Samantha Christopher

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
--The Baptismal Covenant, BCP pg. 304.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Our Office readings for today certainly don’t hold back. Hosea is prophesying at a time of political instability, rampant idolatry, and insincere religiosity characterized by the Northern Kingdom of Israel turning its back on God and God’s teachings at the time when the people there needed God the most.

Sound familiar?

We’re used to the Beatitudes being a source of comfort to us, and yet in our reading for today, Jesus calls out the people in his time who seem to be too busy partying and gaining wealth just for the sake of wealth to help the less fortunate in their time.

Sound familiar?

Our readings for today are nothing short of an indictment of American social and political life from the last 50-odd years. Growing up in a military family, I often heard that my brothers were serving their country in Iraq and Afghanistan to spread freedom and to liberate oppressed people. And yet, almost 20 years later, we can see that the wars of the early 2000s were nothing more than imperialism and greed cloaked in the idol of patriotism.

We were promised years of life in a land overflowing with milk and honey, where no one would be in need and yet years of that illusion were shattered when faced with COVID-19. We find ourselves in a nation where more and more people every day are losing everything they have from medical debt or are losing their insurance because the greed of corporations tied our access to doctors to our ability to work.

Our readings from Hosea and Luke call us to repentance, just as Paul was called to repentance on that road to Damascus. Just as the Psalmist feels mired in sin and despair, so too are we mired in sin-filled systems that leave far too many of our neighbors closer to homelessness than economic security.

But all is not lost.

Just as God reached out to Paul, so too does God reach out to us through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. We are pulled out of the muck and mire of sin and death through no power of our own and, through repentance, we can work to build more equitable economic systems. Through repentance, we can break the strangle-hold that imperialism and greed have on our culture and live into Isaiah’s vision of beating our swords into plowshares.

In Christian Hope,

Sam Christopher (they/them)
Beloved in the Desert Intern