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by Ken Sehested

Under the sway of Easter bunnies, chocolate binges, and spring fashion sales, Holy Week and Resurrection Morning observances have shed almost all connections to the volatile political events in Jerusalem leading up to Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into the city.

The season of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem was the fevered occasion of Passover. Passover was the story of the Hebrews’ miraculous escape from Egyptian bondage. Passover’s observance in first century Palestine was like President’s Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day all rolled up into one. Judea was again in bondage, this time subjugated by Roman occupation. Jews from around the countryside streamed into Jerusalem for reasons of piety mixed with nationalist fervor. Rome ramped up its troop level every year at this time.

Acts of terrorist assassination escalated during the Passover observance. Some Jewish Zealots—known as the Sicarii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarii , armed with sicae, small daggers that could be hidden in their cloaks—attacked both Roman leaders and members of the Jewish Temple elite who collaborated with their Roman overlords.

Remember what the people shouted as Jesus, mounted on a donkey—an intentional act of satire against the assumptions of military prowess conveyed by the war horse—paraded into the city to be met by cheering crowds who laid palm branches in the street, a common symbol of victory, peace, and triumph among ancient Near East populations.

“Hosanna,” cried the people lining the parade route. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our Lord! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David! Hosanna.”

These shouts were thinly-veiled expressions of political subversion, with the memory of the mighty King David brought to bear against the Roman Caesar Augustus’ chokehold on the nation.

The word “hosanna” isn’t merely a pious expression. It’s not like saying “Amen,” “Hallelujah,” or “Thank-you-Jesus!” The word “hosanna” means “come and liberate us!” It expresses the hope for martial intervention, for achieving political independence, authored by none other than the Creator of heaven and earth, the One who sponsored Abram and Sarai’s trek to the Promised Land, the One who empowered Moses to organize the Hebrews’ flight from Pharaoh’s slavery, the One who ransomed Judah from Babylonian bondage, the One invoked by the Prophets to indict Israel’s failure to practice justice in the marketplace, righteousness in the judiciary, faithfulness in the legislature.

There is of course profound spiritual significance in Good Friday’s brutal arrest, torture, and trial—resulting in Jesus’ execution by crucifixion, an explicitly political form of state-sponsored terrorism designed to repress revolutionary violence—along with the seditious drama of Sunday’s rolled-away stone. But it is a spirituality which informs and reforms social, political, and economic norms. Throughout Scripture, the indwelling of the Spirit traffics in fleshly affairs.

The starting point for this drama, though, occurs on Maundy Thursday, setting the stage for everything else.

In some parts of the church, Holy Week’s Maundy Thursday service is one where Jesus’ initiative in washing his disciples’ feet is replicated. “Maundy” (mandatum in Latin) means mandate, commission, injunction.

The story is unique to John’s Gospel (13:1-17), the Eucharistic account that has no ritual eating and drinking. We are only told that “during supper” Jesus abruptly takes up a towel and basin of water and begins to wash his friends’ feet. Such washing was a common act of hospitality for hosts in a dusty land trod by sandaled feet. We don’t know why this hadn’t happened before the meal. If I were guessing, I’d say no one wanted to do this because none of the disciples wanted to be in Jerusalem in the first place. They knew the danger to Jesus implicated them as well.

When he finished, Jesus used the occasion for his final instruction: “If I, your Teacher and Lord, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” This is Maundy Thursday’s mandate. It was a form of anointing his disciples to enact a reversal of the world’s understanding of power. The righteousness of Heaven’s purpose involves caring for neighbors, particularly the vulnerable, not lording over them. Indeed, naming Jesus as “Lord” disrupts and undermines all forms of lording.

But how is this annulment to be accomplished? By moral heroism? By accentuating the positive? By saintly disposition? By extraordinary feat of willpower?

Notice the odd question Jesus asks his friends in the middle of his teaching. “Do you know what I have done to you?”

