Commendations for sustaining
impervious resistance to imperial dominance
Ken Sehested
Invocation. “Sometimes I get so sad / Sometimes you just make me mad / It’s a sad and beautiful world / It’s a sad and beautiful world.” —“Sad and Beautiful World,” Mavis Staples
Call to worship. Over and over again, the psalmist and the prophets exclaimed grief, sometimes with fury, with some version of: “How long, O Lord, how long will the wicked prosper?” —Psalm 6:3; 13:1-2; 35:17; 74:10; 82:2; 89:46; 94:3; 119:84; Job 19:2; Hosea 8:5; Isaiah 6:11; Jeremiah 12:4; 47:6; Habakkuk 1:2; Zechariah 1:12; Revelation 6:10
§ § §
An internet meme summarizes my conclusion: “If 2025 were a drink, it would be a colonoscopy prep.”
And another: “I am going to stay up on New Year’s Eve this year. Not to welcome the new year or anything. I just want to make sure this one leaves.”
It’s been a pants-on-fire kind of year. The kind that makes even the most happy-go-lucky soul develop a quaver in their 
otherwise cheery voice. Every time I think we hit bottom, a basement appears. And again.
It’s true: there are some hints that the maga-fever might be breaking. We need to note those cracks; but who knows how long cracks survive before a dam’s rupture begins. Even if it does—to switch metaphors—the momentum of a runaway train makes it difficult to halt; plus, the stopping could come as a massively destructive derailment.
You don’t have to be an alarmist to think the future of our republic is in danger. Which is why people of faith and conscience should occupy ourselves with disciplined patterns of storm-resistant spiritual fortification.
It’s a sad world. The Bible frequently and furiously expresses these emotions and impulses. I dare say, Scripture encourages us to hurl our insults, to shout our helplessness, to confess our own violent imaginations—at the world, and even at God.
But it is required that we process these vile emotions with each other, with God as our witness, with the permission of the Holy Spirit, mimicking even the speech of Jesus, as when he said, on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
It is a sad world. A distressful world. A sometimes wretched and rancorous world. But it is also, simultaneously—most certainly, just as surely—a beautiful world.
How do we hold these two things together, allowing neither to cancel out the other, making space both for the brutality of the world and the bounty of the world? Attending both to Earth’s agony and Heaven’s jubilation?
§ § §
Hymn of intercession. “Emmanuel.” —Public School 22 Chorus, Staten Island, NY, arrangement inspired by Tori Amos, directed by Gregg Breinberg
§ § §
I have seven commendations for your consideration. No doubt you can add others.
First commendation. Avoid practicing magical thinking, claims of unicorn sightings, cushioned parlor games of fantastical daydreaming, delusional reverie rising from hot tub bemusement.
We all have the tendency to shelter in place during socially-severe weather; to shut out the shouting; to shield our eyes and cover our ears to the misery just beyond our front gates. But if we are to discover what is truly beautiful in the world, we begin by being attentive to where beauty has been suppressed; to where humanity has been dehumanized; to where earth’s beauty has been contaminated; to where children’s playful voices have been silenced.
Doing so requires being vulnerable in ways that seem risky. That doesn’t mean being foolhardy. It does mean critically examining our risk-avoidance habits. Faith in the Way of Jesus is inherently risky.
Second commendation. It is incumbent upon us to acknowledge that our complaints reveal how privileged we are, in relation to the unnumbered, both within our nation and elsewhere, who have lived in despondence and disposition long before now.
For those of us who do not fret about where tomorrow’s food will come, despair is a form of narcissism resulting in a self-imposed debility. Truth is, we have more resilience than we know, and we cannot know our limits until they are tested. Be willing to be tested.
Third commendation. It’s time to get a grip, cast off the easy comfort of optimism, and welcome being roughly tutored by the Spirit as to the true and wasted places where hope emerges, where water flows from rock and manna appears in drought-impaired landscapes; where impossibilities are reversed, valleys of despair are raised, and heights of arrogance are humbled and brought low.
To quote Mary Oliver, the challenge for us is to “keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable.”
Fourth commendation. It is our duty to be informed. But not consumed. Doomscrolling is a kind of self-mutilation which serves the interests of those who want us distracted, agitated, and frantic, unable to apply the modest weight of our convictions in campaigns of mass resistance AND reconstruction.
As John Paul Lederach writes, “Pessimism born of cynicism is a luxurious avoidance of engagement.” The commitment to be attentive to godforsaken people and places does not mean self-traumatizing. God is not a sadist, and we are not masochists.
Fifth commendation. It is essential that we be grounded in real world events, cognizant of the brute facts of seemingly incorrigible and corrupt patterns of power. But we are also called to practice what John Paul Lederach, in his book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, calls “moral imagination” which is “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenge of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist. . . . creativity requires moving beyond the parameters of what is visible, what currently exists, or what is taken as given.”
Imperial powers always limit what is possible to what is available. As the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy says, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Sixth commendation. As Wendell Berry counsels, it is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. We need communities of conviction, starting with one that is locally grounded; but also with others to which we are connected at a distance.
To keep our eyes on the prize, we need each other, such that when our spirits flag, we are carried by others. All of our communities should facilitate boundary-crossing connections with those not of our caste, class, ethno-nationalities, etc.
James Baldwin said, “The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love . . . is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light.” You don’t have to be a priest or a preacher to do this. You can be a truck driver, a ballet dancer, a beautician, or a heart surgeon.
Seventh commendation. More than anything else, the Little Flock of Jesus’ vision and mission must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance.
In these days, here and now—at historic levels—the community of faith in the Way of Jesus is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. A current, prominent name for this corruption is White/Christian Nationalism.
Maybe the most distinctive calling we have in this season is to undermine the corruption of Christian speech, to intelligently and passionately confront the theme of so-called manifest destiny, as if the opulence and orgy of our national piety have the power to manipulate God’s special favor, as if colonialism is virtue.
This is heresy and must be loudly denounced as such, not just with our words but with the very shape of our lives, livelihoods shaped and animated by the Beloved’s passion for the fate of those left behind, left out, left over.
Kindred, it is a sad and a beautiful world. We live in a colicky world, and in a history that appears to be predicated on violence.
We must speak to each other of our sadness, of our own violent impulses, and testify publicly and grievously, of Earth’s agony; but also testify, resoundingly, to Creation’s beauty, of her inconspicuous heroes, of the stories of kindness and compassion and sheer gladness.
As we do, I assure you, in most uncertain terms, that the Creator of Heaven and Earth hovers near, unseen but fully present, weeping with us in our grievous sorrows, rejoicing in our exultant joys.
World without end. Amen. And amen.
§ § §
Benediction. “Blessed One, whose name we dare not speak, but of whose Presence we dare not remain silent, we stand before you with hearts in shreds and hands frozen. We know that we creatures were made for praise and thanksgiving. We recognize that gratitude is our natural home.
“But these are unnatural days. Instead of Heaven’s jubilation at Creation’s unfolding, most of what we hear are the arias of agony and the cornet’s sounding of retreat. . . . Remind us again, O Holy Spirit, of that design by whose pattern we were made. Call back to memory, Sweet Jesus, at whose table we eat and drink, of whose feet we are to wash. Call us back to our right mind, for clarity over the source and aim of our commission.” —KLS
Recessional. “What a Wonderful World.” —Louis Armstrong
# # #
A version of this article first appeared in Baptist News Global.
