Wow. How are you doing this morning? So much has happened in just a week. Last Sunday to today has been REALLY, REALLY TOUGH. Just when we think we can understand what is going on in the world around us… or at least begin to wrap our heads around what is going on… events happen which challenge us even more deeply. There is daily trauma. This is hard.
In ONE WEEK we have gone from the horrific shooting and death of 11-year old Anisa Scott in Madison and a march and funeral in her memory over a week ago, to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha THE VERY NEXT DAY. Two days later, a young white supremacist killed 2 people and wounded a third in that same city. All of this, in the midst of a pandemic, fires raging in western states, Hurricane Laura racing across Louisiana, and a contentious presidential election.
Wow. Just. Wow. This is 2020.
In one week, our Bible readings have also made a mind-boggling shift. Last Sunday, Peter was Jesus’ rock. Jesus says, “You’re good Peter. You are blessed. You will help spread the Good News” (paraphrase of Matt. 16:17-18). Way to go Peter! Yeah! Peter—the model of rock-solid faith. Peter—the person who gets what this Jesus stuff is all about. Today that very same Peter is a stumbling block standing in God’s way. Jesus even calls him Satan. THAT is a plot shift.
Beloved, as life quakes around us take a moment to breathe. Pause to open yourself to the presence of the Holy. God. Is. HERE. Make space to hold all the uncertainty, the fear, and the anxiety gently in your heart. For this is our reality. And like it or not, Jesus shows up to tell us what lies ahead. It is not an easy journey. The revelation lies in the images of the cross, a lynching tree, a gunshot (or 7 gunshots…) and a dystopian book.
During my recent staycation, or COVID-cation, I began to read The Broken Earth trilogy. Are you familiar with it? These books by N. K. Jeminsin describe in rich detail Earth and its people in another time, another place. The prologue to the first book draws the reader in with these unsettling words:
“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say ‘the world has ended,’ it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.
But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
For the last time.”[1]
I read those lines and kept reading—enthralled by the story. But you know what it is like to be caught up in a good book, right? Whenever I stopped reading to do something else in the real world (if you consider FaceBook, Twitter, and television news the real world…) I was, in part, still living in the alternate reality of the Broken Earth trilogy. A time of turmoil in which one of the characters, Hoa, openly talks about the fall of an unjust society saying, “Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.”
Some worlds are built on a fault line of pain.
Hmmmm… A real-life question for you: Is it a good idea to read a dystopian novel when we are living in a dystopian reality? The nightmares, the lament, the rage?
Keep that question in mind as we shift to this week’s Bible verses. The story comes to us from a very different place, in a very different time, but can you imagine Jesus’s words paraphrased in this way: “This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born…”[2] Old ways pass. New ways are born. I will die. I will rise again.
His mind blown, Peter can’t handle this thought. He grabs Jesus, pulls him aside and says, “No way! No way Jesus! These things, your death, the dangers ahead, we can’t let that happen! Let’s continue on with the way things are.”
Let’s continue on.
Because now, things really get tough. Jesus describes to us what lies ahead. He explains what needs to happen—we need to pick up our own crosses. His comments are not all that easy to understand. Yet what Jesus has to say is more real than any fantasy book. This is Jesus urging us into a pick-up-your-cross moment. For change, any real change, in the world lies along the way to the cross, a lynching tree, and a gunshot.
This is hard, so let’s take a moment to pause. Breathe. Take a moment to settle yourself into this space. And then take another deep breath.
For our current tragedies are laced with memories. Friday was the 65th anniversary of the killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till. A young boy from Chicago, black, who was brutally killed in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. In his book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, black theologian James Cone juxtaposes the image of Jesus’ death on a cross at the hands of the Roman empire with the racial terror that lynching brought to the United States. Cone notes, “The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus’ death on a cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people… have explored the symbolic connections. Yet, I believe this is a challenge we must face. What is at stake is the credibility and promise of the Christian gospel and the hope that we may heal the wounds of racial violence that continue to divide our churches and our society.”[3]
“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all…”
Nothing has really changed as the cross and lynching trees have become, in our own time, gunshot wounds and knees placed on the necks of people who are Black. We hear their names over and over in the news: Michael Brown, Tony Robinson, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake. While I do not condone property damage, what is even more important are the precious lives which have been lost. The wounding of another Black life at the hands of police officers adds layer upon layer of mistrust and fear on top of centuries of white supremacy. In the second book of her Broken Earth trilogy, Jeminsin notes, “Reconciliation is a part of the healing process, but how can there be healing when the wounds are still being inflicted?”[4]
How can there be healing when the wounds are still being inflicted?
The current protests around systemic racism are highlighting the stumbling blocks in our communities. Stumbling blocks which prevent God’s inbreaking of justice. Joy J. Moore, a womanist theologian asks, “What do we need to change—to dismantle—so that people can glimpse the kin-dom of heaven today?”[5] What do we need to dismantle? What new understanding of the social structures around is us Jesus calling us to in these difficult days?
This brings us to one more quote from Jemisin’s trilogy which deserves our attention. It is that, “When the world is hard, love must be harder still.”[6]
When the world is hard, love must be harder still.
Beloved, the world is hard. It has been particularly hard for people who are Black, indigenous and people of color for a long, long time. But know this… God’s love is harder still.
So pause. Breathe. Make space in your heart to hold the uncertainty, the fear, and the anxiety gently. This hard world is our reality. And love—our love—God’s love—must be harder still.
Love hard, beloved. And remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.
~Pastor Kris
Reflection on Matthew 16:21-28 offered August 30, 2020
[1] N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy: The Fifth Season (New York: Orbit, 2018), 14.
[2] N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy: The Stone Sky (New York: Orbit, 2018).
[3] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019), xiii-xiv.
[4] N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy: The Stone Sky (New York: Orbit, 2018).
[5] “Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Aug. 30, 2020) – Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave Podcast #740,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, August 8, 2020), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1O-h6w8YrM&feature=youtu.b.
[6] N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy: The Stone Sky (New York: Orbit, 2018).