What should we do?

STORM LAKE, Iowa — When the crowds asked him, John the Baptist knew just what people should do: share, behave and be satisfied.

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With Luke 3:10-14 as the centerpiece for Tuesday’s worship service at Synod School, the Rev. Liz Theoharis was ready to preach on one of her favorite Bible passages.

But before she could, the Rev. Brendan McLean, associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Tyler, Texas, led a children’s time to illustrate John’s admonition. McLean gave each child who came forward two pieces of candy — one for themselves and one to give “to a new friend” seated in Schaller Chapel. The children quickly and gracefully carried out their assignment.

Theoharis said she’s always appreciated this portion of Luke’s gospel because John is “moving away from the trappings of empire into the wilderness to wake people up, shape them and send them out to fight the good fight.”

“They want to know what they are supposed to do. People in the wilderness have detoxed from the hustle and bustle. … They are ready for something life-giving and liberating, and they are sure curious” about what that might be, she said.

“For years I believed that if people just knew what we could do to abolish poverty and end injustice, we would do it,” said the founder of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice and the co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign. “When we knew what made for justice and peace, we would do it.”

“That’s what’s happening in Luke 3,” she said. “It’s about justice, truth and love, and righting wrongs. It’s biblical rather than political.”

Or, “as we say in the movement: When you lift from the bottom, everyone rises.”

She traced the liberation movement of the Bible back to Aaron, Moses and Miriam, who “sang their way out of enslavement. God sent plagues and pandemics that only hardened the hearts of the authorities.” God’s people “entered the Reed Sea, crossed to the other side, and the weapons and chariots of empire were swallowed up,” Theoharis noted.

The people “passed so many liberatory prescriptions, and it continues into the New Testament. Acts 4 reminds us that God’s grace was so powerfully at work there was no needy person among them.”

Today we might be asking ourselves, do I have the capacity to do more? What happens if people push back? “It doesn’t end so well for John the Baptist,” Theoharis said.

“This is where my mom comes in,” she said.

“When I would get serious and questioning, she would remind my siblings and me she wasn’t raising ballet dancers and baseball players,” Theoharis said, which she and her siblings practiced hard at. “She would remind us she was raising children to make a difference in the world.

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Her mother would quote Micah 6, especially verse 8. She gave her daughter the stole Theoharis has been wearing all week during Synod School. “My mom ordered her life around fulfilling Micah’s call,” she said, “and told us that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“She knew that working for peace and justice required being connected to people across the world,” Theoharis said. “She knew that doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly was the true instruction and meaning for our lives. For my mom, faith and moral action were one.”

In this very moment, “there are millions of people doing such good work,” she said. Food banks are supporting hungry people. Churches are providing sanctuary for the unhoused. Women and LGBTQ folks “are getting the health care they need,” she said. “Mutual aid groups are responding to environmental disasters. Students are protesting war, and so much more.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the response that was needed more than six decades ago: “There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of its way. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed. There is a fire raging now for … the poor of this society. They are living in tragic conditions because of the terrible economic injustices that keep them locked in as an ‘under-class,’ as the sociologists are now calling it. Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.”

Theoharis repeated the question asked of John: What should we do?

“Are we willing to sign up to be an ambulance driver? To ask others to stand in the gap? To ask them to link arms and say, ‘here I am, Lord. Send me.’ We should ask ourselves and others, are we ready to get out of our comfort zone, to respond when people come to us and ask, ‘what should we do? What does the Lord require of me?’”

“If you’re able to answer ‘do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God,’ you’re not alone. Thanks be to God.”