If you go to a mainline Protestant or Catholic church, you have probably noticed a pattern. You sit in the pew, you open the bulletin, and you see a list of Bible readings for that specific day. Whether you are in a Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Catholic church, you are likely hearing the same stories as millions of other people around the world at that exact same time.

This system is called the lectionary. It is a schedule that assigns specific Bible passages to be read on specific days. We are about to enter a new cycle called Year A starting this Advent.

I remember one specific Sunday when I was serving pulpit supply for Pastor Kristin Hutson. I looked at the schedule to see what reading was appointed for that day. It was a very difficult passage. It was one of those texts that makes you uncomfortable and is hard to explain to a congregation.

Honestly, I was tempted to change it. I could have easily chosen to read a different part of the Bible and preach on that instead. It would have been safer and much easier to write.

One thing my Jesuit education taught me was that we who are tasked with preaching should not skip the difficult parts of the Bible. Instead, we are supposed to break into them. We are supposed to wrestle with them until we can make them make sense.

I stuck with the assigned reading that Sunday. It was a challenge, but that is exactly what the lectionary is for. It challenges preachers to treat every part of the Bible as significant. It forces us to believe that every part has a reason and needs to be proclaimed, even the parts that are hard to swallow.

That experience highlights exactly why we use a lectionary. You can think of it like a balanced diet for a church. If a pastor chose their own readings every single week, they might accidentally stick to their favorite topics. They might preach often on love and comfort but skip the difficult passages about judgment or sacrifice.

The lectionary forces the church to read the Bible broadly. Over a three-year cycle, a church will read through the vast majority of the New Testament and the most significant parts of the Old Testament. It ensures that we hear the whole story of God and not just the parts we like best.

It also creates unity. On any given Sunday, a person sitting with me at Edgewater Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and someone sitting at Good Shepherd Catholic Cathedral in Singapore or Good Shepherd Methodist Church in Warsaw, Poland, are likely reflecting on the same stories of Jesus. This reminds us that we are part of one large and global family.

The lectionary is divided into three years simply named Year A, Year B, and Year C. Each year focuses on one of the three main writers of the Gospels. We are entering Year A, which is the year of Matthew. Starting in Advent, your pastor or priest will primarily preach from the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew wrote his version of the story largely for a Jewish audience, so he focuses heavily on how Jesus connects to the history of Israel.

There are a few specific themes you will likely hear this year. First, you will see Jesus presented as the new Moses. In the Old Testament, Moses went up a mountain to receive the Law. In Matthew, Jesus goes up a mountain to give the Sermon on the Mount. You will hear sermons about Jesus as a teacher who gives us a new way to live that fulfills the old laws. You can expect to be challenged to higher standards of anger, forgiveness, and love.

You will also hear about the Kingdom of Heaven. While other Gospel writers call it the Kingdom of God, Matthew usually calls it the Kingdom of Heaven. He speaks of it as a reality that is invading our present world. You will hear stories about what this kingdom is like. It is like a mustard seed, a hidden treasure, or a net thrown into the sea. Sermons will ask you to look for God’s rule in the ordinary and small things of life.

Another major theme is the promise that God is with us. Matthew frames his entire book with this idea. In the beginning, Jesus is called Emmanuel which means God with us. In the very last verse, Jesus tells his friends that He is with them always. Finally, you will hear about judgment and action. Matthew includes serious warnings about how we live, like the story of the sheep and the goats. Sermons in Year A often emphasize that faith is not just what you think or feel, but what you actually do.

The lectionary is a tool that keeps the church healthy. It keeps us balanced. As we enter Year A, we are invited to walk with Jesus through the eyes of Matthew. It will be a year of learning from the Great Teacher. It will be a year where we are challenged to act with compassion in the world. And as I learned that Sunday in the pulpit, it is a year to face the difficult parts of our faith head-on.

So, did you miss me after two weeks off the Kirkcast? I’m back just in time for the end of the liturgical year. This Sunday, I’ll be preaching about something else but I wanted to share on this Kirkcast a significant thing about Christ the King Sunday, as it is called on the church calendar.

