Unsettling Advent 2025, Day 12
“Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3-4)
In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), our anti-poverty ministries all begin with a theological foundation we call “accompaniment.” In brief, accompaniment theology demands Christians walk alongside their neighbors, hearing and telling one another’s stories, so that any justice ministry that emerges is indistinguishable from the life of the community they share. Our desire to end hunger at its roots begins and ends with thriving communities. Where people feel true belonging and hold one another mutually accountable, hunger cannot exist.
And yet, Americans increasingly feel isolated from one another. With fewer neighbors to share stories in common, a 2025 American Psychological Association study found that people who experience regular loneliness struggle with their physical and mental well-being much more than those with low loneliness levels. In the midst of this growing isolation, a near-unanimous solution emerged: 92% of adults surveyed see “relationships” as the way out of our social malaise. That is, we all get it: We need connection, we need one another.
When commonality disappears, we tell abstracted stories of those we do not know and often fear, relegating entire communities of real people to spaces of, in Lisa Marie Cacho’s words, “social death.” Our distance from other communities has allowed common social narratives to spread in which nonwhite people and immigrants are flattened into caricatures. These stories morph entire demographics into “the criminal, the illegal alien, and the terrorist” even before they are permitted to live a full life. Unjust housing costs, incarceration, gentrification’s uneven development at the expense of queer and BIPOC communities, and detention without trial are all causes of poverty, but they share a common root: It’s okay to hurt “them” for our safety or comfort, because they never deserved life to begin with.
In this gruesome reality, the good news of Advent is this: Christ entered the violence of human life, the very violence that says some folks are more valuable than others, and allows entire communities to be characterized as criminals. Jesus took on these abstractions, Paul writes, to their inevitable end: death at the hands of the law.
And the unsettling news of Advent is this: Christians are baptized into that same violent life so that they might live with Jesus, who walks into the killing abstractions of racism, xenophobia, gentrification — any force that tells ourselves and our neighbors that we do not belong to one another.
I see this good news lived out in one of our ELCA communities: Tapestry, a multilingual, multicultural, English and Spanish-speaking congregation in a Minneapolis suburb. Growing as an accompaniment-focused congregation has meant encountering the 20% Latin@ population where they are at. Tapestry offers tutoring, English and Spanish classes, and partners with foodbanks, yes, but they first center everything they do around spaces for deep listening, with culturally-relevant meals, celebrations of tradition, and joy. When the world screams “death,” Tapestry responds with homemade food, stories, and community — they respond with life. While the federal government declares immigrants criminals, Tapestry is doing the hard, life-giving work of sharing stories together.
No doubt, the Christian demand to “live with” Christ in a world that increasingly makes it easier to stay “buried with him” is a challenge. But we are baptized into a refrain — a prayer, perhaps — to carry with us through this Advent season: I belong, you belong, we belong.
Peter McLellan is the Program Director for Hunger Education with the ELCA. He holds a Ph.D. in Bible & Cultures from Drew Theological School. He lives in Minnesota with his family, and enjoys cooking, running, miniature painting, and cheering on his (13-time world champion) Green Bay Packers.