A Note to the Church while talking about Trayvon Martin

Chula, Houston St
My friend Jan found my cat’s tag sign on the Lower East Side of Manhattan – that cat gets around!

I know I’ve been avoiding talking about the Trayvon Martin murder in depth. The event was tragic, terrible, and I feel for the all the families of the victim. The amount of videos, press information, and criminal reports I’ve read about the event is staggering compared to how I usually follow events like these. I’m hoping an arrest is made and criminal charges are pressed on Zimmerman and I’m appalled at the blatant racism that has been displayed by many, many people. It’s a reminder, to me at least, of how far this country has yet to go in regards to racial acceptance.

Bishop Hanson’s message was right on target, I think, and I’ve heard that Martin’s death has been on the radar of faithful Christians all over the place. It’s discussion has caused some soul searching, empathy, and it seems to be in the air even if its impact might be minimal in some places. But I would like to share one suggestion to those in the church who would like to discuss this attack (and racial issues) in general: please don’t use the word “become” as in “what has our society become that allows this to happen?” Speaking for myself, that phrase just shuts me down. In that one simple word and thought, what I see is a romanticism of the past, a rejection of all the other cases of racial violence/discrimination that have happened over the years, and a misidentification of the fact that race in the United States is still a big deal. Discrimination is still a big deal. We, collectively, are not moving away from some golden age but, rather, we’re suppose to be on track towards something better. The amazing thing is not that such an event happened but, rather, that there has existed, and continues to exist, a systematic structure in our society’s very being that allows such a thing to happen. If you are speaking of the law and searching for the gospel, if you are trying to tell the church how the world truly is, focusing on that one act isn’t enough. The groundwork that led to such an event is bigger than that and is built into our very bones. That’s sin and that needs to be talked about, and not washed away under some assumed golden age that was in our recent past.

Today’s reading in the lectionary for Holy Week is John 12:1-11. “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me” Jesus said to the disciples after they complained about Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet. I’ll admit I’ve always struggled with what Jesus said. Even when I exegete it, contextualize the story, and reframe the discussion to argue that what Jesus is commenting on is the lack of faithfulness that the disciples have, I still always return to that phrase “you will always have the poor with you” and shudder. It’s always struck me as an un-hopeful phrase. We will always have the poor with us? Really? We’ll always have the rejected, the unwanted, those who we don’t want to belong? We’ll always have people that we will not invite to our table but that only Jesus will? Always? For all time? Sheesh. What kind of Messiah are you, then? Can’t you just go ahead and take care of it all, wipe the poverty, injustice, fear, from the world, and end the very idea of the poor? I know that the Old Testament told us to let the poor glean but you just marched into Jerusalem with palms and garments thrown on your path – can’t you do MORE?

Today, for me at least, what Jesus tells the disciples is how I’ll frame what the church needs to say about racial injustice in this country. Don’t romanticize the past and claim that the “poor” were never there. Don’t, also, claim that this will be a topic that we’ll ever NOT have to talk about. We don’t, really, live in a post-racial society. We don’t live in a post-class society. We don’t live in a post-gender society. We don’t live in a post-sexuality society. As a church, we need to be honest and keep describing how the world truly is. The world needs to be broken into, changed, and made right. And as we march through this Holy Week, towards the Cross, lets try to keep all of this in mind. We’re not re-enacting the passion story – we’re proclaiming it because it is still needed to be heard today.

Never CPE Alone

Last night, I was a research assistant for Dr. Alex at Never Sleep Alone. The show is hosted by a friend of a friend and my friend rounds up folks who don’t mind asking strangers charged questions. When the questions are asked, the clipboard charts filled out, we seat fill and become the rowdy bunch to start off the show right.

We showed up at 10:30 pm and were directed to the dusty-under-construction-probably-filled-with-asbestos dressing room. We put our stuff down and mingled with the other two dozen interns and volunteers. It was great because several of the folks were friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. There were so many of us that we were broken up into groups. Some were sent to give out free champagne, while others were sent to mingle in the crowd and give out personal invites to sexy people to attend the after party. The rest of us were given a three minute orientation, a lab coat, told to make up a fake name, and sent out into the world with a clipboard, different colored masks, and a pocket full of show branded condoms. I named myself “Sam.”