The Feast of Christ the King, started by Pope Pius XI in 1925 as a Catholic holy day, is a surprising celebration. Although its name sounds powerful, it was actually a protest. It was created to push back against Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and the total control that governments were taking in Europe after World War I.

The feast, established in the Pope’s letter Quas Primas, was a smart way to say that Christ’s spiritual and universal rule was higher than any earthly ruler or ideology. This key anti-imperial message later strongly connected with mainline Protestant groups, including Presbyterians, which led them to add it to their own church calendars.

A papal challenge to rising totalitarianism

Understanding when Quas Primas was written is key. Pope Pius XI wrote it while Benito Mussolini’s Fascist government was growing strong in Italy, and secular, nationalist movements were taking hold across Europe.

These groups often used national religious identities, which is like an early form of Christian nationalism, to support their power. They demanded that people’s top loyalty should be to the state, the nation, or the race.

Pius XI saw this demand as a direct threat to the Church and to individual freedom. By creating a universal feast for Christ the King, he told the world’s faithful that their greatest loyalty belonged only to Jesus Christ.

The feast, therefore, acted as a powerful, peaceful statement: no nation, no dictator, and no racial belief was ultimately in charge; all were under the divine Kingship of the one who ruled through the Cross.

The Pope confirmed this stand against supremacy later in the 1930s when he openly condemned Nazism and planned a letter that criticized racism and anti-Semitism. This confirmed the feast’s role as a defense against all forms of state worship based on identity.

The Crown of Thorns: Christ’s kingship of justice and service

Theology further supports the feast’s protest. Pius XI purposely made Christ’s rule different from the rule of kings on Earth. He noted that Christ’s kingdom is one of “justice, love, and peace,” not one “sustained by arrogance, rivalries, and oppression.” Christ’s kingship, shown during his crucifixion, is defined by humility, service, and sacrifice, not by force.

For Christians, saying Christ is King means rejecting any group, like Christian nationalists or white supremacists, that tries to use faith to gain temporary or exclusive power. These ideologies seek power through worldly force and division.

This directly conflicts with the Kingship of the one who rules by sacrificial love and care for everyone. The feast asks the Church to show a public commitment to morality and social justice that goes against the forceful language of earthly empires.

The feast’s urgent relevance in today’s america

The original purpose of the Feast of Christ the King—to reject the idea that the state is the highest authority—is urgently relevant in places like Chicago and Charlotte today.

When government agencies like ICE and CBP conduct brutal raids against immigrant families, it shows a government that puts its own power and restrictive laws above human life and dignity. The fear and separation caused by these actions echo the totalitarian impulses that Pope Pius XI fought against in the 1920s and 30s.

The feast reminds Christians that their true King demands justice and protection for the vulnerable, including the immigrant and the non-citizen.

The spreading rhetoric that creates distrust of non-white Americans is a modern form of the nationalism the Pope opposed. It attempts to use race to divide people and define who truly belongs to a nation.

When government shows increasingly authoritarian tendencies, the feast stands as a yearly call to choose the kingdom of Christ, which is defined by universal welcome and sacrificial love, over the kingdoms of this world, which are often defined by borders, fear, and oppression.

Adoption by mainline protestant traditions

While at first a strictly Catholic event, the Feast of Christ the King became popular among mainline Protestants in the second half of the 1900s.

After the Church changed its services at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), it moved the feast to the last Sunday of the church year (right before Advent). It also changed the name to the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

This placement, which focuses on Christ as the beginning and end of history, helped bridge the gap with Protestant churches. Groups like the Presbyterian Church, the United Methodist Church, and others embraced this final Sunday. They often call it “Christ the King Sunday” or “Reign of Christ Sunday.”

Presbyterians, in particular, adopted the day not to follow the Pope, but because the theme of Christ’s reign aligns well with their focus on biblical justice, social improvement, and the church’s duty to speak out against systems of worldly power.

This shared focus on Christ’s radical, servant leadership made the feast a strong, shared statement against making the state an idol.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Photo: SpaceX via Wikimedia Commons.

I want to reflect today on a story I read recently, a story that, in a strange and heartbreaking way, speaks volumes about the limits of human aspiration and the enduring reality of God’s sovereignty over creation.

I confess, as a lifelong Trekkie, I have often imagined my own final journey, inspired by that famous, poetic burial of Mr. Spock in The Wrath of Khan. I dreamt of having my body reach for the cosmos, but after reading this story, I think I’ll settle for a more earthly resting place: a plot of dirt right here in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery.

The story I read is of a final journey, one chosen by 166 souls: scientists, dreamers, and fans of the cosmos, who wished to make deep space their eternal resting place. In June of 2025, their cremated remains were aboard a special memorial capsule, designed to orbit our blue marble before its eventual return. It was meant to be the ultimate triumph of technology over finitude: an eternal memorial among the stars.

The imagination behind this is immense, and perhaps, beautiful. We all feel the desire to transcend the dirt, the rain, and the limits of the grave. But this journey, powered by one of the most advanced launch systems in the world, did not reach its planned destination.

Shortly after a failed attempt, completing its controlled re-entry to save the mission, the capsule’s parachutes failed to deploy. Instead of a soft landing, it crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

What was meant to be a burial among the stars became, instead, a burial at sea.

The memorial service, meant for the stars, was sharing space with companion payloads that included scientific instruments and, on this very commercial space mission carrying the remains, even cannabis seeds and plant matter intended for an extraterrestrial growth experiment.

There is a profound, almost biblical irony in that descent. In our Reformed tradition, we talk about the doctrine of creation, and the truth of imago Dei, that we are made in God’s image. We also acknowledge the consequence of human pride, the deep-seated impulse to be as God, to erase our limits, to conquer mortality itself.

This impulse, this striving to use technology to defeat the simple, humbling reality of “dust you are and to dust you shall return” is the very definition of modern hubris.

We believe that if we build a machine fast enough, powerful enough, and tall enough, we can finally escape the constraints placed upon us by our Creator. But when the sacred ritual of burial becomes a line item on a commercial manifest, sharing space with the purely mundane or experimental, we reveal a spiritual emptiness.

But creation, in its elemental power, is relentless. The ocean, often a symbol of chaos and untamable might in Scripture, reached up and reclaimed what the machine had tried to defy. The cold water, the immense pressure, the anonymity of the deep, these were the humbling realities that replaced the infinite promise of the void.

The lesson for us, as people of faith, is not to judge the desires of those families, but to understand our own spiritual geography. We are, after all, dreamers who look up and imagine an ultimate transcendent farewell.

Yet, our hope does not and cannot rest on the success of a rocket launch. The ultimate memorial for those we love is not located in any physical place, be it deep space or a churchyard plot. It rests in the unbreakable promise of the Resurrection, a promise that operates outside the laws of physics and the whims of technology.

In a world obsessed with transcendence through engineering, where we attempt to launch our dearest hopes alongside commercial crops, the failure of that spacecraft is a powerful, sorrowful reminder: our final journey is not dictated by NASA or SpaceX, but by the love and grace of the One who holds the stars and the sea in the palm of His hand. When the rocket fails, our faith must hold. And in the mystery of God, it always does.

Someone from my church said it’s only Tuesday and it’s already been an extremely exhausting week. She asked for me to record a prayer.

So, let us pray.

Loving God, we come before You weary and heavy with the weight of the world. The headlines never stop. The alerts on our phones shake us awake before we are ready. The voices from places of power shout over each other, while those most vulnerable among us—our neighbors, our elders, our children—wait for news of help that never seems to come.

We pray for calm, Lord—calm in our spirits when the noise grows too loud, calm in our hearts when fear begins to rise, calm in our homes and neighborhoods where ICE and CBP bring terror instead of peace, where the uncertainty of paychecks, food, and shelter gnaws at the edges of our hope.

Grant us the courage to breathe deeply in Your presence. Let Your peace be a shield against despair. Help us to see one another through the eyes of compassion, to remember that we belong to each other, and that Your love holds us even in the storm. May Your still, small voice remind us that the chaos of this world is not the end of the story—that justice, mercy, and peace are still possible, and that You, O God, are still here: steady, faithful, and near to the brokenhearted.

Amen.

