But Not…

Scripture: II Corinthians 4:8-9

There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the struggling soul.

The Apostle Paul writes to the community in Corinth:

We are afflicted in every way,

but not crushed;

perplexed,

but not driven to despair;

persecuted, but not forsaken;

struck down, but not destroyed…

As I read and prayed over this passage this week, I kept returning to three things:

The starting place for this passage is a bearing witness to and allowing ourselves to feel, really feel the grief.

We are afflicted. We are perplexed. We are persecuted. We are struck down.

We, as a nation, have chosen a sexual abuser, a fraudster, a con man, a racist, a billionaire horder as our president. And, already, the alleged child sex trafficker, Matt Goetz, is up for Attorney General. The Christian Zionist who says the West Bank does not exist, Mike Huckabee, is up for Ambassador to Israel. The science-denying and vaccine conspiracy theorist, RFK, Jr is up for Health and Human Services Secretary.

With Project 2025 as the roadmap, Steven Miller is already at work on plans to denaturalize as many citizens as possible and deport as many undocumented people as they can. And criminalizing health care for women, targeting LGBTQ people, overturning same-sex marriage rights, and implementing a whole host of Seven Mountain Mandate work in order to empower White Christian men to rule in all areas of society.

Lives are at stake.

We are afflicted. We are perplexed. We are persecuted. We are struck down. And the grief, affliction, perplexion, persecution, struck-down-ness isn’t evenly felt. Some of us are closer to the pain and oppression. Our undocumented and immigrant siblings, our trans and non-binary kindred, our BIPOC beloveds, our Palestinian and Ukrainian neighbors are in the cross-hairs in particular ways.

We are right to pause and name the grief and affliction and bear witness to it. And we ought not move too quickly away from the grieving. Since Nov 5th, I’ve been thinking about the October of 2001 edition of the Women Against Military Madness newsletter. It carried the headline, “Leave us to Grieve in Peace.” It was right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Bush Administration was hell bent on revenge and retribution. The saber-rattling was palpable all around. And the authors of the WAMM article, grandmothers all of them, talked about the importance of allowing ourselves to grieve and mourn, weep and wail.

They well knew that part of staying human, and I would add, part of staying faithful, was to recognize the importance of grief. Without grief, our hearts become hardened and set on vengeance. And we can strike out for the sake of taking control of something in a space that feels powerless. But grief helps our hearts stay open, and soft, and allows us to hear the voice of revolutionary love.

I was at Howard University’s Chapel service this past Sunday and Dr. Michael Eric Dyson preached a word. In the heart of the historically black university from which Kamala Harris graduated and at which she gave her concession speech, Dr. Dyson reminded us that grieving keeps us human and helps us remember what we hold dear, even when it feels lost.

But even as we bear witness to the affliction, the perplexion, the persecution, the struck down-ness… we mustn’t let the first part of the sentence be the last… Dr. Dyson called our attention to God’s movement in the conjunction between the two parts of the sentence. Pay attention to the BUT NOT. Don’t forget the BUT NOT. Look for God in the BUT NOT.

If we are able to bear witness, if we are able to grieve with soft, open, and vulnerable hearts, if we are able to remember what we hold dear that has been lost… we can see the BUT NOT…

We are afflicted in every way BUT NOT crushed.

We are perplexed BUT NOT driven to despair.

We are persecuted BUT NOT forsaken.

We are struck down BUT NOT destroyed.

On the Wednesday after the election, about a dozen Lyndalians met over Zoom to hold one another and share things that helped get us through tough times. Rev. Monica Powers shared a post by Dan Hix.

Hix starts by quoting Wendell Berry in his work called Remembering. Berry says, “But that an argument was losing did not mean it should not be made. It had already been made and it would be made again, not because he would make it but because it existed, it always had, and he belonged to it. That it was losing did not mean it was beaten.”

And then Monica read the rest of Hix’s post:

I’m pretty sure Calvary looked like losing
No doubt, Calvary looked like losing
So did dark threats deep in [a] Birmingham jail
I’m pretty sure Bethlehem’s stable looked like losing
So did Lincoln’s sparse log cabin start
I’m pretty sure Mother Teresa’s slums looked like losing
So did Bonhoeffer on Flossenberg gallows
I’m pretty sure Egypt’s slavery looked like losing
So did “Middle Passage,” then evil grueling beyond
I’m pretty sure “three smooth stones” looked like losing
So did [the] knee to Floyd’s neck in Minneapolis street
I’m pretty sure Robben Island looked like losing
So did Selma’s bridge and Jordan’s Koinonia Farm
Yes, I’m pretty sure Calvary looked like losing
No doubt, Calvary looked like losing
But worst thing isn’t last thing
No, worst thing isn’t last thing
Light shines, still shines in darkness
Mercy isn’t through.
(he continues…)
Persevere friends
Pray, pray always, and don’t lose heart
Breathe, take long, take deepest breath
Listen quiet, so quiet, listen closely
Then closer still
Listen beneath, around, listen above
Hear?
Hear that?
Last word, yet to be spoken
Last word’s never ours.

[pause]

In the 1980’s, amidst the terrible violence in El Salvador in which thousands of children, spouses, beloveds were “disappeared,” a group of Mothers of the Disappeared would meet and grieve together for all they had lost. And they would weep and cry and wail. They called it desahogarse… they undrown themselves. They never skipped this step… always shared grief, always un-drowning themselves first. And this grieving allowed them to see God’s BUT NOT…

And this is the third piece from our scripture this morning. When we allow ourselves to grieve, to bear witness to all that is lost… when we can lay claim to God’s BUT NOT… we can be resurrection people.

(I need to say one thing as an aside. I don’t believe that electoral politics is liberation. And we need to be very careful about wedding our faith to any political party. AND, electoral politics are one way we can make manifest our values and our faith. And electoral politics, economics, and state violence are often the arena in which evil is experienced. So, electoral politics are about harm reduction even if they are not liberation.)

In her concession speech, Vice President Kamala Harris said “on the campaign I would often say ‘when we fight, we win’. But here’s the thing, sometimes the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win. The important thing is don’t ever give up. Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place.”

That’s the third part of this scriptural passage. We are indeed struck down BUT NOT destroyed. Crucifixions have happened and will happen and we must grieve these deeply. But after the Mothers of the Disappeared undrown themselves, after they lay claim to the fact that they were not destroyed, after these crucial steps, they marched, and they stood in front of presidential palaces, and they tore down the structures of evil.

No doubt, Calvary looked like losing
But worst thing isn’t last thing
No, worst thing isn’t last thing
Light shines, still shines in darkness
Mercy isn’t through.

May we be given to cast our lots with mercy. Amen.