A THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

FOR THE SEASON OF ADVENT

By the Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold

Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church

 “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Isaiah 61:1-2)

On the Third Sunday in Advent, the Revised Common Lectionary gives us Isaiah’s well-known words that also served as the text for Jesus’ preaching in the Synagogue at the first appearance of his public ministry.   The vocation claimed by Jesus in the recitation of these words is also given by God to us: to bring the good news of God, in word and deed and the example of our lives, to all who are bound and oppressed and cut off from the glorious freedom and abundant life God intends for us.   Jesus’ vocation is our own, and the same Spirit given to Jesus is poured out upon us as well.

That vocation is particularly critical as the weeks of Advent draw us ever closer to Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s incarnation in the midst of our battered and broken world.   Advent invites us to prepare for Christ’s coming by examining the patterns of our lives and relationships with God and one another, and submitting ourselves to undergo repair, re-ordering, and reconciliation in the model offered to us by God in Christ. We are called to open our hearts and minds to the working of the Holy Spirit within us, so that in living out our lives and relationships, we ultimately may see as God sees and act as God acts.

This Advent, in particular, my thoughts are drawn to how this sort of preparation might be lived out in the life of our nation and our world.   In the year that is now drawing to a close, we saw world leaders at the G8 Summit in July and the UN meeting in September consider how the planet’s resources and strategies might be used to bring hope and relief to the one billion of God’s children around the world who live each day under the burden of extreme poverty and hunger.   The world possesses the wealth – many times over -- to end extreme human poverty in our time, and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) offer us the strategies for doing so.   It is now up to all of us to build the will.  To be sure, building the will involves a significant reorientation of our nation’s and world’s priorities.    Ultimately, though, this is what the Christian faith is all about, and Advent shows us why.

Advent calls us to prepare for the coming King by putting aside our own illusions and narrow self-serving views and submitting ourselves to transformation according to God’s terms, which often are very different than our own.   When God called the Blessed Virgin Mary to bear the infant Christ into the world, life as she knew it was turned upside down and thrown into confusion.   The patterns of her life – a wedding, a family, and the daily and seasonal rhythms of Nazareth – were cast aside as the crooked ways of God overtook human logic.   Yet, Mary’s response was one of acceptance: “Be it to me according to your Word.”

In Advent, we are challenged to make Mary’s response our own and allow God to re-pattern and re-order our lives according to Divine will.   One of the Church’s most ancient Advent texts, an antiphon known as O Sapientia, speaks of the coming Christ as “Wisdom proceeding from the mouth of the Most High, pervading and permeating all creation, mightily ordering all things.”   Advent, indeed, is more than a season: it is a state of being in which we are called to respond to the will of God planted deep within our hearts: our yearning for justice, peace, and love; our desire to heal the hunger, poverty, nakedness, and disease of our world. 

The Millennium Development Goals embody the response God calls us to give to our suffering world.  The MDGs reflect God’s passionate desire for justice and mercy, and the work of re-ordering and rebuilding we have been given.

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention has called all of us to support the Millennium Development Goals and to give of ourselves to see that they are fulfilled.   Currently, more than 35 dioceses of The Episcopal Church are giving 0.7 percent or more of their income toward the realization of the MDGs.  Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) is operating successful programs in the developing world that are working in all of the Goal areas.   Moreover, the Church is living out its commitment to the MDGs in its world mission work and the efforts of its offices of Women’s Ministries and Peace and Justice Ministries.  As part of that effort, the Church’s Office of Government Relations in Washington, DC – with the help of the thousands of Episcopalians around the country in the Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) – is lobbying the U.S. government to devote more resources to fulfilling the MDGs.

We still have a long way to go, however.  As the world stands one-third of the way to the Goals’ completion point, it is clear that a dramatic re-ordering of our nation’s priorities is necessary if the Goals are to be met.   Our nation must lead the world in providing significantly increased development aid and debt cancellation to poor countries, in making fair the structures of trade between nations, and in seeking to heal the injustices and inequalities that fuel poverty and conflict across the globe. 

The developing world has many examples to offer of programs that are working successfully against global poverty.  The flourishing of health services – particularly for children – in Mozambique as a result of debt cancellation; the soaring rates of primary-school enrollment in Kenya due to the elimination of school fees; and the rapid decline of HIV/AIDS rates in Uganda as a result of well-designed prevention and treatment programs are but a few of these examples.   It is now up to those of us in countries blessed with great wealth to see that these programs and others like them have the funding to flourish and grow.

Governments will only move to action, however, when lawmakers feel pressure from their constituents.  People in the pews, thus, are the most critical building blocks in re-ordering our country’s energies, resources, and momentum in order to meet the MDGs.  All of us are invited by Advent to consider how we might contribute.  Can you join the Episcopal Public Policy Network and become a regular part of the Church’s witness to our nation’s policymakers?  Can you set aside a portion of your own financial resources – perhaps 0.7 percent – for Episcopal Relief and Development or another provider of international assistance? Can you help educate your friends, neighbors, and fellow parishioners about the MDGs?  Can you commit to praying each day for the world’s poor and needy?

This sort of re-commitment and re-ordering of life is what Advent is all about.   Mary’s Magnificat, her great song of response to God’s will, reveals how radically different a human society re-ordered according to God’s design will look from than the world in which we currently live.  God “has cast down the mighty from their thrones,” Mary sings, “and lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”

This Advent, let us take seriously God’s challenge to help build this sort of world.  We are challenged to say with Isaiah and Jesus, “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” and to respond willingly to God’s invitation to “bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”  The Millennium Development Goals provide our nation a way to do this.

Certainly, the MDGs will require sacrifice.   This should not deter us from the challenge, however, as it is through sacrifice – the giving up of our selves to God’s service – that we ultimately are led by the Holy Spirit to true liberation in God’s perfect and transforming peace.  The peace is all embracing, all transforming, all reconciling: it changes hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and makes us able to see as God sees – with unbounded compassion and love that burns within us for the whole creation.  In the midst of life-denying circumstances, this deep peace makes it possible for us to remain steadfast, reflecting and revealing God’s hopeful imagination for our world.

In this Advent season, may the Church and the world have the grace to move forward in this transforming peace.

12/2005