What Does the Angel Say to Us?

by Rev. Sarah Campbell

On Christmas Eve we heard the Christmas story of the angel, God’s messenger, coming to Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds, giving them each a different message but saying to all of them, “Do not fear!”

What does the angel say to us?

Organize! 

Organize for power of all the people!

Organize and, like the Shepherds, move with haste! There is no time to lose in this fight against our greedy and cruel wannabe king and his minions.

For many churches and congregations this organizing thing is new. (There were over a hundred new congregations represented at the Convention Center on December 13 for ISAIAH’s Light in the Storm gathering.) Usually, they have focused solely on education and individual action, on acts of mercy, rather than working on the root cause. Or, when they have taken any action, they usually had to be at the helm of creating it, involving lots of process—with various levels of church governance and purity of partners—and therefore unable to be nimble and move with haste.

Not so Creekside. We’ve been organizing for two decades.

On Christmas Eve I said, quoting Barbara Brown Taylor, “Like Mary… You can take part in a thrilling and risky scheme with no script and guarantees.” True. No precise script, but there is a very clear road map, constructed by some leaders in our congregation along with other leaders and organizers with ISAIAH who are consulting organizers around the country. You may not agree with every piece of this road map, but if we gather enough participants and move quickly, we will stop this growing, cruel, and greedy authoritarianism in our beloved nation. We will live and witness to our faith and not let the authoritarians hijack it.

What is the angel saying to you?

If you are very busy with parenting, caretaking, and other employment, you can still do every single action alert and most tabling actions on Sundays. And remember: These are not just acts of faithfulness, they are also highly strategic.

And, if you are able and can carve out some time, there are actions and trainings starting this month… see below, ISAIAH… Also, there will be actions that our other faith partners will call us out for…

Also, if you feel called to be a leader, and join a core justice team, ISAIAH, Beacon, Prism, Earthwise, etc. Susie or I will help you connect.

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The Selma Bus Boycott in the 1950s, at the heart of the Civil Rights movement in our country, didn’t just happen. There were many, many months of hard-core organizing behind the scenes.

As Rev. Sharf, a Confessing Church Lutheran Minister in Nazi Germany, reflected in 1983 about the Confessing Church’s failure to stop evil:

If a far greater number of the neutral pastors, together with their parishes, had joined the Confessing Church from the beginning; if we had brought it, our resistance, forth not only in sermons but also into the streets, like the Civil Rights movement in the US in the 60s, if we could have united others to oppose Nazism more forcefully… The disaster could have been averted.”

What is the angel saying to us? Organize!