“Speak up for the voiceless. …. Defend the rights of the poor.”
Those words from Proverbs 31:8-9 are among the many in Scripture that call the people of God to a life of empathy and advocacy— a wide stream of Scripture that begins all the way back in the Torah.
Take, for example, that familiar old admonition in Exodus 23:9, “You shall not oppress the immigrant,” followed soon after by Leviticus 19:9, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the edges of your field. … You shall leave the edges for the poor and the immigrant.” And then Leviticus 19:34, “The immigrant who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the immigrant as yourself,” and Deuteronomy 15:11, “Since the poor will always be with you, I therefore command you to open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”
Chuck Poole
Empathy voices and advocacy verses continue in Isaiah 1:17, “Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” And Isaiah 58:6-7, “Is not this the worship that I choose, to loose the bonds of injustice and to let the oppressed go free … to share your bread with the hungry and to bring the homeless into your house?”
And what of Amos 5:24, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” and Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Then, of course, comes the Second Testament, where Jesus in his first public sermon is reported to have said the reason he has come into the world is to be the one Isaiah promised, who would “bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives … and let the oppressed go free (Luke 4:16-21).
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there will my servant be also.”
Later in Luke, Jesus embodies that calling, over and over and over again, sitting down with and standing up for whoever is most marginalized, ostracized, voiceless, vulnerable, hurting and alone.
Which is why we try to do the same. We are called to follow Jesus. Indeed, in John 12:26, Jesus is reported to have said, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there will my servant be also.”
Jesus spent his life sitting down with and standing up for whoever was most on the margins, and if we are following Jesus, where Jesus was is where we will be.
Which is why the closer we grow to Jesus, the more deeply we live a life of empathy and advocacy. Empathy is solidarity with whoever is most in need of help and hope, and advocacy is empathy in work clothes.
Advocacy is what empathy looks like when she is standing on the steps, marching in the street and holding up a sign alongside whoever is most in need of help and hope, comfort and relief, love and a welcome.
Here it seems important to say that no matter how meticulously careful we are never to name a political party or person, our efforts at advocacy will sometimes seem and sound “too political” to some. But when we are talking about empathy with and advocacy for immigrants, people struggling in the health care coverage gap or those who have suffered racial injustice, we are talking about matters far deeper and higher than partisan politics.
Last week, for example, I returned to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, this time to register my opposition to the current widespread practice of detaining immigrants when they appear for their scheduled periodic check-in appointments.
The moral hurt and harm of that practice is not up for debate or dialogue. It is wrong, and it needs to stop.
For nonimmigrants like myself to show up at the ICE office and say so is a small act of advocacy which, like many moments of advocacy, is an act of both solidarity and resistance, solidarity with our immigrant neighbors and resistance against a government campaign of fear.
“To stand up for people pushed to the margins by standing up against the powers that put them there is a morally clear right and true thing, not a politically partisan red or blue thing.”
No matter how “political” such an act of advocacy might sound, to stand up for people pushed to the margins by standing up against the powers that put them there is a morally clear right and true thing, not a politically partisan red or blue thing. When you sit down with and stand up for people who are being discriminated against, excluded and erased, when you fight for health care access for all people, when you stand for the right of all to be who they are, believe what they believe and love who they love, you aren’t being political, you’re being moral. Taking your empathy to the capitol steps and the sidewalk, the empathy that fills your heart becomes the advocacy that fills the streets.
I have a friend who was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. Her mother had told her not to go, that it was going to be too dangerous. But my friend, at the time a teenager, went anyway, against her mother’s warning and without her mother knowing.
Sixty years later, she recalls seeing police officers on horseback at the end of the bridge and thinking, at first, they were there to keep the marchers safe — a beautiful thought that soon turned to a brutal reality as the deputies stormed the bridge, knocking many, my friend included, to the concrete.
Some kind strangers rescued my friend and carried her to her home. Her mother, who had told her not to go for fear something like this might happen, owned two pair of shoes — a nice pair she called her Sunday shoes, and another pair she wore to work, which she called her walking shoes. Upon seeing the pain that had been inflicted on her daughter, she said, with quiet resolve, “Somebody get me my walking shoes.”
And with that, she joined the movement and never stopped walking and working for change.
Advocacy is empathy wearing walking shoes.
Chuck Poole retired in 2022 after 45 years of pastoral life, during which he served churches in Georgia; North Carolina; Washington, D.C.; and Jackson, Miss. He has served as a visiting preacher and teacher on the campuses of multiple universities, seminaries and divinity schools. He was the founding teacher of the Wood Street Bible Class in Jackson, which he led for 21 years. The author of nine books, numerous published articles, one gospel song and the lyrics to three hymns, Chuck has served as a “minister on the street” and as an advocate for interfaith conversation and welcome. He and his wife, Marcia, now live in Birmingham, where he serves on the staff of Together for Hope.