Advent: How and for whom to prepare
Happy Holidays, LAMA Friends!
The Season of Advent begins this Sunday, and as we enter into this traditional time of preparation, I invite you to consider what it really means to ready ourselves to meet God.
Churches often spend Advent examining the ways the Bible prepares for the arrival of the Messiah, in addition to helping individuals ready themselves for the holiday. We often read prophesies from the Old Testament that foretell Christ’s birth, as well as the earliest stories in the New Testament, about the angel Gabriel visiting Mary and the birth of John the Baptist.
In these stories, there is a great deal of hope, but there is also instruction. God does not tell His people to sit still and wait for their deliverance, but to prepare to meet it. The ancient Israelites are instructed to repent and follow God’s laws so that they are ready to receive the Messiah when he arrives. Zachariah and Elizabeth must physically and mentally prepare their lives for the arrival of a new, precious, unexpected life. Mary prepares to face the judgement of her community and Joseph is asked to lean fully on his faith. Anna and Simeon spent their whole lives anticipating the baby Jesus’s arrival. In examining the ways followers have prepared for God in the past, we are encouraged to prepare ourselves sometimes to meet God in the afterlife, or Christ’s promised return, or in God’s callings for our lives.
This year, I have been considering how often God asks his people to prepare for Him. It is not just the arrival of the Messiah that requires us to be ready. The Bible is full of stories in which God calls followers into action, from Moses’s call to lead the Israelites into the desert, to the instruction to aide our neighbors in distress, to Jesus’s gathering of disciples. From the Psalms to the prophets to the story of the Last Supper, scripture reminds us again and again to be prepared to meet these calls to action.
This Advent, I encourage us all the prepare to meet God, not on a detached, spiritual plane, but in the stranger, the unhoused, the incarcerated, and all those around us in need. This Sunday, many of our congregations read Matthew 25:31-46, which makes it clear that the way to meet Christ is to meet our neighbors in need. The way to achieve righteousness and make our homes in God’s kingdom are to work for justice everywhere it is needed. We are told that whenever we meet a person in need, we are meeting the Son of Man himself. To serve our neighbor is to serve God, and to ignore them is to ignore God. A call to action doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Advocacy is one of the most effective and direct ways we can answer this call. Advocacy equips us to greet our neighbors in need by helping us to better understand the complexities of their need and the solutions that are available. Our advocacy also builds a governmental system that meets the underprivileged with justice and assistance instead of marginalization. The policies, laws, and practices that we advocate for have real, concrete effects on the lives of our neighbors, and our advocacy helps ensure that these things are changed for the better. Engaging in advocacy can be one of the strongest ways to serve our neighbors.
This season, I invite you to join me in adopting a spiritual advocacy practice. Disciplines can help strengthen and focus our spiritual practices as we prepare to meet Christ in our neighbors. Some of the ways you can use advocacy as a spiritual practice this Advent Season include:
Dedicating time each day or week to reading and watching the news happening in your community
Dedicating time to checking the news on specific issues that you are invested in (For Example, spending on morning reading any news related to LAMA’s Policy Priorities from the last week)
Volunteering at relief ministries (like food banks, unhoused programs, and so on), with the specific intention of getting to know your neighbors
Exploring our new Advocacy 101 Tool Kit if you are unsure how to start advocating or want a refresher on the process
Committing to following all of LAMA’s Action Alerts during Advent
Learn about ELCA’s Peace Not Walls program work for a world in which Christ’s Peace reigns supreme
Educating yourself on the ELCA’s Truth and Healing movement to better support our Indigenous Neighbors
Leading a social justice group, organizing an Offering of Letters, or using our Advocacy Tool Kit with your church community
Check out our calendar of events and join us for some of our networks, roundtables, and information sessions
As we officially enter the holiday season, we at LAMA wish you and yours blessings and joy. We hope that our office can be one of these blessings for you! If you have found yourself here, following the call to advocacy, but are uncertain of where to go next, or if you are seeking additional resources to organize your community of advocates, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us via email!
In radical love,
Autumn