In his presence, we have been acted upon. By his power we are no longer autonomous, belonging only to ourselves, putting our own welfare before all others. We do not become (as the marketing gods insist) consumers for whom “freedom” means the choice between cable or satellite, Mac or PC, window or aisle.

Servanthood in the manner of Jesus involves relinquishing private interests in favor of covenant ties to the welfare of the community. St. Augustine famously said, “We imitate whom we adore.” At the core of our faith, the privilege-abandoning Jesus is the cipher for the self-abandoning character of God’s love, inviting and empowering us to participate in that self-giving nature.

Short of Maundy’s mandate, Friday’s agony is little more than divine ransom (as if God was in the bartering business); the joy of Sunday’s empty tomb, little more than the reassertion of divine gloating.

Capacity for living beyond rancorous human competition has been bestowed. We are freed to wash because we have been washed; to forgive because we have been forgiven; to live graciously because grace is loosening the knots of self-absorbed greed in our own souls. The process of conversion, which is a lifetime appointment, is a form of divine photosynthesis: receiving the light of the Beloved’s delight to regenerate the verdant fields of creation’s intention for shared bounty and extravagant endowment.

In the Jesus story, the memory coheres with the mandate. However it didn’t take long before the church’s remembrance of the simple, embodied act of washing feet was replaced with philosophical, ritual, and moralistic conditions and indicators of exhibitionist purity. Exacting doctrine; fastidious performance; forensic precision.

A formula of the faith displaces formation in the faith. The former is easier to measure, manage and, thereby, to control.

There is no behavioral gap between believing and doing. “If you know these things,” Jesus says, “blessed are you if you do them.”

# # #

by Ken Sehested

“Cuba seems to have the same effect on U.S. administrations as the full moon once had on werewolves.” —Dr. Wayne Smith, former director of the US Interest Section in Havana, Cuba

Medieval European maps traced the outline of the entirety of its exploration. Just outside the bounds of what was known they inscribed the words “Here Be Dragons.”

Here Be Dragons is an appropriate mythological metaphor for the U.S. public’s image of our nearest offshore neighbor. Preoccupation with Cuba was a terrifying experience six decades ago when we came within a hair’s breadth of a full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union.[1]

One result of the terror—both shaping and being shaped by U.S. foreign policy—was the locking of public perceptions in a time warp. The U.S. embargo has not only been economic but also diplomatic and cultural.

Except in rare moments—like President Obama’s dramatic trip to Cuba in 2016[2] and, just recently on 11 July, the angry protests of Cubans in numerous cities across the nation,[3] the largest in decades, some met with violent repression and arrests—most in this country think little about U.S.-Cuba relations.

We just don’t get much news from there; and the little we hear is shaped by a woeful lack of historical context.[4]

Nothing that we say is accurate without a crash course in the tortured history of U.S.-Cuba relations.

And nothing could be more helpful in allowing Cubans to negotiate their future than ending the U.S. embargo, an utterly failed policy propped up not as a tool of diplomatic leverage but as a wedge in U.S. domestic politics.[5]

In this matter, we are the pariah nation.[6]

§  §  §

“In 1859, the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate reported favorably a bill ‘to facilitate the acquisition of the Island of Cuba.’”[7]

§  §  §

Few know that the U.S. was considering annexing Cuba not long after solidifying our own independence. In 1820 Thomas Jefferson thought Cuba is ‘the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States’ and told Secretary of War John C. Calhoun that the United States ‘ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.’”[8] In 1823 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams predicted the U.S. would annex Cuba with 50 years.[9] In 1854 President Franklin Pierce supported a plan to annex Cuba, by force if necessary.[10]

Few know that the Cuban people’s first constitution contained a provision allowing the U.S. to intervene in its affairs.[11] Or that when the treaty ending the U.S. war with Spain was signed (giving the U.S. control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines), the U.S.-based “Island of Cuba Real Estate Company” opened for business to sell Cuban land to Americans.[12]

We are largely ignorant of the imprint of the U.S. military’s boot there: of stepping in to steal the Cuban nationals’ expulsion of Spanish rule in 1898; of the Marines’ occupations of 1906-09, 1912, and 1917-22; the 1971 disastrous “Bay of Pigs Invasion.”[13] Still today the U.S. maintains a naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba’s eastern shore.

