Choosing Welcome: Advent Call to Justice and Peace

I was reading a book this week called Reconciliation 2.0 by Barbara Salter McNeil. And she was saying that there's like four steps to justice. And she says, the first thing you have to do is realize, you have to recognize what's going on. And I think that's where most of us really fall short, because we're so busy, we don't even stop to see the pain that people are in. And then the second step, she said, is to identify with it. To recognize that if my sibling is in pain, then I'm in pain too, because what breaks God's heart breaks my heart. [00:50:35] (40 seconds)  #RecognizeEmpathize

And God loves every single one of us, everyone in this entire world. And so when one of us hurts, God's heart hurts. And God invites us to be in touch with that pain so that we can identify with it. And then the third phase, she said, is preparation. And that's where we try to figure out what the person needs. So many times we come in and we say, this is what you need. We're going to do this. And we don't recognize that that may not be what they need at all. [00:51:16] (32 seconds)  #AskDontAssume

And so part of the preparation is that conversation, that relationship, finding out what they need. And then the final piece is the activation, the action. And I think sometimes we, once we see something and we identify with it, we'll jump right to acting on it. And we don't take the time to build those relationships. And yet that's how you get to this piece of justice. Because justice is more than mercy. Mercy is feeding people. Justice is asking why people are starving in the first place, right? [00:51:48] (34 seconds)  #MercyToJustice

And so it's more than just that sense of offering something to another person. It's trying to make those relationships right. And as I pray for our congregation, I think for me, that is our next growth area. Is to move from kind of transactions where we feed people and give food, which is a beautiful gift. Two, how do we build those relationships so that it becomes transformational? So that it moves from mercy into justice? [00:52:22] (35 seconds)  #RelationshipsTransform

There was an organization called the Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. So, what these women did, they were part of the Women's Aid Society or the Women's Society. What they did was amazing. They would hear somebody say that, you know, these people have been, these young African Americans have been arrested and the sheriff is going to release them from prison and into the hands of a mob that was going to lynch them. And you know what these women would do? They would get on a bus or a train or however they needed to get there and they would go to that place and they would stand there and they would block the crowd. [00:55:01] (44 seconds)  #WomenAgainstLynching

There was this great story about this woman who heard that it was on Christmas Day that a young man was going to be lynched. She stopped cooking her food and started getting on the phone. She called the sheriff. She called all of her friends. They stopped cooking their food and they all showed up and prevented that man from being lynched. [00:56:15] (20 seconds)  #CommunityIntervention

So they invited all of their African-American neighbors to come to their youth group so that when they went to their first day of school, integrating their school, it wasn't filled with strangers. There were some people that they knew would be their friends. And, you know, you may say, well, that's just not that big of a deal. But in the lives of those people who were going to a new school where the hostities were all around, seeing a familiar face, seeing someone who welcomes them was a very big deal. [00:58:46] (34 seconds)  #CreateBelonging

And so Jesus fed people, and he healed them, and he argued for people to, you know, be part of the one community. He included everyone. And because of him, he invites us to follow in those footsteps. And so, yes, we live in the world now where God's reign is fully present, but it's not realized yet. We see all around the pain. But God is depending on us to partner with the Holy Spirit to bring justice and peace to our world. May it be so. Amen. [01:00:00] (42 seconds)  #LoveLikeJesus