This afternoon, I had a new experience.
Like most Sundays, I went to church. Proclaimed the Gospel. Set the Table.
Because it was the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, we baptized a new Christian. As has happened every other time I’ve stood over the font with the priest and the brand new Christian, dutifully holding the priest’s bulletin or Book of Common Prayer, I got splashed. There’s something really beautiful about that. Something that thrills my soul. The privilege of being right there, in the tenderness and messiness and beauty of that moment alongside the priest (or occasionally the bishop) always feels like the most unearned blessing. It’s pure joy and grace. I’m there helping in my way, but in some sense, what I’m mostly doing is bearing witness. In the minutes that follow, I can’t stop smiling, delighted to know one more beloved child of God has been marked as God’s own forever, delighted to know that from that moment on, the Body of Christ has one more member. One more voice in the great cloud of witnesses.
None of that was new, but it shaped what came.
As soon as I spoke the dismissal, I left straight away. Took off my vestments. Put on my heavy winter jacket and warmest hat. Got in the car. Drove to city hall. Grabbed a sign from my back seat, and joined 60 or so grandmas, veterans, soccer moms, and goth kids standing at the intersection with our signs. Just a small town protest in a county where, if you considered the last decade or so of voting data, we were probably standing against the wind.
Of course, we were also standing against the actual wind, so what’s new?
Every now and again, we’d get a thumbs down from a passing driver.
Some folks flipped us off (some furtively so their fellow passengers wouldn’t see).
Only a few times, somebody rolled down a window to hurl expletives at us.
That wasn’t the new part of the experience for me. I’ve gone to enough protests where my fellow citizens who disagreed with me have utilized their free speech rights right back at me and the rest of their neighbors.
What was new for me this time was this:
I could still taste the Eucharist in my mouth.
In that moment, I felt the totally normal rising anger that comes from being insulted, but I felt something else… something that has been growing in me more and more in the last year: deep, abiding sadness.
We were there, on that corner, protesting ICE’s brutality. In a week that was already shaping up to be a real doozy, the cruel murder of Renee Nicole Good brought this lawless wickedness to the fore… but for anybody who has been paying attention, there are countless examples. I had just printed off a list earlier in the week—a full 8.5×11 sheet, of names of people who have died in the last year in ICE detention, so I could pray for the repose of their souls and for their loved ones to experience the comfort and protection of a God more faithful than powers or principalities. And then the news out of Minneapolis on Wednesday. And then the lies and spin on Thursday. And then on Friday: the murderer’s eye view video of the whole affair, complete with raw, hateful misogyny spewed as her car careened into a light pole when her nervous system does what nervous systems do when you shoot somebody in the head three times. We had borne witness to something that stirred our souls and we did what every person in America has the right to do: we freely assembled to voice our opposition.
I’ve been feeling a lot of feelings this week: shock, anger, frustration, fear… but the most pervasive, most unyielding, has been sadness.
I’m sad to know how many lives have been lost.
I’m sad to know how many of those lives have gone unnoticed except by those most immediately impacted.
I’m sad my child is growing up in times such as these.
I’m sad seeing families torn apart— some literally, some figuratively.
I’m sad watching so many of our institutions waver.
More than anything, I’m sad that so many beloved children of God have had their hearts so hardened, their morality so twisted by the machinations of evil, that they cannot or will not see what is plainly evident: that our tax dollars are being used, not to make us safe, administer justice, or to benefit the common good, but to terrorize our communities, murder our own citizens and sojourners in our land, and mock the poor, the widowed, the oppressed, and the marginalized.
I’m sad at the very real moral injury to the soul that hating anyone causes. I’m sad about the kinds of life experiences and poor counsel that leads to living with that much rage and scorn. I’m sad that so many people would spend their one, precious life on this side of eternity reveling in cruelty and dishonor. How small must their lives feel that this is what makes them feel good and worthy? What a terrible thing to bear.
With the sweet taste of the body and blood of Christ still fresh on my lips, I heard the insults and jeers hurled from a moving vehicle at neighbors crying out for justice for a life lost too soon and I was overwhelmed by that sadness. I handed my sign to another, I folded my hands, there at that intersection, and I did the only thing I could think to do:
I prayed to God:
Soften hearts.
Change minds.
Stir their souls.
Please, God, let them not waste their lives on this wickedness.
And then I took back up my sign.
I don’t mind the sadness. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t hurt. Sadness can be borne alongside hope. It can be borne alongside joy. Its cousin regret is a heavier burden, but even regret is an easier lift for a soul than wrath and bitterness. I thank God that what is resting on my heart is sadness.
“Ah, you who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes,
and shrewd in your own sight!
Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine
and valiant in mixing drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of their rights!
Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
and as dry grass sinks down in the flame,
so their root will become rotten,
and their blossom go up like dust;
for they have rejected the instruction of the LORD of hosts,
and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
-Isaiah 5:20-24
Lord, have mercy.