Occasional Papers
from
The Cathedral

A forum for the People of the Diocese of Connecticut      Published by Christ Church Cathedral

Liberty and Justice For All:
A Theology of Social Ministry

By
The Reverend Canon James A. Kowalski, D.Min., Rector of Saint Luke's Parish, Darien, and an Honorary Canon Scholar of Christ Church Cathedral, Hartford

Dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York City (2002- )

     Every parish that I have belonged to or worked in has been involved with outreach ministries. I think that I have never really given much thought to the alternatives. Perhaps I have taken for granted that all parishes are like the one in which I grew up. (Saint Paul's, Willimantic, had and still has, a vibrant social ministry.)

     That assumption, or illusion, has been challenged in several ways. First, I am aware that many congregations do not identify social ministry as central to what it means to be a community of faith. Second, I am aware of some parishes up to their eyeballs in outreach who might not be able to articulate why or how social ministry is integral to who they are as a Christian community.

     Besides, to some of us, the stance of social ministry may seem to risk an imbalance. Isn't there a danger that in caring for those outside the parish we might neglect the flock? Surely all of us have seen such patterns develop. I suggest that there is always a tension between inreach and outreach, and that more often than not they are out of balance. Envision, if you will, outreach and inreach along a continuum of ministry, held together by the Founder of our faith - to whom those both near and far matter. By struggling with this creative tension we embody Christ's concern for all people, including ourselves. Indeed, the practical reality exists that if we do not care for ourselves, we shall have little of value to offer others. In contending with this tension, I value our prayer for the newly married, our belief that they can know in their new family enough love to share with a broken world. A parish must be, in that sense, a haven of nurture and pastoral support for the flock, so that parishioners are comforted and yet strengthened to go out into the world.

     My personal formation involved a deep commitment to Boy Scouting. Soon after I was confirmed, I began work on my "God and Country Award." Both preparations required memorization of the Catechism, or what we call today "The Outline of Faith" (BCP, p. 855). The question "What is the mission of the Church?" is answered: "The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ," pursued as the Church "prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace and love."

     I do not remember participating in great debates about the meanings of "justice" or "peace" or "love" during those years. Serving others and contributing to my community were the ways I learned to talk about such topics. Somehow it became clear to me that one of the signs of God's reign is that divisions among people would be healed and that people would live in justice and peace. If you had asked me what such behavior would look like on a social scale, I probably would not have been able to describe it, except to say something close to an extrapolation on the Golden Rule. I found few people who disagreed that the world would be a better place, if we loved one another and acted justly; but it was very easy to fight over the particulars and political implications -especially with my Dad!

     Perhaps that is why I eventually found Matthew 25:31-46 so shocking. This passage is commonly called the "Judgment of the Nations." Jesus is depicted on a throne dividing the sheep and the goats, determined by who did or did not respond to the hungry or thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and those in prison. What startled me was what those who ministered and those who did not had in common. Both asked, "When did we see you, Lord, needing such ministry?" Whether sheep or goats, none sees the radical implications of the Incarnation: those helped or refused help actually are the Lord! God is enfleshed so completely in Christ that, "Whenever you helped or refused to help these poor ones, you did so to me."

     I should have known that truth. I grew up in a Boy Choir and had some of the best theology of our tradition poured into me through our hymnody. What accessible images we have in our great hymns, like Hymn 609, placed under the theme of Christian Responsibility! Frank Mason North eloquently created the image of the embodiment of God in Christ in the verses:

Where cross the crowded ways of life, Where sound the cries of race and clan, Above the noise of selfish strife, We hear Thy voice, O Son of Man. In haunts of wretchedness and need, On shadowed thresholds dark with fears, From paths where hide the lures of greed, We catch the vision of Thy tears.

     North concludes with the stirring vision of the entire world learning Christ's love and following in His footsteps, as then "shall come the City of our God."

     Likewise, how literally do we take the Collect "For The Diversity of Races and Cultures" (BCP, p. 840)? We pray that our lives would be enriched by "ever-widening circles of fellowship." We claim that God's presence is shown "in those who differ most from us," and that our knowledge of God's love "is made perfect in our love for all (God's) children." If we truly believe what we pray, we must do more than provide presentations or study groups about diversity and integration! How often do we "add on" special liturgies to focus such critical issues, and even then not challenge ourselves to see this social mandate as central to being faithful?

