prophetic tradition holds up a vision of all
people—even widows, orphans and foreigners—participating fully in a community
in which all members have food, shelter, clothing, health, dignity and so
on. The challenge to the people of God
twenty-five hundred years ago is still the challenge to the people of God
today. What are we doing, or failing to
do, to ensure that everyone in our community—including children and youth at
risk of failure, frail and isolated elderly women and men, or those who live on
the fringes or beyond the fringes of acceptable society—have access to the
things they need for the fullness of life in community?
Many
of our churches do a great job of recognizing the needs of persons in their own
surrounding communities. In inner
cities, in decaying and prosperous suburbs, and in many rural communities,
churches rally to provide generously for “the less fortunate.” Food pantries and homeless shelters thrive
because of the support—time, talent and treasure—of our members. But how often do we as individual disciples
of Jesus or as church communities take a step back and ask hard questions about
why there are hungry or homeless or otherwise deprived people in our
communities? It's not because there
isn't enough food to go around. Even
with six billion people on Earth today, this planet can easily produce enough
food for everyone. And
homelessness? How many of our newer
homes now have three-car garages while the hidden poor even in some upscale
communities have no place to call home? What can we do to challenge the root
causes of poverty? How do we
participate in and support structures and public policies that determine that
many of us will have more than enough while some of us have less than enough?
There is a temptation in the
justice advocacy community to try to “guilt trip” those of us who have more
than enough for our own needs. Guilt
may sometimes be a useful tool to get people to reconsider traditional choices
or behaviors. But I believe it is much
more fruitful to offer opportunities for people to experience how small but
significant changes in their own behaviors can contribute to the common
good. As with most issues, before we
can hope or expect to change outcomes, we must first focus on and affirm a
common vision. Does the vision of God's
shalom make sense to the people of
God today? Are we as the church trained
and prepared to make a connection between the ministry of Jesus and our own
ministries? What would it take for
those of us who are leaders in the church, whether professional or voluntary
leaders, to learn to automatically think theologically about the connection
between Jesus and Justice?
As in most movements in church and society, one of
the first steps must be education. Even
before we enter into an educational process around specific justice issues
(economic justice, restorative justice, civil rights, access to health care, to
name a few) we must ground our effort theologically. Recently an organization that I am a part of, Protestants for the
Common Good, offered a two-day retreat for United Methodist pastors to help
them learn to think theologically about justice. The movie, “Romero,” was used as something of a case study for
the retreat. In the movie, a portrayal
of the final years of the life of Roman Catholic Bishop Oscar Romero in El
Salvador, the traditional cleric is shown as he slowly makes the connection
between the pastoral concerns of his people and the political oppression in
their country. At first Romero is
reluctant to let the political concerns of the peasants in any way impact the
ministry of the institutional church entrusted to his care. Eventually his basic compassion overcomes
his basic conservatism. He feels
himself called to speak out (advocate) for those who are voiceless and
powerless, even though the church had traditionally blessed the oppressors, if
not in fact the oppression itself. In
the end, Romero is martyred as he celebrates the mass with the oppressed. In a graphic scene in the movie, as Romero
is assassinated, the chalice is spilled and the blood of Jesus is, once again,
spilled for the sake of the people.
I
would like to suggest that we in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod undertake a
process of “consciousness-raising” in
our own community. I envision a retreat
focused on Jesus and Justice. I have
spoken briefly with Bishop Landahl about the possibility of his convening and
actively participating in a retreat as a way of demonstrating the importance of
the undertaking. It may be wise to have
one such retreat for professional church leaders in the synod and another for
layfolks. I would hope that a retreat would offer strong theological grounding for
justice ministry in the church and a real opportunity for dialogue and debate
about the place and the relative importance of such ministry in the
church. I would also hope that such a
retreat would attract more than “the usual suspects,” that the dialogue would
not just be among those who have a long commitment to and experience in
integrating justice ministry into congregational life. I would hope that church leaders who are
skeptical or resistant to the idea of the church venturing into public policy
issues would be fully engaged in the work of the retreat. I do not have a specific time or format to
suggest at this time. I am aware that
the synod's Justice Team has recently begun working on a strategy for widening
the commitment to justice among MCS congregations and members and perhaps a
retreat such as I have suggested could be a part of that effort.
A great deal of my own ministry over the past decade has been
shaped by my training and experience in community organizing. A fundamental tenant of community organizing
is the idea that power is neither automatically good nor bad. Power—the ability to act—is neutral. The
question that determines the character of power is the values that are
reflected in the exercise of power.
Surely the church can identify fundamental values that we can agree to
rally behind. Can we agree that every
individual, made in the image of God, has inherent value and deserves to be
treated with dignity? Can we agree that
the dignity of each person before God demands that we strive to ensure that no
one goes hungry, that no one is discarded as having little or no productive
value to society, that no one is despised or discriminated against because of
the circumstances of his or her birth (race, class, gender, nationality,
disability, ethnicity, IQ, sexual orientation, etc.)? If we can agree on some of those basic values (and I do not take
for granted that we can easily agree on everything I just listed) is it
possible for us to make a dedicated effort as the church to work for
public policies that reflect such values?
The
ELCA, through the Advocacy Department in the Division for Church in Society
(DCS), supports numerous state public policy advocacy offices across the
U.S. The Advocacy Department also
supports the Lutheran Office for Governmental Affairs, in Washington, DC; the
Lutheran Office for World Community, at the United Nations and the Office for
Corporate Social Responsibility. All of
these ELCA ministries are dedicated to work toward the translation of ELCA social
policy positions (social statements, churchwide assembly resolutions, ELCA
Church Council resolutions or DCS Board resolutions) into actual public
policies on the part of state or federal governments, or in international or
corporate policies. In so doing, we
attempt to make a witness that the values that we hold as the people of God are
not just abstract and theoretical. They
are concrete suggestions for how we might live together in such a way that
God's will for all people might be more evident in real lives.
The Lutheran Advocacy
Network/ Illinois (LAN) is the ELCA public policy advocacy office for the state
of Illinois. LAN is a shared justice
ministry of the three ELCA synods in Illinois, the ELCA's Division for Church
in Society and Lutheran Social Services of Illinois. A statewide steering committee (still in formation) made up of
lay and clergy representatives of the five member organizations helps to set
the advocacy agenda for LAN's work.
More details about LAN, including the 2000-2002 Advocacy Agenda and an
update on several priority issues is available at www.lutheranadvocacy.org. As the director of LAN, I am available to
speak with (not just to) groups within ELCA congregations in
Illinois. I am anxious to have the
opportunity to preach, teach, discuss, debate and organize congregational
involvement in social justice issues.
I was delighted when we as a
synod adopted our present mission statement that calls us as the church
to “Preach Christ, Make Disciples, Do Justice.” It is clear that those men and women in our synod who helped
shape that statement understand that doing justice is not an afterthought or an
add-on to the church's ministry. And
yet justice ministry is hardly a given in the life of many of our congregations
or of our synod.
Not yet!
The Rev. Dan
Schwick
Assistant to the President
of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois