Mardi Gras Sunday.
Matthew 17: 1-9.
Rev. Dr. Rebecca Voelkel & Castor Welsh
-Touch our mouths… touch our hearts… may we laugh and dream your reality here and now, O God. Amen.
The last six years have been hard. The last year has been hard. And the last three months have been excruciating. Covid, the Uprising in response to the murder of George Floyd, Trump 2.0 and now Operation Metro Surge. It’s been a hard few years… few months…
It is important for us to acknowledge that these are perilous times. And many of us are weary. Many of us are triggered and hypervigilant. Many of us are numb. It is a lot.
But as I prepared for Mardi Gras Sunday, I went back and read a number of pieces about laughter and creativity and dancing – particularly amidst difficult times, particularly that Joe Bunce has sent me over the years. (Blessed be your memory, Joe!)
And I was reminded that one of the most powerful tools that colonizers and oppressors and would-be authoritarians use is despair. When people are so mired in the pain and misery of the present, they cannot dream of a future of liberation. When we are so focused on feeding our neighbors in hiding, and grieving the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and protecting trans and non-binary siblings who have come here for sanctuary, and defending gender affirming care for our children, we can become despairing and exhausted and unable to resist.
But one of the things that we know from many liberation movements is that one of the most powerful tools of resistance is laughter and dance and celebration. There is a deeply revolutionary spirit and power that is unleashed when we laugh and dance and celebrate. For when we are laughing, we are breathing deeply of the spirit. And when we are dancing, we are claiming a joy that may be in the future, but we are also claiming it in the here and now.
Theologians have this fancy word called eschatology. Eschatology is the study of hope. It is the study of the future. It is the study of time. And the thing about laughter and dancing and celebrating is that they can be a radical claiming of God’s hope and love and joy and justice—all of which may seem like they are far off in the future. But we can make them real in the here and now—if only for a few moments—when we laugh and sing and dance.
Through laughter and dancing and celebrating, those experiencing colonization can break the power-over dynamic by claiming their full humanity manifest in joy, now. Through laughter, they invert the bad to make it comical or playful. They can use the farcical for a dead-serious purpose, embodying that colonization’s defeat is already real because they are fully alive and free.
It was Christmas morning in 1987, and I was in the remote, mountainous Salvadoran village of Santa Marta as part of a small delegation of North American Christians and Jews representing the Accompaniment Movement. We awakened, disoriented, to the ground shaking. Quickly, an older man who was a leader in the community explained that the Salvadoran government was dropping bombs nearby to scare and intimidate the residents of Santa Marta. The contrast between the ground-shaking bombs and the early Christmas morning was lost on no one. With such a backdrop, we heard more about the village’s history, including the killing of this elder’s daughter, who had been pregnant with her first child, and the murder of his childhood friend, who had been attempting to defend his own family. The elder described in detail the ways in which colonization targets real bodies with torture, pain, and death.
But the story made a sharp turn when, after describing the history, we sat in silence and prayed. Then he said, “Do you know how I can tell which North Americans are going to last here with us?” After a pause in which no one answered, he continued, “The way I know that anyone is going to last here is that they know how to laugh, to sing, to dance, to experience joy . . . because the work we are doing is so difficult, we have to claim the promise of how the world is going to be, now. We have to live the promise. That’s what our faith teaches us.”
I have been thinking a lot about that Salvadoran elder’s wisdom. I’ve come back to it for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that this ICE occupation has made me think a lot about my experience in El Salvador amidst the Civil War there. The weapons, the tear gas, the federal government turning military might against its own people, the parallels are haunting.
But the Salvadoran elder has been speaking to me. And I have been so inspired by all of us: Singing Resistance in the streets… the Powerderhorn Park Ice Sled rally filled with silliness and satire… the luminaries on Lake Nokomis spelling: ICE Out of Minnesota for planes landing and taking off at MSP… the ubiquitousness of sambusas made by Somali aunties and shared like a banquet at the Good and Pretti memorials.
And Reinhold Neibuhr has been speaking to me, too. He’s the author of the Serenity prayer that so many alcoholics and addicts pray, who also suggested that “[h]umor is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”
I have to tell you that I have been experiencing this so much here in the Twin Cities. The joy of the resistance, the creativity, the art… I am so in love with us… and it is leading me deeper into faith and prayer. How about you?
I’ve asked Castor to share a bit about how laughter, music, dance, and joy are grounding him in these times. Castor, would you be willing to share?
Thank you so much, Castor.
Indigenous and African American activists talk about First, Second and Third Space. First space is the conditions of oppression and violence that mark much of daily life. Second space is the resistance, the knowing that something isn’t right, the refusal to settle for First Space. And Third Space are those experiences and times when, if only for a moment, or a day, or a collection of days, an experience of liberation, of healing, of wholeness free of oppression happens.
It is those moments of Third Space that fortify and encourage our living in Second Space in order to resist First Space.
The story of the Transfiguration that we read this morning is a story of Third Space. It is a story of Peter and James and John being gifted by Jesus with a vision of the future that will be but also already is. And it is not coincidence that Jesus allows them this experience of Third Space as a way to fortify them for the journey they must accompany him on through his arrest, trial, and execution. He knows they need it to have any chance at holding on to hope amidst their despair.
So, laughter and joy, humor and jokes are both the practice and sign of God’s liberation.
This claiming of a future promise in a present joy is one of the most powerful tools to defeat authoritarian attempts and movements of supremacy and hatred. They are also powerful tools for the more intimate and personal times of suffering and difficulty. Joe has been such a mentor to me in this… his last few years, and particularly his last year, was filled with a lot of pain and he didn’t shy away from naming that. But he also regularly shared with me his jokes and memes… laughter transported him into third space, and he brought me with him whenever we connected.
My friends, these are hard times, perilous times. Individually and collectively, we are journeying with a lot… And we are invited to be like Joe Bunce… we’re invited to follow Castor and take joy in simple things and maybe a little gamification… and we’re invited to sing to ICE agents and slide down Powderhorn hills in silly sleds.
And may God continue to bless us with Transfiguration moments that we might continue to live and act in love and justice. Amen.
Recent Comments