     In fact, as many of us face shrinking parish and diocesan budgets, outreach ventures are often among the programs cut. We may discover that only a few people involved in social ministry even know what these outreach organizations do, let alone perceive them as key to our identity as parish or diocese. When areas of ministry compete for limited funds, the less controversial often are easiest to defend. I have heard the concern expressed, "Exactly why should the church be involved in these secular or political issues, anyway? If individuals want to contribute, let them. But don't drag the whole parish into it."

     In every parish I have known I have been blessed to be surrounded by people who comprehend social ministry as a way of expressing our identity as people of faith. This cathedral paper, and the continuing education I have completed, have given me opportunities to reflect on ministry that is social and public, and woven tightly into the fabric of our life together as Christians.

     In Social Ministry (Westminster, 1982) Dieter Hessel has written,

...congregations are schools of Christian living which teach by doing (or not doing) mission and ministry. In a milieu of vital parish life, through a process of action and reflection, members of all ages learn to be faithful to God. (p. 109)

     Yet, do we truly believe that doing justice is central to Christian faithfulness? Clearly we are not loved because of what we do. Nonetheless, we are entrusted, as stewards, to care for creation. We have been given by God a special relationship to all of creation. Made in God's image, we are charged by God not to dominate or abuse that creation. That vocation is best lived out by appreciating the Creator as joyfully creating the diversity we experience in life. How could we learn to imitate that celebration of diversity? We are faithful as we delight in and cherish what God has made. This is the reason we pledge in our baptismal vows to respect the dignity of every human being.

     North's hymn captures the vision of the City of God. As Christians, we are called to build such a City, heaven on earth. Imagine what the world would be like, if we believed that disrespect is the unnatural state for a society! Picture the kind of world we could build if we treated each other as worthy of God's love. One behavioral change might be the sharing of resources rather than forcing persons in need into a "finders-keepers" distribution of resources. In urban work, I have found many who believe that the poor deserved what they got - or did not get. There still seems to be an abiding conviction that all people in need did something to cause their circumstances. When we share, we often distribute only from abundance or surplus. I am not surprised that people ministered to in this way feel they are getting left-overs.

     The Bible draws us to a vision of the New Jerusalem, that Holy City of great complexity. It is the Commonwealth of God, where life is lived for the common good. God does not mean for us to conduct life as a free-for-all, with winners and losers. That vision places on us the great commission to build a just society. During the pilgrimage toward such a society, we must deal effectively with people from every segment of the social structure including those who may reject responsible participation.

     Our Biblical faith traces the Mighty Acts of God in history. God acts in history, and we are an Exodus people. Our lineage is traced to a tribe of worthless slaves chosen by God. God valued them, named them the Children of God, and set them free. This Faith connects the spiritual and the political inexorably: once this people was nobody, and now they are God's chosen, led to a promised land and made into a nation. Our wandering forebearers are witnesses to God's love of the stranger, the outcast, the alien. The Prophets were very blunt in reminding this much-loved nation, whenever it forgot what was expected of it given its own story, that Yahweh loves justice even more than Yahweh loves Israel.

     Christ is the embodiment of this message from God. Jesus shows us the potential for the New Community of love and justice. Jesus as Messiah is a new kind of king, as God in Christ becomes a poor human being. This unique Divine Intervention identifies the most dehumanized persons with God. The exploited and oppressed are promised abundance and full human life. Each time that Jesus positioned Himself to be with the outcast and throw-aways, he said, "The Kingdom of God is like this." This revolutionary love is described in our collect for mission, which says:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace. (BCP, p. 101)

     As John Booty wrote in The Christ We Know (Cowley, 1987), "The focus is on the cross, that amazing display of divine love, which liberates the faithful from the bondage to sin and death, freeing them for new life, for participation in Christ, in his body the Church, and for sacrificial service in this broken world." (p. 71)

      God's graciousness is meant to be expressed in community. Divine Love is intended to become social as it is carried to social transactions and social institutions. That is how love and mercy become justice. To reduce the demonstration of Divine Love in Christ only to personal and interpersonal spheres of ministry is to strip the Incarnation of its social meaning. We imitate Christ when we love one another and do justice. Our arena of stewardship includes the maldistribution of goods and services, hoarding wealth, and dominating others by not removing barriers that keep people poor. As Thomas Gromme states in Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (Harper, 1980):

When Christians join together as Church, the conversion effort which began in their individual hearts must express itself in a community effort to change such oppressive structures and create alternatives more likely to ‘prepare the material’ of the final Kingdom. This points eventually toward the potential role of the Church in the world. (p. 47)

     Social ministry functions as a central way for faithful persons and communities to live out this role in the world.

