I’M STILL IN LENT: ON ASH WEDNESDAY AND BEING UNEQUIVOCAL

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

This is specifically for white Christians who are entering into anti-racism work, such as myself. I want to begin by acknowledging that this reflection comes only out of having Black people on my social media feeds who were willing to share wisdom born out of their emotional labor.  Namely: Rachel Cargle, Rachel Rodgers, Austin Channing Brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Dr. Oluwatomisin Oredein (CashApp $TomiOredeinEducates). If you find what I have written helpful, please show that by being grateful for them, following and sharing their work, and paying them for their work. I’ve included links or info with ways to do that.

Over the past month or so, I never quite felt the Easter glow.  I’m deeply appreciative of all the clergy who pivoted into Holy Week at home and Easter Vigils on Facebook, but the lack I’m talking about is deep down, into the heart of myself.  I’m talking about my soul and its sin-sickness, and how I never quite felt absolution and resurrection.

This week, I watched the sin-sickness of racism become front and center after hundreds of years of it needing to be front and center to begin with.  I always thought that because of x, y, and z about me, everyone must know that I care about Black people.  This week has illuminated a truth I long knew but fought: “caring” is not enough and silence is complicity.  And, more so than that, mingled with the sin-sickness I wanted to lose but couldn’t, questions emerged: Should I start posting about this?  So many people are now sharing things... Will people think I’m being performative, because I stayed silent for so long, but am now sharing that I believe this is important?  What will people think of me?

And what a disturbing feeling to realize how deeply I must be rooted in white supremacy to sit in the question, “What will people think of me?”, while Black bodies continue to die in the streets at the hands of systems that are upheld by that sin-sick part of my soul.  What a telling sign of my racism that I would dare to center that question amidst the questions from Black people about how long we will let the system that keeps killing them continue.  

I will not spend much time sharing with you about myself, because what I found is that I was prefacing posts about this, which again, centered me.  I want to center the Black voices and the questions I am hearing in the communities where I am putting my ear to the ground to try to figure out how to begin allying.

In the midst of this question of how to show up late, I returned to the words from Ash Wednesday, the most recent service I have attended at a physical church building. Ash Wednesday is a tricky service, because the gospel (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21) warns us not to practice our piety before others to be seen, not to disfigure our faces to show that we are fasting, but then we put ashen crosses on foreheads and send people out from the church.  I’m finding it helpful to view my work as a white Christian through the lens of this dichotomy, as a way to try to remove performativity from my actions and instead root my work in my belief in the sanctity and beauty of Black lives.

On the one hand, I should not disfigure my face; I should not practice my piety before others to be seen. This is performative, because it’s an action that centers myself (my white self) and not the Black bodies I claim to want to defend and love.  To practice my piety would be to make it about me and how I am “trying.” As I said before, I had been prefacing my statements with comments about me, which was a participation in the sin-sickness I am asking God to absolve.  There is certainly a space to do the work, to open up, to process the experience, but that will be my piety that I don’t practice before others.  That will be the work I do with my therapist, my spiritual director, and other white people who are also seeking accountability to stay in this for the long haul.

But then, we put crosses on our foreheads.  The cross, however, is not a sign of my personal piety.  The cross of Jesus Christ is a sign of self-sacrifice, it is the sign of a cruel murder at the hands of an unjust system, it is a sign of the death of a brown body. One of the most powerful inspirations I saw this week was from Rachel Rodgers. In her video, she asks that white people show they are unequivocal in their anti-racism work, that is “leaving no doubt; unambiguous.”  She specifically talked about the need for white people to be at risk, whether that be risking their bodies, their jobs, their followers, their cash, etc.  I wondered: How will I be unequivocal as a Christian right now?  How will I make sure I am leaving no doubt as to my belief that Black lives matter?  And the cross is a sign for me to be unequivocal. The cross has always been about risk, Jesus Christ risked his life - and lost it in innocence at the hands of the government - by preaching that unjust systems kill people who are asking for an unequivocal defense of the marginalized. The cross can serve for me as a reminder that I am called to self-sacrifice, that the system continues to be unjust, that brown and Black bodies continue to be killed. As a priest, I’ve vowed to God and to the church to bear the cross that will now remind me of my anti-racism work and how I need to be unequivocal.  The liturgy says, “Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence,” and the cross is now the reminder to me that I am mortal, sin-sick with racism, and in need of actionable penitence in order to bear the cross of Christ with any integrity. 

This week I also noticed white people announcing they were leaving social media for a while because of the negativity, that they had hidden some posts, that they were “taking a break.”  While I do think cultivating forms of rest and restoration, so that we can continue to show up for Black people, is important, it was a convicting reminder that the problem with social media is that I can deactivate.  I say this because I know I need the cross of Christ to remind me that being unequivocal means participating in anti-racism in ways that I cannot deactivate.  I will read books, as I believe education is power, and I will continue posting on social media to raise awareness the way others have raised mine.  That said, my Christianity finds its root in the incarnation, God being with us in the flesh, and in order for my anti-racism work to be anything other than practicing my piety before others, I have to figure out how my anti-racism work will become incarnate, how my anti-racism work will become something I cannot deactivate. As Dr. Oluwatomisin Oredein shared, white people will need to create a 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, and so on plan so that our anti-racism work continues.I will have to share my plan with others and ask that they hold me accountable. I want this to be incarnate, unequivocal, to be my new normal; part of my work, she helped me see, is creating a plan.

So now my questions are: How will I speak unequivocally for the sanctity of Black life? How will I not disfigure my face? How will I risk because I believe the cross of Jesus Christ requires me to risk for the incarnate Black bodies that are being murdered?

Lent is explicitly uncomfortable. It is about removing comfort, so that we can engage in a closer union with God. It’s a time of preparation, marked by penitence and fasting.  The liturgy states: “It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church.”  As white people, we are a people of notorious sins.  We can picture that the body of the faithful is a Black body and we have been separated by white supremacy.  For reconciliation, we must be doing the actionable work of penitence and forgiveness to be restored to the fellowship of the Church. 

We go out of the Ash Wednesday service into not a day, but a season.  We are sent into a season of repentance that is intended to draw us into a greater life of worship and obedience.  I believe I am being called into a season of repentance that I pray will draw me into a greater life of worship and obedience. I feel God inviting me into my own season of penitence, a calling you might also be feeling.  Maybe you, too, like a return to Ash Wednesday, are being called into a season of self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; maybe you, too, are being called into a time of reading and meditating on God's holy Word, explicitly finding the Black voices that breathe new life into God’s holy Word, specifically meditating on God’s holy Word in conversation with the stories and lived experiences of Black people so that our understanding of the guidance of scripture is inseparable from the guidance we have been given by Black leaders, both spiritual and otherwise.  

I still feel like I am in Lent and it is appropriate.  I wonder if I never felt the joy of Easter this year, because, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached to us, “no one is free until we are all free.”