Our Lenten Journey Continues
I have a friend who has recently decided to throw off the gloves and start bare-knuckling evil wherever it may be found. I get it. There really is a lot of evil and it often feels that the quiet, steady work of suasion and service is getting us nowhere. At some point, we decide that we’re ready to change things one flaming Social Media post at a time and if someone is bothered by it then they’re part of the problem. At times, that kind of righteous anger is exactly what is called for. At other times it is simply another log that fuels the fire.
Throughout this Lenten season we have been following the arc of Kathy Escobar’s book, Turning over Tables: A Lenten Call for Disrupting Power. In addition to a weekly gathering of those who are reading Escobar’s daily reflections, we have been studying and using the biblical texts that the book’s publisher, Westminster/John Knox Press, has developed to accompany the book. Hence, we have the six weekly themes that Escobar gives us in her book as our roadmap for this Lenten season.
Our approach to last week’s theme, “Disrupt,” raised a lot of questions. The text that the publisher’s material provided was Luke 3:10-14, the story of John the Baptizer, telling the crowd to disrupt by sharing their food and clothing, then prohibiting tax collectors and soldiers from exploiting their power to oppress others. I don’t know about you, but I expected something a lot more dramatic – after all, our theme is “turning over tables!” But I suspect the crowd, the tax collectors, and the soldiers might have expected something more dramatic from John when they asked, “What should we do?” After all, John had no qualms about speaking truth to power and even lost his life for taking on Herod directly.
If I were scheming this season around our six themes, I would have chosen to read the story of Jesus turning over tables for the week of “disrupt.” Part of my Lenten discipline has been to lean into the texts that the publisher provided, instead of doing my own thing (which is my wont.) And that has been a gift, especially this week. It helped me to notice that, long before Jesus turned over tables, he disrupted oppressive systems by sitting at tables with “the wrong crowd.” It shows that sometimes setting a table is more disruptive than flipping one. How powerful is that? It echoes everyone’s least favorite line from the 23rd Psalm, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” It echoes the Proverb, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” It echoes that great story about Elisha in II Kings 6, when God blinded the enemy army and they wandered right into Israel’s stronghold. The king asked Elisha, “Can I strike them?” and he said, “No. Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink, and let them go back to their master.” And it is like Jesus’ teachings, echoed in Paul’s writings, the if our enemy is hungry, we feed them. That’s disruption.
Setting a table does not feel as immediately effective or anger-satisfying as flipping a table. And many of us do not express our anger because we are in a privileged place where the injustice that offends us does not directly harm us. Anger is a real and genuine human emotion, but I do think, however, that we often overestimate our capacity for clear-thinking and self-control when we are angry. John Lewis and other Civil Rights advocates of the 1960’s followed the principle that, until we have cleansed ourselves of hate and are motivated by love for our neighbor, our anger will not achieve God’s purpose, because we will become no different our enemy. I think that is the primary lesson that most Christian Nationalists are ignoring with their chest-thumping cheers for violence. We cannot ignore anger or underestimate its destructive power. Our Lenten journey is calling us not to resort to quietism or to violence, but to disrupt unjust systems with truth and unanticipated love.
With you on this journey,
Mark of St. Mark
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