A Week of Protests
June 7, 2020
Matthew 28:16-20
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20

I didn’t go out this week. I didn’t walk the streets of New Orleans. I didn’t attempt to climb the Crescent City Connection. I didn’t go to Jackson Square and leave my burdens at the river alongside thousands of neighbors who have gathered faithfully for a week.

I haven’t been able to figure out why I didn’t feel motivated to join these gatherings this time. A few days ago, I spent some time scrolling through photos of marches and rallies and protests and vigils I have attended with you in recent years. When we gathered with Muslim neighbors to decry the travel ban on majority Muslim countries. When we traveled to Memphis to march with sanitation workers and unions on the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s death. When we cried out to protest the separation of families at the U.S./Mexico border. When we joyfully paraded through the streets in last year’s PRIDE with a message of love, remembering PRIDE started not as a celebration but as a protest and our love keeps the beat of that first marching song.

Why not this week? I don’t fully know. I feel guilty for not doing so, and I don’t have an reservations in sharing that with you. But I also know that guilt is not the right motivator to show up. So I have listened to my Knowing, as Glennon Doyle says, dropping down into my body and listening for that inner word on how I am called into this movement, not just this moment.

There is for sure something about crowds in a pandemic that freezes me with anxiety. A neighbor’s dog got away yesterday, and Nathan and I were able to catch him and distract him. Nathan grabbed an extra leash while the neighbor ran down the block to retrieve her pet. And as we huddled over this large, german shepherd mix, I realized no one had a mask on. I mentally started the 14 day clock over as we breathed all over each other. Twelve+ weeks at home has certainly made a germaphobe out of me. Even with masks and dropping numbers that indicate we’re on the other side of a curve, I find I am very uncomfortable even in the grocery store. The thought of walking closely with hundreds and thousands of neighbors is hard. 

I have also needed, in a deep soul way, to be home and to be near my husband and our children. I rest in their presence. I want to play with them while they still want to play with me, to be here for family meals, to laugh and be silly together. I know that is a tremendous luxury and soaked thoroughly in my privilege. Nothing about the grace and gift and rareness of this time is lost on me. It also feels like the very thing my body and spirit have been crying out to have for quite a while. I know my mind, spirit, and body are healing after pushing too hard for too long. And to be a leader in this time will require my Knowing, my presence, my wholeness.

Meanwhile, I noticed someone on twitter warning white folks of the “mission trip mentality” at protests across the country this week. Showing up for a photo op, grabbing a sign to be seen, and then disappearing back into white, suburban lives to not be part of any systemic, lasting change. I felt that critique so deeply. There will be no photo op of me this week with signs, marching with a stole on, showing up even though a couple of folks called me out for not showing up. I will not be a social justice tourist in a movement anymore.

As I scrolled through those past photos, I asked myself: What has my ongoing commitment been to Muslim neighbors who are targeted and discriminated against for their religious practices? How have I advocated for migrating families who risk separation at the border because the alternative of staying in place is worse than the journey ahead? Am I doing anything at all to acknowledge children who are still separated from their parents even now? To what extent have I campaigned for workers to be paid a living wage in our city and in our nation? Has my advocacy and love and protection for full equality of my LGBTQ+ siblings been enough?

No one can take on every single one of those justice needs and manage them all at once. This is why we need movement communities who do the work together and make the long work sustainable. If I am guilty of it in the recent past, I don’t want to be a photo-op pastor anymore. I don’t want to be a photo-op ally. My intention is not to criticize anyone in what I am saying. Rather, I have spent a lot of time this week getting very clear about how I do want to show up. I want to be part of true, long, moral-arc-bending systemic change that changes the structures my people have helped create. I want the content of my work to be a stronger statement of my commitment to working for good than the quantity of photos on my phone. 

I want to continue to work toward being an anti-racist leader and guiding our city toward anti-racist faith communities. That’s why I have been meeting with white colleagues along St. Charles Ave. to process together what our long-lasting, undoing work looks like. It’s not enough for us to publicly lament what systems and structures have done to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and Amaud Arbery, and Michael Brown, and Alton Sterling, and Trayvon Martin. We must confess and lament our complicity in those systems and structures. And we must actively commit to dismantling them and dreaming a better world into being. 

Right now, we are living between two worlds. The old systems of racism and white supremacy are being called out. If *RICHMOND, VIRGINIA* is casting an image of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter onto the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Ave. and successfully having that statue removed…a new world is being born. Ushered in. Called and spoken and sung and marched into being. But the old world is very much still here. What do we do? What CAN we do?

Dr. Stanley Saunders, professor at Columbia Seminary ATL, points to a similar reality for the disciples heading into a world without Judas and without Jesus.

“They will conduct their mission between two worlds: with Jesus on the mountain—itself apparently a thin place between the human and divine realms—they stand at the edge of a new world and a new time. The time of empire, of debt and slavery, of the reign of death, is passing away.”

Saunders continues, “Living between two worlds is not easy, however, even for those closest to Jesus…Most English translations of 28:17 leave the impression that the disciples included some worshipers and some doubters (e.g., “doubting Thomas” in John 20:24-29), but the Greek may also be translated, perhaps more naturally, to suggest that the whole group of disciples both worship and doubt…The Greek word distazo carries a sense of standing in two places at the same time or being of two minds. Jesus commissions not perfect disciples, but people who both worship and doubt as they stand at the edge of the world that is passing away and the one that is coming to them.”

“Jesus sends the disciples into the world not only to announce the salvation of humans, but to bear witness to the end of a broken creation. Jesus’ words at the Great Commission are thus not merely the fitting end of Matthew’s story of Jesus, but a vision of the end of a broken world and the beginning of new creation.” 

If Jesus is commissioning us to go and the Holy Spirit is guiding us in our steps, what is our work to do? What is the good news we have to offer one another and our world? If the authority of God rests on us in our good news spreading work, then what might we actually accomplish in love and peace with our neighbors? Let us hold these questions before us as we enter into a meal of remembrance, renewal, and recommitment. And let us continue to hold these questions before us into the days and weeks and years ahead.