I Remember, I Believe

As I was emptying my dishwasher late last night I had the sudden thought that I don’t know if I can be a priest to the beloved congregation to which I was called only ten months ago. We are a congregation riven by anxiety: the financial base that has sustained this parish for years is gone; we are aging and live in the memory of our past glory; we have buildings that cost too much to maintain and sit empty too often; and now, this congregation primarily (but not exclusively) made up of white, Pacific Northwest liberals is face to face with a president that strikes fear into many of their hearts.

The Featured image is from the Nov 6 entry in A History of Racial Injustice Daily Calendar from Equal Justice Initiative.

My personal anxiety in the face of what is before us landed me in a pile of tears on my kitchen floor.

Walking to church this morning, I did what I did when I was in seminary almost thirty years ago: I played Sweet Honey in the Rock’s album Sacred Ground, and Bernice Johnson Reagon’s (1942-2024, may she rest in peace and rise singing once again!) words once again grounded my soul:

I don’t know how my mother walked her trouble down

I don’t know how my father stood his ground

I don’t know how my people survived slavery

I do remember, that’s why I believe

I don’t know why the rivers overflow their banks

I don’t know why the snow falls and covers the ground

I don’t know why the hurricane sweeps through the land every now and then

Standing in a rainstorm, I believe

I don’t know why the angels woke me up this morning soon

I don’t know why the blood still runs thru my veins

I don’t know how I rate to run another day

I am hear still running, I believe

My God calls to me in the morning dew

The power of the universe knows my name

Gave me a song to sing and sent me on my way

I raise my voice for justice, I believe

The permission to preach misogyny, the race-baiting and fear-mongering of the campaign, and likely foreseeable future, feels overwhelming. But it is also not new. For years I have considered that Trump and the fear he uses to persuade us that in him we will find security is not new, but the unmasking of the fear, misogyny and racism on which our nation (and many of our churches) was built. This morning, Carlos Lazoda reminds us that we need to Stop Pretending Trump Is Not Who We Are. Trump reveals the truth about us as a nation.

Friends, the beginning of repentance is facing the truth of who we are, so that we know exactly what it is we need to turn away from. Our hope is not in a universe which arcs towards justice by itself, but in accepting God’s invitation to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly alongside the One in whom we live and breathe and have our being. We are called to bend the arc of the universe towards justice.

The voices that I need to listen right now are those that have known the truth (because we incised it on their backs, we lynched their sons, we denied them their children, their language, their culture, we left them on the streets, we sent them back across borders when they were no longer of use to us), and who stood their ground. 

Those who may not know why they survived, but remember that they survived.

Friends, white friends especially, our survival depends on listening to the voices, the plans, the strategy, of those who have already survived our inhumanity, and are gracious enough to call us into solidarity with them for the liberation of all.

So yes, let’s grieve. And then let’s listen to and follow those who by remembering their own survival have resisted the profound injustices on which our nation is built.

With the blessed Bernice, Pauli, Ida, Dolores, Grace, may we have a song to sing, may we be sent on our way, may we raise our voices for justice.