It’s that time of year again. The pledge cards are coming out, the spreadsheets are starting to grow, and pastors and stewardship teams all over the country are taking a deep breath before we start asking our people to give.

If you’re not familiar with Edgewater Presbyterian Church, go ahead and look it up on Wikipedia. You’ll see our 100-year-old building on Chicago’s North Side, a 52,000-square-foot community house that hums with life. Inside are art studios and black box theaters. There’s the Nepali Cultural Center, Humanity Relief for refugees and immigrants, and rooms filled with activity and hope. But that also means 52,000 square feet of lights to keep on, water to run, heat and air conditioning to pay for, locks to fix, and security to keep our people safe. And when something breaks, our saintly Dwight Elmore has to figure out if he can repair it himself before we have to call in the professionals.

Add to that the ministries we love—the worship services, the fellowship hall dinners, the community meetings, the choir rehearsals, the youth events, the basketball games in the old gym. Each one takes resources, planning, staff hours, and care. It’s not just running a church. It’s running a living, breathing part of the neighborhood.

And yet, this is the part of church life I hate the most. Asking for money. Talking about budgets. Watching the numbers not quite meet the dreams. They don’t teach this part in seminary. You study theology, Scripture, pastoral care. You learn to preach about love, grace, and hope. But no one pulls you aside and says, “Oh, by the way—you’ll also have to figure out how to make a buck if you want to keep the lights on.”

Still, here we are. Because as much as I hate this part, I also love what it makes possible. Every dollar pledged is a sermon in itself. It’s a statement of faith that says, “I believe in this place. I believe in what God is doing here.” The pledges keep our doors open to the artists, the immigrants, the students, the seekers. They keep the sanctuary warm on Sunday mornings and the gym bright on cold winter nights when people need somewhere to go.

So, if you’re out there listening and you’re dreading this season—if you’re a pastor or a finance elder or a stewardship chair and you’re feeling that same knot in your stomach—hear me: you’re not alone. You’re doing holy work. You’re helping make ministry possible. It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s not what we signed up for when we said yes to ministry. But it is one of the most faithful things we do.

Because stewardship isn’t just about money. It’s about trust. It’s about building a community that believes enough in the mission to carry it forward. It’s about saying, “This church matters.”

So take a breath. Step into the pulpit. Send that email. Make that ask. Because this, too, is gospel work. And even though they never teach it in seminary, it’s part of how we keep God’s light burning in the heart of our neighborhoods.

There’s a haunting scene from Renaissance Florence that still speaks to our own time. On May 23, 1498, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola stood on the gallows in the Piazza della Signoria. The Church that once praised him for his piety now condemned him as a heretic. The same city that once gathered to hear his sermons now gathered to watch him burn. As the flames rose, someone in the crowd shouted, “If you can work miracles, work one now!” and when the fire made his hand lift as if in blessing, the crowd panicked and scattered. It was as though conscience itself had momentarily reached out through the smoke to remind them what they had done.

Savonarola was no saint, and truthfully, I never cared for his brand of religion. His iconoclasm—his hatred of art, his denunciation of beauty, his censorship of the imagination—ran contrary to everything that makes faith human and culture alive. But beyond that, his fearless voice against corruption remains admirable. He stood before popes, princes, and merchants and told them that their greed was poisoning the soul of the city. He spoke against the rot he saw in both the Church and the state, and he paid with his life.

That story isn’t trapped in the fifteenth century. It repeats itself whenever power wraps itself in holiness and calls injustice divine. We are seeing it again now. When a government weaponizes fear—sending agents into our neighborhoods to raid homes, detain parents, and terrorize children—it claims to uphold the law but acts against love and mercy. And when Christian nationalists cheer it on, praying over the cruelty as if it were a holy cause, that isn’t faith. It is blasphemy. It is the spiritual corruption of a Church that has forgotten who it is supposed to serve.

Faith should be a check against tyranny, not its megaphone. The early followers of Jesus faced down empire by living compassion, not by aligning with it. They sheltered strangers, fed the hungry, and cared for prisoners. To follow that example today means to resist systems that strip dignity from immigrants, the poor, or anyone cast aside. It means confronting the state when it crushes the vulnerable, and confronting the Church when it blesses that cruelty in God’s name.