Few know that for more than a quarter century the U.S. propped up the brutal dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who murdered as many as 20,000 of his critics and allowed the American Mafia to construct and control casino gambling, prostitution, and drug business, protected from U.S. law enforcement.

It is the rare scholar that knows by 1950 the U.S. owned most of Cuba’s sugar industry and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land. Or that by 1956, U.S. corporations controlled 90% of Cuba’s telephone and electric services; 50% of public railways; and Cuban branches of U.S. banks handled 25% of all deposits.[14]

Your school history class probably didn’t mention that in March of 1960, barely a year after the Cuban Revolution, U.S. President Eisenhower signed off on a Central Intelligence Agency project entitled “A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime,” to create an organization of exiled Cubans to train for and carry out terrorist attacks on Cuba.[15] Or that the established U.S. policy on relations with Cuba—from the outset—called for “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”[16]

Furthermore, what do you make of the fact that China and Vietnam, also communist countries, are among our largest trading partners? And we frequently sell boatloads of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, among the most dictatorial governments in the world, where converting to Christianity is punishable by death.

§  §  §

We do control the destinies of Central America, and we do so for the simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a course. . . . Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those we do not recognize and support fail.[17] —Under-Secretary of State Robert Olds, 1927, quoted in Walter LaFeber’s “Inevitable Revolutions”

§  §  §

My personal interest in US-Cuba relations originated with a providential encounter with Rev. Raúl Súarez, a Baptist pastor in Cuba. A mutual friend connected us. I was fascinated to hear about the life of churches in Cuba, and astounded when Raúl quoted from memory long passages from the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[18]

Since that day I have traveled to Cuba numerous times and developed a network of friends and contacts. During those trips I heard this repeated refrain, “Cuba is neither heaven nor hell.” Almost all also say that they thoroughly support the values of the Cuban Revolution, but not its administration, with varying degrees of dissent. Do we, as citizens of the U.S., not exhibit the same diversity of opinions on our government?

The recent street demonstrations in Cuba are due to multiple layers of frustration. Despite the fact that Cuba is the only country in Latin America to produce its own vaccine, the country’s surge in COVID cases triggered unrest rooted in other complaints, which include anger at the government’s monetary policy shift in January, which dramatically increased the price of food and consumer goods; the lack of simple medicines; repeated electricity outages; dismal performance of Cuba’s inefficient, centrally-controlled economy; and outrage over the government’s human rights record and lack of political accountability.[19]

Many of my Cuban friends report an avalanche of disinformation about the pandemic, from shadowy sources, very similar to what we are experiencing in the U.S.

The Cuban government, of course, blames the U.S. economic boycott, a brutal measure which has lasted long beyond the Cold War’s legacy and is the longest such sanctioning policy in U.S. history.

Is the embargo the root cause of Cuba’s problems?[20] Maybe. Maybe not. Near the conclusion of this reflection I will offer a policy prescription to test this opinion.

§  §  §

It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of Our America. . . . I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair—and my weapon is only the slingshot of David. —José Martí, poet, philosopher, and journalist (Cuba’s national hero, considered the “Apostle of Cuban Independence) in his final letter, 18 May 1895, the day before he is killed in the revolt against Spanish rule

§  §  §

Needless to say, the audience here is my own fellow citizens. My goal is to offer historical context to expose a history largely unknown, one that we must take into account in our bilateral relations.

The key element we fail to recognize is that the Cuban revolution’s understanding of human rights, and the resulting idea of “freedom,” is different from that in the U.S.

