What can I do about injustice? Violence? What can I do?

As I posted the other day, it’s easy for me to write stuff on a blog or on social media.

The season we’re in calls for action. Doing. Replacing old habits with new ones. This is not the time for defense. It’s time for offense.

This is where I come up short of any ideas.

I could march in protest of guns, police brutality, racial profiling, and violence in general. Would I make a statement? Yes. Would I make change? I doubt it. We’ve had a lot of marches in this country over the last few months.

I could vote for candidates whose policies and voting records support economic and social justice. I could vote for candidates whose policies support common sense gun control. I could vote for candidates who speak the language of inclusion, peace, and reconciliation. I will vote for those candidates in November.

For some citizens, I suppose making statements and voting is enough.

As an apprentice and student of Jesus Christ, however, I adhere to his commission to be “light” and “salt” in the world. A Christian is an active–a *pro*active–force for faith, hope, and love in society. When plagues broke out in ancient cities, Christians would move in to care for the sick while everyone else fled for the countryside.

What does it mean to be “light” and “salt” in this dark season in America?

It means moving in close to the parts of the problem nobody else wants to see or touch. It means making ourselves at home in the danger zone when we have every excuse and every right to stay at a safe distance.

Most of all, it means doing the hard, inconvenient, thankless work of healing and reconciling. For it is healing and reconciling that best describes the work of the Christ himself.

How to begin?

For me, I have to start with self-reconciliation. Specifically, I have to reconcile my desire to solve the world’s problem with the reality that I can really only solve my own problems. So many people–I among them–never start because they can’t get over their inability to solve problems on a global scale. “Why bother if I can’t fix it for everybody?” I take this hard and I take it personally. I beat myself up and quit before I start.

So I have to reconcile with myself. And accept that the Christ neither commissioned nor equipped me to solve a global problem.

My commission and equipment from Christ is for one thing only: Loving the places and people around me. The Holy Spirit of Christ will extend the invitations and open the doors. Where a need for healing and reconciliation exists nearby, I will become aware of it by the Spirit. I have to trust this.

One word keeps coming to mind over and over this week: Communion.

As a man, how many of my friends are people who are very different from me? Black lives matter. Yes. How many of them matter to me personally? I’m not talking about the cute Hollywood schtick that “every white guy needs a black friend.” I’m talking about the circles in which I run and how those circles bring me into friendship with people who are not 40-year old white guys who live in the suburbs.

The diversity of my personal circle of friends is a microcosm of what the church of Christ is to be in a broken-up world: A fellowship–a Holy Communion–of people who have every reason to be enemies or just “separate but equal.” Our witness to the world is not at a platform or podium; it’s at a table. In Communion, we break bread apart in faith that the Christ will put us together.

I have every right to stick to “my own kind,” but a commitment to the Christ life is a renunciation of that right. It is a commitment to never be too busy for the work of healing and reconciliation. It is a commitment to communion with those I’d rather count as enemies or simply not know. It is a commitment to make the choice: Go far and go long to assemble the *un*likeliest communion rather than the one the world expects.

No grant plan or pronouncement here. Just a simple move toward communion in my own city. And here’s how I’ll start: By extending an invitation to break bread with four men I believe can help me better understand my role in the church of Christ and in society. My only agenda will be to ask what I can and should do.

I’ll report back to you here when the time is right.

In the meantime, may the Prince of Peace calm and cool our country as the summer grows hot. May justice and peace prevail.