So, I have been reading Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coats. It is written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being a black man in the United States.
In it he tells the story of his youth in Baltimore, detailing the ways in which institutions like the school, the police, and even the streets discipline, endanger, and threaten to disembody black men and women. Coates sees white supremacy as an indestructible force, one that Black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against.
It's a powerful book. And really, really hard for me to read. He's not talking to me. He's not trying to convince me of anything. He's explaining life to his son. Not complaining, really. Just explaining how life is going to be for him. And, as he says, it's not going to be all that good.
Life will be what his son makes of it. But what it won't be is white, with all the privilege that entails. And his life will be punished in a way because of that.
Like I said, it's hard to read. Because it's true. And the fact that it's not written to me makes it so startling. I'm just eavesdropping in a way. The starkness in the language, the harshness in the lessons Coats teaches, and the clear, unadulterated love he shows his son are made that much more jarring because he is trying to make sure that his son knows exactly what life will be like...no illusions.
In some ways this is how I feel listening to Gospel passages. Jesus is talking to he own people. Not to us. I mean, what he says applies to us, and, as Christians we take his words to heart. But he is talking to them, and we are just eavesdroppers. And he's telling the people he has come to love that following him is not going to be easy. Following him, instead, will be incredibly difficult...maybe even deadly. Taking up a cross does not mean taking on an extra burden. They can look around him and see executed Jews on crosses on just about any horizon.
So, he's telling hard truths to the people he loves because he loves them. And he needs them to understand that following him isn't going to make them rich, or lucky, or lottery winners, or powerful. And if they are planning on that, then they are following a different God.
So many of our fellow Christians seem to have lost the plot nowadays. They don't realize that those Jesus loved were the rogues, the riff-raff, the minorities in their own land. They were the people who had everything going against them. The police hounded them. Their political and religious leaders used them for their own ends.
We seem to look at them from 2,000+ years on and think about those poor, poor people. And when we do, we are heavy with our accent on THOSE. And we are lucky in that way. In some ways, we HAVE won life's lottery. And that can affect how we see ourselves in relationship to others...and with God.
Because it seems that many Christians suffer from a bad case of Disney Princess theology. When so many Christians read the scriptures, they see themselves as the princess in every story. They are Esther, never Haman. They are Peter, but never Judas. They are the woman anointing Jesus, never the Pharisees. They are the Jews escaping slavery, never the Egyptians.
For people of the most powerful country in the world, who enslaved Black people and relegated Native Americans to a few spots of land, to see themselves as Israel and not Egypt is shameful. And it means that as people in power, we often have no lens for locating ourselves rightly in Scripture — and it has made us blind and utterly ill-equipped to engage issues of power and injustice.
But Jesus is calling on those he loves to open their eyes...and us, too. If we are seeing our lives as being on the top of the heap, then we need to look at our lives and ask ourselves how we got there. And he is calling on us to consider this:
Perhaps when he talks to us about son against father and daughter against son, we are the father and we are the mother. So many of us are those living in the old ways, refusing to change.
And that refusal brings us to a junction in the life of the church. We have sent a canary down into the mine, and when it dies, we say, “Well, maybe that bird wasn't a good fit for that mine.” So we send another down, putting a tiny mask on it, and get confused when it dies as well.
It's hard to leave the old ways of doing things the same way. Traditions are traditions because they work. We dig for treasure in the same mine because we found treasure there before. But eventually, the traditions lose meaning and become quaint. Eventually we have to admit that our rich mine is toxic. And it's no longer enough to insist that the canary develops an immunity to the fumes.
And maybe it's time to understand what Jesus is telling us here. Turn away from being the parent guarding the old ways. And find our place in the arms of Christ, children reborn. Sons and daughters looking for new ways. Recognizing the dangers we are embracing. But embracing them nonetheless. Because we are now children. Children of the living God.
And children of the living God are all around us. Hurting, afraid. And so very weary of having to justify themselves, their very existence. Time after time after time.
So, what do we do?
Usually at this point in the sermon, I sum it up with an answer. Something to cause you to go, “Hmmmm.” But right now, I don't have a good answer. I don't have a clear path forward. Because I'm just starting to see that I need to take a new path.
And it's going to be scary, and it might be dangerous, and you might see my silhouette hanging on a cross somewhere on the horizon. But I think it's time to take those first steps. You can come with me, if you'd like. I know I'd like the company.
Amen.