As my last three final exams approach, I am finding it
harder and harder to return to my books, lectures, and notes. Too much is going on in the world outside my
pathophysiology, health assessment, clinical documentation, and
pharmacotherapeutics textbooks.
Refugee crises.
Climate change
summits.
Mass shootings.
Attacks on cities,
nations, states, ethnic areas.
Assaults on
healthcare facilities.
Denial of schools,
housing, safe neighborhoods, healthcare, jobs, transportation, food.
Systemic oppression
with roots in what some call heritage and what others call history.
Retributive justice:
“an eye for an eye.”
We are making the
whole world blind.
Those blind eyes are
turned away from the inhumane treatment of fellow human beings because of
certain distinguishing characteristics.
Race
Class
National origin
Sexual orientation
Gender identity
Economic status
Housing status
Political affiliation
Religious affiliation
One after another,
after another, after another.
What do these events and processes have in common?
The exploitation, desecration, invalidation, and erasure of
human beings, animals, and the planet; perpetrated by other human beings.
Vulnerable human beings, and the beautiful planet we live
on, have been assaulted and hurt and maimed and killed by other human beings
who have wielded tools of power over them.
I am not innocent of these crimes: I have contributed to
climate change, I have not learned the best strategies to be an ally to my
brothers and sisters in the Black Church and the Black Lives Matter movement, I
am an imperfect ally to my friends who are fighting for a living wage, trans*
rights, improved immigration policies, an end to dependence on fossil
fuels. My colleagues and peers around
the country who have left their classrooms to demand an equal hearing,
appropriate diversity measures, an end to death threats in the very places
where they are trying to obtain an education.
And yet. Not all of
these issues are in the news every day.
When people of Northern European ancestry are killed in the workplace,
in their homes, or in their churches, the nation rises up in grief and the call
goes out for prayer, and politicians and peers ask God to “fix this.”
Last I checked, when black and brown people are killed in their
workplaces, their homes, their streets, and in their churches, nations don’t
rise up and call out for God to “fix this.”
Recent history has demonstrated that politicians only tweet
prayers for white folks. At least,
cisgender, heterosexual male, high socioeconomic status, politically
conservative white politicians don’t tweet God on behalf of black and brown
bodies. Last I checked. I mean, social media outlets and New York
City daily newspapers don’t cover it on their front pages—so I wouldn’t know.
I am here to tell you, as a person of faith, a
self-professed Christian, that God is not going to fix this.
Why would God fix it?
A human mess means that the onus is on humans to repair.
I am here to tell you that God did not do any of this to us.
I do not believe that God does do things to us.
God is not in some heaven, light-years away, playing chess
with the planet and laughing. Not the
God of my understanding, to use the phrasing of my friends of the Unitarian
Universalist tradition.
God does things with us.
God experiences things with us.
God suffers with us, prays with us, holds vigil with us, cries with
us.
I also believe that God hopes with us, walks with us along
the journey from despair to joy, and assists us along the path of growth and faith.
Why do I believe this? Why do I believe this so forcefully
that I have spent half my night, when I ought to be studying, writing about a
God of hope and love and accompaniment?
Because it’s Advent.
The season of active waiting and preparation for the arrival of
Emmanuel, God-with Us. The small child,
the incarnation of God, the Word made flesh who came to walk on earth as a
human being. It is this God I believe
in, the God who brings so much hope into the world.
I believe in the God who sent a baby—the most vulnerable
iteration of a very vulnerable humanity—to a young unmarried woman and her
almost-but-not-yet-husband demonstrated hope thousands of years ago. Whether or not this story is true-as-written
in King James English (or whichever version you prefer), think about the last
newborn child you held. Completely
dependent upon the good will and care of others for its nurture, its safety,
its food, warmth, and comfort. Newborns
are one of the ways I experience God—they are full of hope, promise, and love
that gives unconditionally.
Newborns don’t fix things.
They poop, they barf, they cry—they need to eat, they need changes of
clothes, they need to go to the doctor, they need to sleep, they need lots of
things. They’re expensive. It’s a lot of work and a lot of
commitment. It takes a village to raise
a child.
The God-with-Us, the God who comes at Christmas, the God
whose coming we prepare for during the season of Advent is not a God who came
to fix everything. This God is the God
who came to hope with us, to pray with us, to cry with us—to act with us as we
participate together in the changing of the world.
If God is with us, we are partners in changing the
world. In bringing about the beloved
community, in which we do not take out our neighbor’s eye. In which we do not turn away our fellow human
beings because of any characteristic that distinguishes them from us. In which we participate in breaking down the
borders that divide us from each other and recognize our common humanity—that
humanity that God shared with us at Christmas.
If God is with us, it is up to us to take up the work of
ending homelessness, ending gun violence, ending attacks on health centers,
ending assaults on cities and workplaces and places of worship, ending violence
against gender and sexual minorities, ending unlivable wages.
If God is with us, this is the work of bringing about the
kin-dom of God.
I believe God is with us.
I am committed to this work. It
is the work of lifetimes, the work of all of us.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.
