Friends,
I hope you'll try out my podcast every morning for Lent. Or the same thing on YouTube.
I'm headed to Florida to meet up with alums from Episcopal Divinity School. And hopefully warm weather? Lots of trips this March.
-Liz
Introduction to Act! Be Church Now
Back when I was young, okay, 37, which now seems young, when I was young I wanted to create the Kingdom of God on earth. I mean yeah, I know that that is God's work, but I wanted to be part of it. Some of this was resistance to the "go to heaven when you die" but a lot of it was that I was willing to do the work.
My spiritual type is totally about doing the work.
It was not that weird that I ended up serving at a street church, where the theological questions are whether you can come to church drunk, what can you do to get into fewer fights, and is orange juice or iced tea a better substitute for grape juice for communion. My atonement theology became more important than understanding the trinity; pastoral care more focused on self-love and gifts identification and less on meaning-making.
But along the way my vision of the almost-here-kingdom, and my preaching on the Kingdom-of-God-is-at-hand faded away. I didn't so much lose my faith as lose my focus. Joaquin, sober for so many weeks, is drunk and fighting again. Robin, who got housing outside of town, and outside the temptations that taunt her, let a guy stay in her home and he raped her. Ruben is back in jail, Moses decided that bible study is replacement for bipolar medications, Mary wasn't approved for visits to her children, Mike lost his apartment to a fire, Bill was turned down for disability benefits, and on and on and on and on.
Perhaps it is all hopeless.
Miguel A. De La Torre develops theology of hopelessness in his book Embracing Hopelessness. Elsa Tamez did not call it hopelessness in her book The Scandalous Message of James, but she expressed the same ideas. I'm on board with this theology. It's my new favorite.
My belief that the Kingdom of God is almost here grew, so much more than I realized, out of my own just-fine life. My hopefulness was situated in the belief that others lives could become like mine. This was not trite "everything is okay"--my life has included times in poverty, my wife's death by alcoholism, my extended family struggles with mental health. Divorce, lay offs, depression.
But also stability. Employment. Just enough self-confidence and self-love to get ahead without putting down others. My life has always been just-fine. I could get through the lows because there were plenty of highs, and plenty of support systems when things get difficult.
What I doubt now is that it will all work out for most people. I doubt that the Kingdom will come, and God's will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. The present administration, the present world, has laid bare what the oppressed could see before, and I could not: that it is impossible to get ahead if you don't start out ahead.
Giving up hope feels like it might be giving up, but De La Torre argues otherwise. Once we face the reality that things are not getting better, we can take on radical and creative strategies of resistance. Strategies that once seemed absurd, as they risk what we already have, now seem possible, reasonable, the right way forward.
“We embrace hopelessness when we embrace the sufferers of the world, and in embracing them, we discover our own humanity and salvation, providing impetus to our praxis, for hopelessness is the precursor to resistance and revolution.” Miguel A. De La Torre, Embracing Hopelessness, 140.
As long as large majorities of people in the United States get along just fine when we have some homelessness, some people with untreated mental health challenges, some immigrants deported, some people without access to hospitals, some people with lives that are impossibly hard, as long as this is okay, we don't have to take big risks for change. And that is where we were before the past election. Some of us, many of us, were okay with incremental change. It kept our lives the same and helped a few others.
Now we can see, I pray we can see, that it is hopeless. Those small changes were not bringing about God's Kingdom, they were protecting my own just-fine life.
Now that the world is hopeless I can begin the important work of risking it all.
What is your favorite theology? Reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
Song: Ana Hernandez Don't Be Afraid.
Christian Century Article: The Church Cannot Bless War
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