For instance, despite its relative poverty, Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than that of the U.S., and its literacy rate is higher. Prior to its revolution, Cuba was considered among the wealthier countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet its level of income inequality prior to its revolution was similar to that of the U.S. today, where 0.1% of the population earns as much as the bottom 90%.[21]

Cuba has one of the largest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world.[22] By contrast, in the U.S. more than half a million citizens file for bankruptcy every year because of medical bills.[23] The homeless population in the U.S. is over half a million, whereas Cuba has virtually none.[24]

Few in the U.S. even know Cuba has elections.[25] Or that a 1990 dialogue between Fidel Castro and a group of 70 pastors and religious leaders led to a roll back of many religious discrimination policies and the substitution of “secular” for “atheistic” as a national descriptor in the country’s constitution.[26]

Given the recent public demonstrations, there is considerable anger among Cubans over their governance. But after the 2020 murder by police of George Floyd, 15-25 million U.S. citizens marched in cities in every state, a few of which turned violent and many resulted in arrests by police.

While it’s true that some Cubans (and many Cuban Americans) are calling for extreme measures, including violent overthrow of Cuba’s government, a recent poll in the U.S. reveals that one in three citizens agree with the following statement: “The traditional way of life [in the U.S.] is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”[27]

§  §  §

In one of his early visits to the U.S., Rev. Francisco “Paco” Rodés asked me to help him find a kitchen cabinet handle to replace a broken one in his home. These are the sorts of consumer items often difficult to find in Cuba. No problem, I said, and I drove him to a nearby home improvement store. It took a few minutes to find the right aisle. Then Paco’s eyes bulged in wonder: hundreds of different shapes, colors and designs of cabinet handles. Then he turned to me, with a sly grin on his face, raised his arms and jubilantly announced, “FREEDOM!”[28]

§  §  §

Back then to the prior question: Is the Cuban government’s claim that its nation’s ills can be traced directly to the embargo an established fact or a fig leaf to cover its own failures?

There’s only one clear way to find out, and the burden is on the U.S., not Cuba, to provide the answer. An act of Congress and a presidential signature would end the embargo.[29]

If such a policy improved the lives of the Cuban people, its government’s excuse would be quickly exposed. The people themselves would know soon enough. And so would we.[30]

I do not know what freedom should look like in Cuba’s future. And, given our history of interference, the U.S. lacks credibility to instruct.

But I wonder about one thing, and I fear another.

Did Cuba’s independence leaders, working hard to fend off manipulation by the U.S., end up fending off the always-needed reforming influence of its own people?

My fear is that, in whatever change comes to Cuba, freedom might look like what one thoughtful Cuban friend said to me. When I asked if he thought the embargo would ever be lifted, he paused for a moment and then said: “Yes, but I fear your country will simply buy ours.”

Cuba’s resident population has been attempting to throw off colonial occupation since Columbus landed in 1492 (thinking it was a coastal island of Asia). He wrote:

“This is the most beautiful land ever seen by human eyes.” Then he went on to comment on the indigenous Taíno people of what is now Cuba: They “are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

And in his letters, he repeatedly invoked the name of “our Saviour” and “His holy service” as justification for this subjugation. (Is it any wonder that the Cuban Revolution’s government declared itself atheistic?)

The Cuban people deserve to set their sights on a future freed from imperial meddling. Toward that purpose, and for us in the U.S., the first two steps require that we tell the truth about our nation’s orchestration of terrorist attacks on the country (for more than six decades) and then press hard for an end to the embargo.

# # #

End Notes

[1] U.S. President John Kennedy made a secret deal with Soviet Nikita Khrushchev that the U.S. would removed its nuclear weapons in Turkey in exchange for the Soviets withdrawing their missiles from Cuba. “The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962,” Department of State, Office of the Historian.  For decades the U.S. has had nuclear weapons, based on land, ships, and submarines, ringing the Soviet borders.

[2] See “Background to the touch down: President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba,” by Ken Sehested

[3] Hundreds of protests against coronavirus-related restrictions have occurred in at least 34 states in the U.S. —Wikipedia

[4] For some “did you know?” background on Cuba, see Ken Sehested’s “Thirty-five interesting facts about Cuba and its US relations”

[5] See “A Time For Change: Rethinking U.S.-Cuba Policy,” Lilah Rosenblum, Washington Office on Latin America

[6] This past June the United Nations General Assembly voted (for the 29^th straight year) to end the US embargo of Cuba. The vote: 184-2. Only Israel joined the U.S. in opposition.

