Hope Moves Into Action

This post was contributed by Relational Evangelist Kelsey Rice Bogdan. 

Seven months ago, as the long-delayed summer of 2009 finally brought Boston the hot and humid days for which summers in Boston are known, a group of enthusiastic, hopeful interns gathered in the undercroft at Trinity Church, Boston for training in community organizing. Both Trinity’s undercroft and community organizing were unfamiliar to me then, but would later become central to my day-to-day life. And while it took me months to fully understand some of the skills and strategies we learned in those warm August days in Trinity’s basement, one thing was clear—on April 10, 2010, we eight community organizers were to bring 500 people to an event that would signal their commitment to economic justice and the overall impact of our campaign.


So it was fitting that on April 10, we would once again start the day in the undercroft at Trinity Church, this time to welcome hundreds of people to our celebration and action on Copley Square in the heart of Boston. The cold winter days between August and April had been full of small victories—young adults growing in their leadership capacity, congregations revitalized by the energy and passion of their younger members, greater awareness of the entrenched, systemic economic inequalities in our city. There had also been struggle and frustration. But on April 10, a pervading sense of hope eclipsed all of that. As the sun shined down and signs of returning life surrounded us in Copley Square on Saturday, I felt hope that perhaps we could address the injustices in our city. Hope that people really did care about standing in solidarity with those in need. Hope that God really is at work in our efforts.

And for me and my colleagues in the Relational Evangelism Pilot Project, hope that this event would be a successful end to the task our leaders—Rev. Arrington Chambliss, Kate Hilton, Jason Long, and others—had handed us back on those humid training days in August. But no sooner had our Trinity community made its decision to support adult learners in Villa Victoria through academic coaching than people began approaching me to ask, “What’s next? What are we going to do now? When will we meet again?” I realized then that April 10, far from being the end of the Hope in Action campaign, was really just a transition into another phase. On April 10, we did celebrate the close of one chapter, but we started another as well. Our Hope in Action event signaled a shift from hope into action, talking into doing.

What Saturday taught me is that justice isn’t like the term paper I wrote about mentoring last year, or the development consulting work I did for a faith-based nonprofit a few years back. Those were finite projects, tasks that I could finish and move on. The struggle for justice, on the other hand, has no starting and ending date, no term paper to signal that you’ve completed it and can take on the next challenge. The work for justice keeps drawing us further and deeper, into more complex challenges and new understandings. It constantly draws us into action, reflection, and further action based on that reflection. It is a lifetime pursuit.

In this, justice work parallels the journey of faith. If we’re really honest with ourselves, we rarely “solve” the great questions about God and move on. We sit with them, wrestle with them, live into them. We are always searching for God, but what we end up finding is ourselves—our vocation, our purpose, our way of acting in the world as a response to God’s love. And if justice is one of the characteristics of God, one of the realities God desires for the world, then it makes sense that justice won’t be complete on April 10 or any other day. We will work, learn, and grow in the pursuit of justice until the day when God makes all things new.

 
So for me and my fellow Relational Evangelists, it’s time to get back to work and begin converting all that hope of the past seven months into action. We are only just beginning!