I learned in CPE that it is never really is THAT awkward to walk into a room and ask complete strangers questions about their deepest spiritual fears, hopes, and thoughts. So it was really a piece of cake walking to random (usually inebriated) strangers, some on dates, some with friends, and asking if they’re looking to “make a sexual connection tonight.” The section I covered never really filled up (lots of no-shows) but I did chat with a dozen people or so. Some highlights are below:

  • The couple who were on a date where the man was much more into the idea of the show that she was.
  • The woman where, after receiving their masks, asked to change colors because she didn’t want to miss out on the fun.
  • Talking to the father of one of the musicians from the show who’s English was very bad.
  • Talking to that musician’s girlfriend who said she’s seen the show five times but loves answering all the questions and asked me to keep going.
  • The old man who had no idea what a ‘hook up’ was.
  • And the beautiful gay couple who were obviously on their first date and we’re trying to guess what the other guy wanted to hear.

When the room was covered in masks, we were finished; we dropped our lab coats back in the dressing room, and sat in for the show. I really got a kick out of seeing how the show worked, who did what, and trying to figure out why the show worked. To quote K, the show is the type of show where you get out of it what you put into it – and being a married man with a kidling on the way means I’m not really that into it. But I did clap, sing along, laugh, judge what people were wearing, and felt incredibly old because only a few of us knew the lyrics to the opening song from Nirvana (kids these days!) It was also amazing watching people fall over themselves to get on stage. This article from the NY Times in December hits all the bases. It is STILL amazing that there were no dull spots, no places where no one moves, and no places where someone outright rejected Dr. Alex. The show moves, is funny, and is moving to Saturday nights (which means I can’t intern it anymore). I had a good time though I’m starting to realize that my staying out to 2:30 am (and sleeping through my subway stop) is probably starting to peter out.

Cradle Rock ‘n Roll

Yesterday, I stumbled into my field education site, hopped up on caffeine and barely awake. The night before, I stayed up till 2 am writing a seven page paper on six verses of Galatians (and misspelling Jesus in Koine Greek in bold letters on the front page) and my body was feeling the effects of a long week. When I arrived, I realized I forgot a scheduled event for that afternoon. I met up with the CYF director (and ended up calling her by the wrong name and insisting that my semester was ending in January rather than May), and waited for the event to begin. We were going to hang out with some new born babes.

There’s been a mini-baby boom at my field site with more than half a dozen babbies entering the world since October. All of them are adorable and lovely with my kidling, I think, the next one on the list. All the moms and dads were excited to learn that my wife and I were expecting and the advice came pouring out. Ideas about how to walk up five flights with a stroller were shared as well as how to get the kid to quiet down if walking around and bouncing isn’t working (do a few squats with them – I must remember this). We all sat around, chatted, and I even held a babby for the group picture! It was a lot of fun.

Near the end, I was asked if I was excited about the upcoming birth, scared, or both. I answered honestly that it depends on the time of day. Most of the time, I’m super excited. Other times, I’m freaked. But, over all, I’m looking forward to meeting the little guy. Just a little more than 3 months! AHHHHHH.

Closeted Christians and Sympathetic Procurators

Last night, I made my acting debut.

During Lent, my internship site has a midweek service series that involves readings, prayers, and a dramatic presentation. The dramatic pieces were taken from a series of unlikely and hypothetical meetings of characters, and their families, in the passion story of Jesus. The scripts were reworked six years ago (and reworked again for this season) and my supervisor asked me to be involved. For the last service (last night), my wife and I played Pontius Pilate and his wife. It was fun because we got to have a play fight and argue about the nature of Jesus after he was crucified.

Now, I’ll admit that the script was difficult for me to work through mostly because, well, there was quite a bit of imagination infused into this scene that seemed problematic. There was an attempt, in some of the formulation of the script, to actually make Pilate’s wife a secret-Christian and make Pontius Pilate a sympathetic character. And I really really really dislike these ideas. Sure, it’s possible to read that lens into the gospels but just because that can be read into the story does not mean that it is actually life-giving. I really actively fought against this perspective and my wife did too. It’s one thing to identify with Pontinus Pilate and dwell deep with why the gospels depicted him (and his wife) the way they do but it’s quite another thing to romanticize the characters away from their own contexts. We’ve already had that in the Acts of Pilate and I don’t think we need to do that again.

