The Gospel Politics of Hope

I got married last month, and the sermon keeps ringing in my ears. “Love is both an action and a feeling,” the preacher said. “You practice love, which causes you to feel it, which makes you want to practice it more.” He talked about the ways one partner might care for another—coffee in bed, say, or a shoulder rub after a long day, or teamwork (zone defense?) with toddlers, or a compassionate ear as one journeys through grief. When we take these actions, we show our love, and our partner is likely to respond in kind. This becomes the real gift—the activity of love changes us.

When we synchronize initiatives that are small enough to manage and big enough to matter, devising solutions that make sense in specific places and times, then we pair local cost with local benefit, and things actually happen. Parks get built. Gardens get planted. Food gets served.

I mention this idea—love is a verb as well as a noun—because I want to understand better how it might relate to a virtue that is hard to come by these days: hope. I care deeply about the climate crisis, yet much of the progress that was made in recent years has been lost. I feel powerless. I often feel hopeless, more so than ever before. 

A Monumental Multitask

Renowned climate scientist James Hansen has said, “It is very hard to see us fixing the climate until we fix our democracy.”[1] The challenge, of course, is that even as we seek to repair the egregious breaches in our common life, smoke still billows every time we burn coal, oil, and gas. Emissions rise, climate warms, divisions deepen. We, the people (of earth) are in the midst of a existential test, with the clock ticking, and we’re going to have to do multiple things at once to live together for the long term. We’re going to have to rebuild and restabilize government that is by, of, and for the people. We’re going to have to quickly and equitably transition to a carbon-free economy. And we’re going to have to navigate the massive climate destabilization already coming our way.[2] Jesus forgives our sins, but the biosphere does not. At least on timelines relative to human civilization, we reap what we sow, and our grandkids will too. 

But what if hope is something like love—a feeling and a verb? What if hope is something we can put into practice, even when we don’t know where to find it? The apostle Paul writes, “And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”[3] Perhaps there truly is a connection between love and hope despite my discouragement. For Christians, our call is to embody Jesus’ love in the world. This becomes a defiant act of hopes it proclaims that powers and principalities will ultimately fall, and that God’s preferred and promised future is already on the way. The Kingdom of God, lined out for us so clearly in the Gospels, is a vision for the world—this one, here and now. We are invited to participate in God’s work already underway. This is fundamentally an act of hope.

So I have come to believe that the only thing we can do, if we are to be morally awake in the face of daunting odds, is whatever we can, wherever we are. Sure, it might not be enough. But the alternative is to sit there and do nothing while insidious evil is carried out around us. I imagine sitting with hypothetical kids and grandkids, telling them how we responded to this moment. I wonder how they will look back on us. I want to be able to tell stories of individual and collective action. I want to tell them what we did.

Jesus on the Scene

The interlocking ordeals of global climate change and local pollution, poverty, racial disparity, broken health care systems, voter suppression, widening wealth gaps, and a shredded social safety net are leading to untold suffering. Jesus of Nazareth, the one we meet in the Gospels, cares about this. He did not get crucified for being nice. He was not promoted for his religious critique, he received no diploma for the Beatitudes. He proclaimed God’s kingdom and he got involved in the local particulars of food and neighbors. 

All these Matthew 25 themes—hunger, thirst, righteousness, prison, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, the homeless, the stranger—have something in common. They are political issues. They stand at the center of Jesus’ public ministry and it is not possible to discuss them without asking “who gets what, when, and how,” the classic definition of politics.[4]

“Too Political”?

Yet many preachers hesitate to touch the issues of the day or sound prophetic or “too political.” Understandably, we don’t want to use the pulpit to sound off for one party or another. Yet much of the country thinks that’s what it means to be Christian: a religion defined by judgment, hypocrisy, and partisanship.[5]

If there is a counterargument against prophetic witness, it may be that the country is polarized, and people have already had enough of the talking heads. They don’t want MSNBC or FOX at church, dressed up with some biblical allusions. Maybe they just want to focus on personal piety on Sundays, hoping they’ll be inspired or renewed when they get back to work on Monday. This is a sincere argument that many make.  