We can’t just oppose political corruption; we have to oppose spiritual corruption too. Because if the soul of a nation decays under the weight of fear and nationalism, no election or policy can save it. What will save it are people who remember that the fire of conscience still burns hotter than the bonfires of hate. People who, when told to stand aside, stand up instead.

And this weekend, we can do exactly that. On No Kings Day this Saturday, when people will gather downtown to declare that no man, no ruler, no president stands above the people or above God, we can be Savonarola in our own way. Not by condemning art or beauty, but by speaking truth to power; not by burning books, but by igniting conscience. We can stand shoulder to shoulder and say that tyranny has no place here. We can say that our faith does not serve kings—it serves the poor, the hungry, and the displaced.

Savonarola’s hand may have lifted in the flames by accident, but maybe it was also a sign—a reminder that even in the face of death, faith can still move, still bless, still point toward a better way. And that’s what we are called to do now: to keep faith alive in a world that would rather burn it down, to walk into the streets on No Kings Day and say, with courage and clarity, that love is still stronger than fear, and conscience still burns brighter than any throne.

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

The Cubs may be out of the postseason, but our hearts in Chicago have not lost their rhythm of gratitude. This past Sunday was Pastor Appreciation Day, and the honors continue throughout October with Clergy Appreciation Month. At Edgewater Presbyterian Church, our congregation surprised the Rev. Kristin Hutson with words of deep appreciation during the Prayers of the People. It was a small, heartfelt way to acknowledge what she brings to our spiritual lives.

But the truth is, what we see of our pastors and all who serve in church leadership is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind every Sunday sermon, every hospital visit, every comforting prayer, lies an entire world of work that most of us never witness. The role of a pastor extends far beyond the pulpit. It includes administrative duties, financial oversight, building maintenance, human resources, conflict management, and community relations. These are not the glamorous parts of ministry. They are the hard, gritty, sometimes downright nasty parts.

As a member of the Presbytery of Chicago’s Commission on Preparation for Ministry, I have read comments from candidates who dread this side of the calling. They speak of endless emails, budget meetings, and personnel disputes. They talk about the exhaustion of having to be both spiritual shepherd and business manager, counselor and custodian, preacher and problem solver. Many go into ministry to provide compassionate care, only to find that compassion alone will not keep the lights on or the roof from leaking. Yet without that administrative labor, the bulletins, the budgets, the phone calls, everything that supports that care would fall apart.

And then there is the emotional side. Pastors are not just caretakers; they are emotional vessels. Every joy, every heartbreak, every confession and cry for help that their parishioners pour out gets collected somewhere within them. They absorb the grief of the bereaved, the anger of the disappointed, the fears of the anxious. They hold these emotions with grace, but even grace has its limits when one person carries the collective weight of a community’s sorrow and hope week after week.

We expect our pastors to be endlessly patient, always wise, always available. Yet they are human, and the emotional toll of ministry can be immense. Burnout is common. Loneliness is real. The expectation to always be the calm in the storm often leaves no room for pastors to experience their own storms.

So during Clergy Appreciation Month, maybe our appreciation can go deeper than words. We can listen to our pastors without expecting them to fix everything. We can volunteer to take on some of the work that wears them down. We can remember that compassion is a two-way street. Our care for them is part of our faith too.

Because when our pastors stand at the pulpit or beside the hospital bed, they are doing so not just as ministers but as human beings who have chosen to bear the burdens of others. And that is no small thing.

The fact that I had to meet with a couple of the Edgewater Mutual Aid volunteers about my plan for an ICE raid during the most basic thing of giving out food to hungry people not only saddens me, it angers me to my core.

It was just three of us talking. Outside, the other volunteers were starting to gather on the church steps, stamping their feet against the fall chill, chatting softly and keeping a lookout as they did for those government agents, as they waited to come in and start separating the produce donations into little bags. Eggplant, bittermelon, lemongrass, tomatillos and tomatoes, among other things, the weekly work of feeding neighbors in need.

These are volunteers who’ve always been ready for direct action. They’ve trained, they’ve shown up for protests, they’ve helped organize marches and safety plans. But this morning felt different. The air carried something heavier than cold. It was anxiety, a low hum beneath every conversation, a shared look in every passing glance.

