God's Word to the Mountains

To our sisters and brothers in the mountains, grace to you all and peace in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a long low cry of pain that moves through the mountains like the wind. And our God, the God of Exodus and Easter, hears that cry, and turns God's face toward the mountains, and speaks God's Word to the people, and it is a Word of justice and of hope.

APPALACHIA IS DESCRIBED by the Appalachian Regional Commission as 397 counties in 13 states reaching from northern Mississippi to southern New York. It is urban and it is rural, it is steel mills and coal mines and farms. It is rich and it is poor.

We release this pastoral letter at the Appalachian assembly in December 1992. The recent presidential campaign focused on the fractured and unjust state of the American economy and the discontent of the American people. What is true throughout our country is doubly true in Appalachia and has been so for generations.

Our region reveals all the characteristics of American economic life at its worst, and connects our people by chains of suffering to sisters and brothers in other exploited places like South America and Africa. So Appalachia has been properly defined as a part of the Third World within the United States.

Per capita income in Appalachia is below 70 percent of the U.S. average, a decline of 5.35 percent during the past 10 years. Twenty-five percent of the region's children live in poverty; unemployment is consistently higher than in the nation as a whole. All of this translates into two words--suffering and hopelessness.

We are particularly concerned about the children of Appalachia. Teen-age pregnancy is higher in the region than in the nation as a whole. Education is inferior. In West Virginia, the only state totally within Appalachia, more than 12,000 children were denied the opportunity for Head Start because of inadequate funding. In the same state, undereducated adults exceed 35 percent of the population and illiteracy is pervasive.

So, while the mountains carry mineral deposits in their breasts, and wear garlands of timber on their brow, the lament of the people moves through the valleys like the wind.

THE CHURCH IS CALLED to be the reflection of God's face, so that when the people see the church, they should know that God's face is turned toward them.

What are the theological foundations of our church's mission in Appalachia?

First, the stewardship of creation.

We humans are responsible for the land and its people. If the wealth is being carried away, if tax structures are so regressive that those who own the most land pay the lowest rate of taxation, if politics are so corrupt that government does not represent the people, if the hopelessness of the people causes them to litter the streams and the roads, then the church must remember and must remind that "the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein" (Psalm 24:1).

The second theological principle is incarnation.

The church in Appalachia must be present, active, and involved "on behalf of" and "against."

To be incarnate is to be involved in the struggle. It is to take sides on behalf of the victims. Jesus of Nazareth was "for" and "against" and so has the church been at its best. Martin Luther was not neutral; Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not neutral; Martin Luther King Jr. was not neutral. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is not neutral. We cannot be neutral in Appalachia.

The third theological principle is costly grace.

A church that stands with the victims will be a church that bears the cross. A church that bears no wounds in a suffering world must ask itself, Why?

Ministry in Appalachia will not only give a food basket and a cup of cold water but it will "wrestle against principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:12).

What does it mean "to take up the cross and follow Jesus"? It means to choose vulnerability. It means to stand at the side of the victim and ask, Why? It means to follow where that question leads, and to take the consequences.

The fourth theological principle is liberation and resurrection.

The church is more than an agent of political and economic reform. It is a community of hope that "lives toward a vision" of new life (Walter Brueggemann). It remembers and passes on the first word of Jesus, according to the earliest gospel: "The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news" (Mark 1:15).

Exodus and Easter are the great words and they are not words for other places and for other times. They are our words in the coal mines and on the farms, in the factories and in the schools of our beautiful agonized Appalachia.

SO WE COMMIT ourselves to lead our church in mission and ministry based upon these theological foundations.

As Leonard Sweet has said, "The church doesn't have a mission, the mission has a church," and we are all a part of that church and servants of that mission.

Dear sisters and brothers, we plead with you to serve the mission of the one who said, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18);

· to rejoice in the creation, springtime green and autumn gold, so beautiful in our mountains;
· to cherish the children, all the children who live up the hollows and on the farms and in the cities of Appalachia;
· to be a church that has as many colors as an Appalachian quilt;
· to sing in the morning and to dance in the evening and to believe all day long that "the kingdom of God is at hand";
· to be optimists in a pessimistic culture;
· to share God's good news with somebody every day;
· to be the church, the community of the covenant which enables discouraged people to see in your faces the reflection of God's smile;
· to be an Advent people who stand on tiptoe to see the coming of the new creation to our land, wherein:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in the land or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days
or an old person that does not live out a lifetime.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord--and their descendants as well.
Before they call, I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear!
They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain says the Lord.

- Isaiah 65:19-20, 21-24, 25

O God, make us the stewards and the servants of that dream.

And let it come true! Amen.