Spiritual Clarity

We are living in a time, and have been, that requires spiritual clarity. That requires us to choose this day whom we will serve. Whose way we will follow. On Friday, while many of us marched with thousands upon thousands of others through the streets of downtown Minneapolis, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic jubilee of union coalitions, interfaith organizing networks, advocacy groups, citizens, neighbors, all united in solidarity, following the courage of faith leaders arrested that morning, it was easy to feel inspired and hopeful about the power of nonviolent witness and action. Yesterday and today feels harder. Yesterday and today, the swirl of rage, fear, and uncertainty is back, and it’s stronger. Which is why, if we haven’t already, we must choose. Today. And then follow through, with as much faith as we’re granted, by grace, day by day, hour to hour.

I’m not going to tell you there’s only one way to follow Jesus in the face of violence and terror. What I want to tell you today is what I believe, and that is that the way of Jesus is nonviolent resistance to the ways and means of dehumanization, cruelty, and death. I stress resistance because the way of Jesus, as understood by the early church martyrs, the peace churches, Gandhi, Day, King, and so many others, is not weak. It is not passive, detached, or conflict-avoidant. In fact, in situations like ours, it necessarily accelerates conflict through agitative nonviolent means to achieve genuine peace through justice. The question is not whether to resist evil. We must. The question is how. And the how, the way of Jesus, these all believed, I believe, is active, direct, courageous, far stronger, and ultimately far more creative, effective, and transformative than violence. It is a force, the force, more powerful. So now is a time to deepen our commitment to love our neighbors and not flinch, by delivering more groceries and medicine to families too scared to leave their homes, by extending support to more immigrant businesses, by flooding constitutional observer training with more trainees, and, yes, by connecting to local rapid response networks so that more of us show up, like Renee, like Alex, to observe, to document, and to guard the civil and human rights of each and every beloved child of God. Now is also the time – and the urgency of now could not be more fierce – to expand the size of our marches, the reach of our boycotts, the length of our strikes, the number of direct acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, and the level of pressure we place on elected officials not just to defund but to dismantle and abolish ICE, as a baseline, as we begin to prepare for something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the years ahead. 

Even more than this may be required, and so we will need to turn to the hardest teachings of our spiritual traditions. To quote Walter Wink, biblical scholar, activist, and passionate advocate for what he called the Third Way of Jesus: “to resist something, we must meet it with counter-force. If we resist violence with violence, we simply mirror its evil. We become what we resist. But even when we resist evil creatively, seizing the initiative and lovingly challenging the Powers to change, there is danger. The easiest temptation is self-righteousness,” and “in such a mood, it is easy to fall into us/them thinking, to forget our own complicity in our past complacency toward the evil we now so tardily oppose…Every outer evil inevitably attracts from our own depths parts of ourselves that resemble it. To engage evil therefore is a spiritual act…I would like,” he continues, “to become nonviolent from the heart, but there is a killer, a torturer, a coward, and a dictator in me,” which “does not want to be redeemed, or [to] see others freed as well…Even recognizing that this aspect is in me does not free me of its power.” And so, he concludes, “I must continually offer…these parts of me…to God, for whatever healing and transformation is possible.”[1] If we are to find ourselves capable, by the grace of God, of the hardest thing of all, of loving even our enemies, then this, I believe, will be the way, this will be how. 

We don’t know how long this terror will last. It has deep, deep, complex, entwined roots, which some in our midst have been pleading with us to recognize for far too long. Because of this, we find ourselves in a time and a place that demands even greater spiritual clarity and depth from us. So we have to choose, this day, whom we are going to serve and whose way we are going to follow. And then we’re gonna have to commit to action, each of us, every one, acting big or small, loud or quiet, internal and external, private and public. We’re gonna have to commit, and then, in faith, hope, and love, in remembrance of Jesus, I do believe, we’re gonna follow through, together.   

These remarks were shared in worship at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church in downtown Minneapolis, the day after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, MN.  

[1] Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Augsburg Fortress Press, 2003), 78-80.