Because all day yesterday, ICE and CBP agents were in our usually quiet lakefront neighborhood, detaining people, or rather, abducting people, dragging them into unmarked SUVs driven by masked and unidentifiable villains of the State.

That’s what they are. Villains. The kind who make neighbors disappear and then claim it’s for law and order.

So here we were, trying to plan for something no one should ever have to plan for: what to do if those same black SUVs roll up while we’re just trying to give out food. What to do if compassion becomes confrontation.

We talked through the basics, who would be on the lookout, who would document, who would calm people down. It all sounded so methodical, so strangely clinical, as if we were planning a fire drill instead of bracing for the Trump Administration to descend on our doorstep.

And as we spoke, I could hear the muffled laughter of volunteers outside, laughter that felt fragile, like it could shatter with the sound of the next siren.

I looked toward the Sanctuary, just beyond the Fellowship Hall wall. Inside that space, Pastor Barbara Cathey baptized children, Allison Mann led us in our hymns, Pastor Kristin Hutson prayed for peace. And now, on the other side of the wall, we were preparing for raids.

This is what it has come to, the work of hospitality shadowed by the machinery of fear.

It’s hard to describe what that does to the soul of a city. But if you’ve ever stood in that tension, between generosity and danger, you know it’s not abstract. It’s real. It’s the Chicago front.

And yet, despite the fear, despite the exhaustion, I know these volunteers will keep showing up. They’ll keep bagging the produce, welcoming the hungry, praying with one eye on the door. Because love, real, embodied love, doesn’t retreat.

Chicagoans protest ICE raids on June 10, 2025. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Jesus was neither Republican nor Democrat. He is neither right nor left. And yet, we keep trying to claim him for one side or the other. We quote him to back our policies, to defend our moral certainties, to score points in arguments. But Jesus doesn’t fit inside our party lines. The Gospel never has and never will.

Matthew 25 stands on its own. It doesn’t say, “When I was hungry, you created a committee.” It doesn’t say, “When I was a stranger, you checked my papers.” It says, “When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was thirsty, you gave me drink. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me.” That’s not a partisan command. It’s a moral one.

Taking the side of the least of us is not to be Republican or Democrat. It is to be Christian. It is to follow Christ who chose the margins over the palaces, the fishermen over the politicians, the poor over the powerful. When our Presbyterian elders stood outside the Broadview ICE detention facility this morning and protested, that was not a political act—it was a spiritual one. When they celebrated the Eucharist in memory of the undocumented, in full view of ICE agents and National Guard soldiers, they were declaring that the body of Christ has no borders.

When Edgewater Mutual Aid and Care for Real distribute food to hundreds of people while watching the security cameras for ICE vehicles, that isn’t Republican or Democrat. It’s discipleship. It’s what it means to live out the Gospel when the Gospel costs something.

At Edgewater Presbyterian Church, we are not called to be neutral. We are called to be faithful. Neutrality keeps us comfortable. Faithfulness keeps us human. It keeps us standing where Jesus stands—in the places the world tries to avoid. In the shelters, at the food pantries, by the detention centers, beside the people the empire wants to disappear.

The Gospels defy the tribalism we keep insisting on framing our communities and our world. They do not ask us to fit into red or blue, but to bleed compassion for those who suffer. When the early Church gathered, they weren’t strategizing how to win influence at Rome’s Senate. They were feeding widows, freeing slaves, and breaking bread in secret, knowing it could cost them their lives.

The Church must remember that again. To follow Jesus is not to align with power, but to serve with humility. It is to resist cruelty, even when resistance is inconvenient. It is to love the neighbor and the stranger alike, even when the world calls that naïve.

So maybe the question isn’t which side Jesus would take. Maybe the real question is whether we are standing on his side—the side of the hungry, the detained, the displaced, the forgotten. Because when we take their side, we find Christ already there.

And that is not Republican. That is not Democrat.That is the Gospel.

Pope Leo XIV. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

I am just an armchair theologian, someone who has yet to learn the deeper intricacies of theological thought. But I write what I take to be clear from my lay position.

