John the Baptist is one of the heroes of the Christian faith. More of the churches that bear the name Saint John do so in honor of John the Baptist than John the Evangelist. Perhaps it is because he is so closely linked with the birth of Jesus as Mary and Elizabethshare their pregnancies. John is the one who baptizes Jesus and it is after the death of John that Jesus begins to enter into his public ministry in earnest. Yet, few people wear WWJBD (What would John the Baptist do?) bracelets. We aren't too sure that we would want to be quite so odd as John with his strange diet and his strange clothing. Going out into the wilderness to preach does not excite too many clergy who would rather find themselves in a growing, prosperous congregation, but we really don't want to follow the example of John the Baptist when it comes to the way in which he died.

Fortunately for those of us who are not looking forward to being beheaded, it is not a common practice in this country. Almost any form of religious expression, no matter how bizarre, is tolerated in the United States. You can be about as weird as you care to be and folks may think you are looney but they won't bother trying to divert you from your craziness. But then John the Baptist wasn't beheaded for his diet or his choice of clothing. He was beheaded because he took on the ranks of power. He dared to speak out against the king and although Herod tolerated his rants, the royal household did not. It was deadly for John the Baptist to take on the powers that be and although it might not lead to beheading it is still dangerous today and in this country.

The first danger we face when we begin to speak out on public issues from the vantage point of our faith is the voice of those who will tell us that we should keep our religion private and out of politics. But Christianity is as much about how we live together as people as it is about our relationship with God. And the political arena is where most of the issues are settled which concern how people are going to live together. The first sin was disobedience to God and the second was murder. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with God and the next six are concerned with community life. Jesus summed up the law and the prophets by telling us to love God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves.

We can't get away from dealing with social issues if we are true to our religious heritage and to our Lord. We can't deal adequately with the social issues of the day unless we apply the biblical standard of justice. All of this has to take place within the political system if we are going to be effective at all. We take as our Lord the one who marched into Jerusalem and turned the tables of power and commerce over in the temple marketplace. We are disciples of the one who not only forgave sins but fed the hungry. We follow the one who turned upside down the social structures by eating with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. In the early church, the office of deacon was begun when the ministry of taking care of the physical needs of the widows and orphans began to be a heavy burden on the pastors. If we are Christian, our faith must take political action, even if it means offending some people.

We also will have to face the fact that we are going to offend a lot of people by the stands we take on issues. Although Christianity has no allegiance to any political party, it definitely has a huge interest in seeking justice for those who are without the means to look out for themselves. When people are denied the right to vote, the church has a bias in favor of the disenfranchised. When the grocery stores in the poorest part of town receive the out-of-date food from the stores in the suburbs, then the church has a bias in favor of the poor. When class size is larger in schools with high proportions of ethnic minority children than it is where white children are the majority, then the church has a bias for the minority students.

This kind of bias will not sit well with some people and we may not be very popular with them. It may cost us social standing, political office, or even a promotion at work, but we stand in the line of John the Baptist and the other prophets who faced the evils within the system and called for them to change. As Christians we must always align ourselves on the side of those who are being denied justice. As human beings who have grown up in different homes with different experiences and with differing perspectives, we will not always agree on the means by which injustice must be changed. We will not even always agree whether or not it is a case of injustice. We must love and respect one another in our differences. What we cannot tolerate is allowing ourselves to be drawn into supporting systems that foster injustice.

Most of us will never have to face the executioner's axe because of standing up to the powers that allow and even promote injustice in our world. The worse that we will probably suffer for taking our stand for justice, and for those who are misused, is to be ridiculed by folks. We probably won't be called upon to address the president of the United States face-to-face in the oval office and to denounce the actions that have been taken. Most of our work will be done in the secrecy of the voting booth. But if we do not take the side of justice and the oppressed, we will have the much more uncomfortable time of facing our Lord and explaining why we did not feed the hungry or care for the sick (even if health care is expensive) or visit those in prison. When we stand before God with the folks who have been slaughtered in ethnic cleansings and we are asked why cheap imported crude oil was more important than these lives, that will be far worse than risking being unpopular. When we are asked by our Lord about the children who have gone hungry in our own country while our government paid farmers not to raise food crops will we be able to say we spoke and voted for programs that would have fed them?

It is not easy to be a prophet, especially when we are called to face the powers that be and stand with the poor and the oppressed. If we remember that Jesus numbered himself among them, it will help us understand our duty as Christians a little more clearly. In the end, nothing will compare with being able to face our Lord at the judgment and find ourselves being counted among the sheep instead of the goats.