Sadly, it obscures the connection between individual and collective responsibility, and ignores the faith’s teachings about sacrifice: if our faith comes without cost, it is not Christianity. 

It is not partisan to preach virtue, integrity, justice, and kindness—these come from the Good Book. It is not partisan to proclaim the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” No, this is the gospel. It is not partisan to raise voices of protest when children are treated as animals. It is not partisan to protect God’s creation. Rather, it is the command of the Scriptures. 

In this decisive moment in our democracy, it is time to offer a bold Christian witness and launch local actions, focusing on habits of the heart—individual and collective, mine and ours. It is time to amplify hope. There has never been a better moment to proclaim the real Jesus found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In a word, we have something to say, and we should say it. 

Getting Out of the Office

The power of local action comes from relationships born, momentum generated, and capacity built.  When we synchronize initiatives that are small enough to manage and big enough to matter, devising solutions that make sense in specific places and times, then we pair local cost with local benefit, and things actually happen. Parks get built. Gardens get planted. Food gets served. We tunnel through political barriers. We mobilize pockets of political will. We cultivate partnerships and invent possibilities that we had never imagined. We get out of the office and into the neighborhood. Engaging our communities, enriching our spiritual and physical wellness, it’s possible to make measurable progress on issues Jesus cares about most passionately: human dignity for all, love for neighbor and self.

When Christians pursue actions that are biblically informed, communally discerned, and Holy Spirit-led, we tap into energy that inspires others.[6] At All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta, a 30-year relationship with refugee agencies and their clients empowered us to take a bold stance in January 2025. At that time, previously vetted families had their financial support rapidly withdrawn by the federal government, with barely a month’s notice. Many families stared homelessness in the face.

Partnering with our congregation and neighbors, we simply offered to pay what these families had been promised before they came to the United States: six months of modest financial support while they settled here after years of trauma overseas. With a simple appeal to our congregation and friends, we aimed to raise $75,000 to cover bills for six families. But that’s not what happened. In less than a month, $500,000 came pouring in, generating a fund that will provide sustainable support to dozens of refugee families for the next four years. Such actions have sparked a feeling of hope for our whole community.

Hope Happens

A similar spirit motivates congregations around environmental reform and other efforts toward the common good. Locally, Christian communities have taken the following actions to improve life in their neighborhood:

·      Conducting a campus-wide facility audit with Interfaith Power and Light to reduce waste, improving energy efficiency, and building toward carbon neutrality by 2050;

·      Partnering with a local electric company to install a major solar array on church property;

·      Installing electric vehicle charging stations in the church parking lot, and providing hospitality to guests who need to charge their cars;

·      Offering food and fellowship to bike commuters on the rails-to-trails path outside the church;

·      Drawing on shared trust in the community to help low-income families buy and cook healthy food;

·      Raising money to collect food for the local food bank as SNAP benefits expire.

Rather than prescribe a particular action for your own congregation, I simply want to encourage you to do what you can, where you are, with your people. There is a great deal of need around us. There are incredible resources in your midst. You’re the only person with your unique perspective in the world. Nobody else knows the people you know. Nobody else has your skills, your passion, your voice. Nobody else has your particular read on the Gospel of Jesus. No other community has the unique blend of people and capacity that yours has.

When we jump in, we’ll figure things out along the way. Doors unlock. Relationships open. Possibilities emerge. Especially when we ground our actions in the reconciling love of Christ, and in carefully considered ways to be uniquely helpful, we have the capacity to change lives for the better. These actions inspire others to join in. You feel something genuine when you’re obviously making a difference. 

That feeling, rooted in God’s love for the world, is called hope. 

The Rev. Andrew K. Barnett ’12 M.Div./M.E.M. is Senior Associate Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta. He graduated from Oberlin College with a double degree in environmental studies and sacred music. At Yale his degrees were in the joint program at YDS and the Yale School of the Environment, and he earned his Doctor of Ministry in Congregational Leadership and Mission from Luther Seminary. He is also a pianist and founding director of Theodicy Jazz Collective, a nationally recognized liturgy-focused jazz ensemble whose music has been described as “a constant prayer, sometimes a shout of joy, sometimes a call to action, sometimes a cry for hope.”