When I first read Pope Leo XIV’s new teaching Dilexi Te, I was skeptical. As a Presbyterian elder, I am not used to looking to Rome for direction. But this letter, officially called an apostolic exhortation, surprised me.

It speaks clearly about love for the poor and the marginalized, taking its title from Revelation where Jesus addresses those oppressed by Rome.

Pope Leo reminds the world that faith and love for the poor cannot be separated. He even cites Matthew 25, where Christ identifies himself with those who are hungry, thirsty, sick, and imprisoned.

Reading this as a Reformed Christian, I could not ignore how much of this message echoes our own call to live a faith that changes society, not just individual hearts.

Too often in the Protestant world, we have treated poverty and justice as optional issues—especially in safe, white-dominated suburban or rural congregations. We focus on spiritual life while telling ourselves that social problems belong to someone else—whether we realize it or not.

Dilexi Te refuses that comfort. It says clearly that to love God is to care for the poor, and to do that seriously means confronting the systems that keep people poor.

That means we cannot avoid politics.

It means the Church must sometimes raise its voice against unjust structures that crush the weak.

When Pope Leo says the Church cannot remain silent about civil matters, I hear a challenge to all of us who have hidden behind neutrality.

To address poverty is to speak about the economy, wages, housing, and immigration policy.

To address these things is to step into the political arena. And to do that as the Church is not a betrayal of faith. It is obedience to Christ’s command to love our neighbor.

In our Reformed tradition, we say that faith covers every part of life. John Calvin spoke about the duty of believers to bring righteousness into public life. But in practice, we have sometimes retreated into private religion.

Dilexi Te calls us back out.

It says that charity alone is not enough.

Giving food and clothes to the poor is good, but if the economic system remains built to exploit them, our faith remains shallow.

Real love means changing the conditions that make poverty normal.

The Pope speaks of “invisible market forces” that exclude the weak. We should be the first to name them, because Reformed theology has always insisted that sin is not only personal but also structural.

We confess that greed, racism, and exploitation are not just individual vices. They are systems. And if we remain silent, we are complicit in them.

In Chicago, this call feels immediate. We are surrounded by people who work two jobs and still cannot afford rent. Immigrants are hiding in fear as National Guard troops and ICE agents fill our streets. Families with children are sleeping in police stations.

Dilexi Te reminds me that these people are not statistics. They are Christ himself standing before us.

At Edgewater Presbyterian Church, we see that truth each time we open our doors to serve our neighbors.

We have learned that hospitality, accompaniment, and advocacy are all forms of worship. When we welcome the stranger, we welcome Jesus. When we help feed a family or offer them a place to rest, we are not doing charity. We are meeting Christ in the flesh.

But the message cannot stop at hospitality. It must move into action.

Our churches must join immigrant-led groups, legal clinics, and social service partners. We must speak to city and state leaders about housing, wages, and fairness in how resources are distributed. When we vote, when we write letters, when we testify at hearings, we are doing theological work.

This is the public witness of faith.

The Gospel is political not because it supports a party, but because it dares to challenge systems of cruelty. That challenge is uncomfortable, but it is holy work.

Every time we stand with the poor, we are standing where Christ stands. And when the Church withdraws from that work, it loses its salt and light.

I think often of Matthew 25, where Christ separates the sheep from the goats. He does not ask what we believed. He asks what we did for the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner. In this time of rising inequality and xenophobia, that question is haunting the Church again.

If Dilexi Te teaches anything, it is that the love of God must look like justice on the streets.

For us in the Reformed family, that means picking up our cross and walking into the city, not away from it.

It means letting our worship spill out of our sanctuaries and into public life.

It means treating civic engagement, protest, and advocacy not as distractions from faith, but as its true expression.

So I read this papal letter not as a Catholic command, but as a Christian challenge.

It tells us that to claim Christ is to take sides—with the poor, the hungry, and the outcast.

It tells us that we can no longer pretend that faith is private or safe.

As a Presbyterian in Chicago, I take that to heart. The words of Dilexi Te call us to stand up, to speak out, and to act.

The Church belongs in the struggle for justice because that is where Christ still walks among us.