Becoming an Advocate, Changing the World: Rooted in Relationship (Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a post that will span a few weeks. How do we make a difference in the world? How do we participate in the political process? What does that question have to do with Foolish Church?  Stay tuned as we consider these questions.

What I needed to know about becoming an advocate for people beyond my immediate family, I began to learn from my friend Bill Mefford. He taught me the core truth behind the best, most important, most effective, least destructive advocacy:  it is rooted in relationship. Always, always, always.

Sometimes there’s a disconnect. It’s not unusual to hear a politician say, “We’ll help those poor people by imposing work requirements before they can receive SNAP benefits.” Or a well-meaning person who would consider herself an “ally” will criticize the disruptive public demonstrations led by Black Lives Matter or report on an issue affecting the LGBTQIA+ community, without really hearing the perspective of those most directly affected. Looking back in time, way too many Christians in the old South claimed that those in slavery were being protected by that evil system. People claimed women couldn’t handle the responsibility of voting, or working outside the home.

It should make us nervous when we notice that someone is saying, “Here’s what’s best for those people.” Or when the speaker is not among, and likely hasn’t spent real time with the people most directly affected by the rule in question. Or when the speaker contradicts the voices that emerge from among those people.

It’s backward, Bill Mefford might say. We shouldn’t trust advocacy that isn’t situated within personal relationship.

I experienced something of that in a 2014 ministry consultation inside the men’s prison at Chillicothe, Ohio, where Bill led us in exploring the meaning of “incarnational relationship.” Bill was then on staff at the United Methodist Board of Church & Society. He led 2½ days of our learning from men who had been incarcerated there, about how the church might intersect with gang violence, poverty, drug addiction, and more. The men there could speak with authority about those questions because they had lived them. This experience—which I previously shared in this 2015 blog post—has informed my ministry and advocacy, and helped inspire my book Foolish Church.

If the term “incarnational relationship” isn’t familiar to you, you wouldn’t be alone. It’s helpful to remember that we understand Jesus to be the incarnation of God, taking on human flesh, living our lives, and experiencing the fullness of humanity, in order to save us. “Incarnational relationship” involves that kind of direct, lived experience, rather than just observation from a distance. Bill explains this in his own book on this subject, The Fig Tree Revolution: Unleashing Local Churches into the Mission of Justice (Cascade Press, 2017):

All too often our “service” to the poor removes any opportunity for incarnational relationships among the poor because we share, in some way, …disdainful attitudes [about the poor]. The poor are objects of our service, but not real people to learn from, much less serve alongside of.

(p. 49)

Reflecting on my own experience, I suppose the most complete way one might experience incarnational relationship with persons in prison would be to be convicted of a crime and join them behind bars! Short of that, though, I do feel like my experience as the pastor of Women at the Well—and countless hours of conversation, worship, and sharing with women in prison who have become friends and sisters—has brought me closer than I could have imagined to that vision Bill describes.

I will never forget the moment when I first knew that to be true. It was in worship at an advocacy conference in Washington DC, where I had spent a day or two learning about mass incarceration and criminal (in)justice alongside hundreds of people from around the country. At worship that Sunday morning, we were invited to sing the hymn “Canticle of the Turning,” which was new to me that day. The words—based on Mary’s “Magnificat” in Luke 1—unfolded with raw truth and amazing promise.

From the halls of power to the fortress tower, 
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
ev'ry tyrant from his throne.

Those words of walls falling meant, to me, prison walls. And I saw, as real as I was standing there, the faces of so many women who had become dear to me. Yvette. Tina. Rochelle. Jamie. LeAnn. Regina. Ruthann. Tammy. June. Cathryn. Michelle. Crystal. Tausha. So many more, in my mind’s eye. Present. Whole.

The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
There are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.

I sang, and wept, and knew that something had shifted in me. I felt marked with the urgency of speaking out of my experiences with them, my love for them. The questions I had been reading about and the injustices I had observed had become indelibly personal, because of the life we had shared in so many ways.

That life intersects with so many issues that have been in the public arena in recent years: mass incarceration, addiction and drug policy, mental health, gender-based violence, bullying, immigration, and more. I wept that day because I knew there were so many injustices behind these sisters’ stories. There’s always so much more to their stories. It pains me how many nuances of the injustices they’ve borne happen in our name, on our watch.

But I’ve been thinking: Before I went to the prison, I didn’t see that. Before I became the pastor at Women at the Well, I didn’t weep for the injustices that affected people I loved. I think now that it was partly a failure of awareness; surely I knew people burdened by mental illness, addiction, or domestic violence, but I didn’t really know that. I didn’t have eyes to see, or wonder, what the policies or systems are that affected the people in my life.

Looking back, though, I wonder how much I had sheltered myself among (seemingly) easy folks, people like me, without a lot of baggage from complicated histories and troubled childhoods. I didn’t wonder about poor people. I didn’t volunteer even at the nursing home in the community where I served, let alone among people with more complicated ills.

And I think God must have been saying to me, “C’mon, Lee. When will you notice my children who need someone to care about them?” I couldn’t hear that then. I look back and know that my life was impoverished by the absence of those relationships.

But, after all, our faith is rooted in relationship. Love of God and love of our neighbor. When we live out that command only narrowly, we only partially know the fullness of the plan God was trying to show us all along.

And then, when we love—really love—we won’t be able to leave our friends and siblings to deal alone with the trouble that threatens their well-being. Advocacy grows out of the very relationships at the heart of our faith! Knowing and loving and sharing life together, we find ourselves lifting our voices, organizing, even changing the world on behalf of these kindred.

To whom is God calling you, even now—first to relationship, and soon to much, much, more?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring. 
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn!

Image courtesy of Shari Miller photography. Used by permission. Lyrics are quoted from “Canticle of the Turning” by Rory Cooney. See his reflection on the hymn at this link.