     Saint Paul wrote, "Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2) I have found that outreach ministry helps me connect my personal faith to the larger social and political realm where injustice exists and offers a transformative opportunity. Such ministry reveals a crisis in distributive justice. I see myself transformed by an awareness of how poor women and men pay a price for injustice and of the cost to our society of poverty bred by injustice. My own lifestyle has been challenged as I have been drawn into political actions that help to redistribute goods and services.

     How does such transformative education relate to the Church's mission? If we are called to justice ministries, then we must be educated for justice. We prepare for ministry that assists awakening, as we are led from complacency into the promise of the Holy City. The conversion provided by our faith encompassesnot only the metanoia (change of heart) of individuals, but also the reversal of structures and systems in society. Too often, our educational approach is the conventional method of protecting and promoting the status quo, the circumstances into which we want people to fit nicely. We neglect seeking their help in critiquing society. Christian education domesticates when we simply transmit our views of what is to others. Instead, our vocation is to discern and promote the vision of God's reign. Authentic religious education can help us envision the world as it could be - as God means for it to be - and then to follow that faith with action.

     A related, realistic concern is that social ministries may lead regional or local Christian communities into adopting positions on political issues or public policy with which various members, including clergy, disagree. I propose that parishes in particular embark upon parish-wide mission only with heartfelt consensus. The body must not be divided against itself; as a Body with One Head, we are not being called by Christ to actions causing self-destruction. Nonetheless, we are called, not simply to study issues and become informed, but also to act.

     We will frequently discover that a primary function of the congregation is to support the thoughtful, diverse positions taken and ministries exercised by its members, rather than endeavoring in every case to unite behind a banner as a parish. However, great dangers lie in fearing and avoiding all controversy as well as by failing to set an example of faithful communities working through conflicts with concrete responses.

     The Church has been a place where I have been encouraged to become who I am meant by God to be. As I grew up in the Church, many people seemed to believe in me before I believed in myself. I was allowed to try out important roles in worship and service. I was treated with the love and respect one feels when others act as if you have something to contribute. In social ministry I see the Church acting that way publicly and politically, encouraging our larger communities to become what they are meant by God to be, the New Jerusalem. Is it possible that the kind of rebirth individuals can experience is also something that could be experienced in communities?

     Social ministries afford us such arenas for transformation. Outreach connecting our theological convictions with the everyday world takes the Incarnation seriously. Jesus lived and died as one of us to show us how important the human condition is to God. God's Word enfleshed in a human Life has married the human and the Divine inexorably. When we neglect to live out our faith in that social and public arena, we minimize the connection that God in Christ has made.

     Such a violation of our vocation as stewards of this New Creation has at least two consequences. First, we cut short our opportunity to make the future present as heaven is brought to earth; we delay the world from becoming the Commonwealth of God. Second, we miss the opportunity to be transformed, because in such ministry we are profoundly changed.

      In my experience it is this second transformation, the transformation that we could undergo, that may be more misunderstood. When we sing Charles Wesley's words to Hyfrydol (Hymn 657), we may question whether we take seriously the petition:

Finish then thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

     When social ministries are central to our mission, they are arenas in which we re-present the vision of God's Commonwealth, the world as it can be. In social ministry we carry out the Creator's plan of salvation: "let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord." (BCP, p. 291) Perhaps Wesley was too optimistic when he pondered the new creation as finished! A theology of creation that carries us into being co-creative stewards with Christ in this way may be more important than a theology of the end of time. What seems clear, however, is that in our liturgy, just as surely as the bread and wine are wondrously transformed, so are we. Then we are sent out; Jesus has given us work to do. We have the privilege to share in the redemptive enterprise that He has entrusted to us.

     A special caveat is needed for Christians who have a hard time saying "No" to needy people or worthy causes! To sustain social ministries we must have good boundaries; we need to understand our strengths and weaknesses. We have to be free to set limits, such that we are reminded that we are not God the Almighty, and that God counts on others as well as on us. If we had all the resources in the world at our disposal, others should be invited into these ministries. The ecumenical and interfaith opportunities for ministry build further community as we work together for a more just society.

     The enterprise of social ministry leads us to complete the Great Cycle of faith, Incarnation and Resurrection. God's embodiment in Christ leads us into this identification with ministries that are social, public and political. Christ's resurrection from the dead keeps us in the communion such ministries offer. That is why, I propose, that the outrageous claim is made in I John 3:14, "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters." The witness we offer in social ministry is of a Church still haunted by the question asked of our Lord nearly two thousand years ago, when others also wondered, "Who is our neighbor?" Let us be among those who join with our Lord, through such ministries, as we say, "Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven."