Broken and Shared

I’m writing to respond to some of my friends who are legitimately asking: How can anyone talk about God when the world is so f’d up right now? Let us have our feelings!!!

Well, I think everyone should go ahead and have their feelings today and every day. That is part of how I came to faith: realizing that God cares so much he came to meet me in a real person with real feelings. I don’t have to stuff or ignore mine anymore.

So when I woke up to the presidential news this morning, I wept. Even though I don’t put my hope in the government, the slap of the misogynist, elitist whitelash was painful. My 13-year old son asked, This guy molested women and bragged about it and now he is our president, Mom?  Yes. This guy has also labeled and demonstrated hate toward people based on the color of their skin, their sexual desire, their paperwork and their socioeconomic status. My daughter curled up in a fetal position on my bed and asked in all seriousness if we could move to Canada. Apparently they’re not too young to sense the real leadership chasm here.

What keeps going through my mind are the words of Jesus that we repeated last night as we broke bread: this is my body broken for you. Broken. I do not follow a God who has not experienced the pain and injustice of the world. I follow a God who is experiencing it right now with me and billions of others. I am going to die and rise with him today and tomorrow and the next day. My pain is known and touched. How can I not know and touch others, and see what we can build together to transform this mess? That’s what Jesus is doing, as far as I can see.

The government of the United States, or any government for that matter, has never been a transformative system. I hoped and fought for that in graduate school when I was just angry about all the injustice in the world. I still get angry now, but I have received the grace and mercy of God, and I need to keep receiving it. The brokenness of Jesus guides me to use and release my anger now through love and service.

We will really have to take care of each other now. Not just in a polite way, but in an open your heart and your home and your wallet kind of way. That has always been the purpose of Jesus and the church — love one another as I have loved you.  But now perhaps with the illusion of the US-government-care falling down we will see our importance in the process a little more clearly.  A few hours before my friend Karen died last year, she whispered to me that we should “Strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. Make every effort to live in peace with everyone…” I knew that she was quoting the writer of Hebrews, who was talking about taking courage and having spiritual discipline in difficult times. As a black woman who gave up a lucrative career in private law to be a public defender for the city, she knew what she was talking about.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.  Hebrews 12

It would be easy to grow weary and lose heart right now. But we are called to take heart. We might do that by considering him who is with us in all disappointment and fear, bearing it with us with great love. If you can’t muster up any faith today, maybe you can let yourself be carried by the faith of others who love you. That’s part of the process of transformation.