However, I really had a lot of fun doing this. It was stressful worrying about it, seeing it on the calendar, organizing rehearsals, and trying to memorize my lines. I really am bad at memorizing things so I spent quite a bit of time on the subway annoying my fellow riders by reading and moving my mouth at the same time. I didn’t have a costume (though I dressed in a shirt and tie, feeling like I was making a contemporary commentary on our real world) and, at the last minute, I discovered I really like props. The folks in the front row got to witness my use of puns and humor by noticing that I had a file with Jesus’ name on it in the “out box” on my desk. I’m pretty proud of that joke actually.

Afterwards, I was amazed with the reflections that people gave me and I realized that I’d make a terrible actor. It seems that in the other dramatic presentations, there was a change that occurred with at least one of the characters on stage. The character would move from one place to the other. However, in my scene, the characters, at the end, ended up in the same place where they started. People expected Pilate to change but he did not. He thought Jesus was silly and insignificant and that is where he ended up. And that, it many ways, is my own take of who Pilate was. Rather than my embodying the character as it was written, I imposed my own view of the character onto the script and I refused to let him change. He flustered but I changed the script before I changed my view of Pilate. I want Pilate to be a jerk and stay a jerk. I don’t have any need to make him a sympathetic character and I think its problematic to do so. So I made Pilate come off as a jerk even if the script explicitly did not do so. I wouldn’t be a good actor because I would refuse to let the character be as they are written. But I did enjoy pretending to be an actor one for the first time last night.

Silver Chalice, Dish Soap, Love Affair

This morning, while serving as an acolyte at my school’s chapel, I discovered a fun fact. It seems that if you use dish soap to clean a silver chalice, the soap clings to the silver and does not come off if you rinse it. For those on chapel duty, or who are partaking in the heavenly meal of Eucharist, you are left with communion wine that tastes not only a tad soapy but the taste lingers for quite awhile. So, when it comes to silver chalices, the method used to clean cast iron pans works best or else Jesus just doesn’t go down easy. Though I guess you could run with this idea and make quite a few jokes about Jesus being the New Dawn. Anti-bacterial Jesus, leaves hands lemony fresh!

Future Hope

Yesterday at my field site, I helped lead our youth education for our middle schoolers. There were about seven of us in a smallish conference room and rather than going over the lesson for the day (from a curriculum that is just a tad too Arminian for my tastes), the CYF director suggested that we do a “Hot Topics” session. With the Trayvon Martin shooting in the background of the news, we thought it might be smart to take their pulse, see what they’ve heard, and just provide a space where they could talk about it.

Now, like most groups, there’s no way that we’re only going to stay on one topic for an entire hour. We covered a lot of ground – from video games, the problems downloading from X-Box live through some local news events and the last episode of “The Walking Dead.” We did get around to Tryvon Martin and we had a great conversation. I asked them about hoodies, fear, stereotypes, and what they thought that happened. Now, I’ll admit that I have a certain perspective on what happened and that my view did infiltrate the conversion – but I really tried to focus less on what happened in Florida and more about what happens in their lives in New York. I was impressed with how up-to-date on local events they were. They knew about the controversies we’ve been having over the stop-and-frisk policy of the NYPD. They had all experienced or witnessed the ageism associated with their being young kids and whenever they are “in packs.” And since they all live in a large city with a huge variety of people, they did share some common sense experiences of how they handle each other and other people. They also were honest about times when they felt discriminated against. We also shared what racism and stereotypes were. It was great being able to share my own experiences of being on the negative end of stereotypes and racism. Eventually, one of the kids even brought up what it means to be an American and I asked each of them what that meant. It was great because race, skin color, class, gender, sexuality, or anything like that didn’t show up in their definitions. They sounded so optimistic, I almost got emotional. I just wanted to tell them “NEVER CHANGE! Keep being open! Don’t limit your definitions to ‘a look!’ America should be bigger than that! My olive toned future kidling will greatly appreciate it!” I didn’t say that, of course, but I guess I’m optimistic about the future too.