Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable

My long-awaited installation is coming up this Sunday at 3:00, and in preparation for that event I have been looking over the elements of worship, including the covenant we will make with one another. My position is what is known as a three-way covenant, a designation that indicates that Community UCC, the Covenant Association, and I will be entering into covenant with one another. I have responsibilities in relation to both the church and the Association, you have responsibilities in relation to the Association and me, and so on. We are not in this thing alone—we have partners in ministry—and I find that reassuring.

This morning I was looking at the prayer of installation in particular. A representative from Covenant Association will offer the prayer, asking God to witness and bless the covenant and help each party fulfill its responsibilities. Quoting one of the New Testament letters to Timothy, the prayer asks God to “grant us the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.” It goes on to say, “Make our ministry a means of awakening the careless, strengthening the faithful, comforting the afflicted, building up your church, and converting sinners to you.”

The Catholic radical Dorothy Day used to say that the job of a Christian minister—or a Christian of any stripe—is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I have taken that advice to heart in my ministry, because I believe that is God’s intention for us as well. It’s also the example we have from the Hebrew prophets and Jesus himself. The prophets in their preaching and Jesus in his ministry could be extraordinarily gentle and generous toward those who had always gotten the short end of the stick in life but stern and strict with those who lived lives of comfort and privilege. That’s because they understood that those who act out of a sense of privilege often achieve their privileged status by running roughshod over others, especially the poor.

Like the prophets and Jesus, I find that state of affairs intolerable. God has demonstrated again and again the divine favor and compassion for those who are poor, mistreated, and marginalized. At the same time, God expresses anger toward those who do the mistreating and marginalizing of their neighbors. My job as a minister, and our job as a church, is to bring God’s word of comfort to the afflicted ones. They need to hear from Jesus that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

And while I would not go so far as to say our responsibility is to afflict the comfortable, I would argue that we should do what we can to make them a little bit uncomfortable by declaring God’s word of judgment. They need to hear Jesus’s woes against those who are rich, well-fed, and complacent. They need to hear the judgment of Amos, Micah, Isaiah, and others against those who claim to worship God but do not practice justice and equity toward their neighbors in need.

I will close with another line from the Prayer of Installation. It’s a word for all of us: “Guard us against the snares of temptation that we may be kept pure in heart, fervent in spirit, and valiant against evil.” That is my prayer for Community UCC, and it’s something that ought to keep us busy for a good while.