[7] “Cuba and Congress,” Albert J. Beveridge, The North American Review, Vol. 172, No. 533 (Apr., 1901, p. 537), University of Northern Iowa

[8] Quoted in “Cuba-United States Relations,” Wikipedia, citing “The American Empire? Not So Fast,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. World Policy Journal

[9] “Cuba-United States Relations,” Wikipedia, citing Cuba and the United States : A chronological History, Jane Franklin. Ocean Press; 1997.

[10] “Ostend Manifesto,” Wikipedia

[11] “Platt Amendment,” Wikipedia

[12] “Cuba-United States relations,” Wikipedia

[13] “Bay of Pigs Invasion,” Wikipedia

[14] “Fulgencio Batista,” Wikipedia

[15] “Operation Mongoose,” Wikipedia

[16] “Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State [Lester D. Mallory] for Inter-American Affairs,” Department of State Office of the Historian

[17] The US has overthrown the democratically elected governments of numerous governments: In Iran in 1953, in Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973. [For more, see “The U.S. tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the Cold War,” Lindsey A. O’Rourke, Washington Post and “United States involvement in regime change,” Wikipedia

[18] Raúl, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Havana, would later found the Martin Luther King Center and, later still, become among the first three Christians to be elected to the Cuban National Assembly.

Also see “Martin Luther King Jr. in Cuba: A Cuban pastor’s story of King’s influence,” by Francisco Rodés

[19] See “Explainer: Causes of the protests in Cuba,” Andrea Rodríguez, Associated Press.

[20] “No one will ever know the extent to which the US embargo has created the current failed state of Cuba, and the extent to which it is a failure of the socialist system. The US determined at the outset of the Cuban Revolution that it could not risk finding out if socialism could work, that would be too much a threat to our system if in fact it did. So we created every obstacle we could to ensure that it did fail, and then when we are successful in its failure, we can blame it on socialism.” Personal correspondence with Stan Dotson who, with his spouse Kim Christman, has lived in Cuba for much of the past six years. I highly recommend Stan’s book, “Cuba: A Day in the Life,” a wonderful collection of stories from everyday life.

[21] See “Income Inequality in the United States.”

[22] “Countries With The Most Doctors Per Capita,” World Atlas.

[23] “25+ Medical Bankruptcy Statistics to Know in 2021,” Christo Petrov, Spendmenot.

[24] “List of countries by homeless population,” Wikipedia

[25] Ken Sehested, “Cuba’s historic electoral process November 2017 – April 2018: For the first time since its revolution, Cuba will not have a president named Castro,” by Ken Sehested

[26] “CUBA: Churches Tackle Divisions by Discussing Ethics, Not Doctrine,” Dalia Acosta, Inter Press Service News Agency and “Sanctioning Faith: Religion, State, and U.S.-Cuban Relations,” Jill Goldenziel, Harvard University

[27] “Poll shows disturbing level of support for political violence,” Dominick Mastrangelo, The Hill.

[28] The author’s personal story. Also see “Martin Luther King Jr. in Cuba: A Cuban pastor’s story of King’s influence,” by Francisco Rodés

[29] “Why the Cuba embargo needs to end, explained in 3 minutes,” Zack Beauchamp, Vox

[30] For more see “Bring Down the Wall in the Caribbean: A resolution in support of renewed diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba,” written by Ken Sehested, approved by the 23-25 June 2016 annual meeting of the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ and later approved by the 31^st General Synod of the United Church of Christ, June 30-July 4, 2017.

by Ken Sehested

“Concealment makes the soul a swamp.
Confession is how you drain it.”
—Charles M. Blow

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly.
They acted shamefully, they committed abomination,
yet they did not know how to blush.
—Jeremiah 6:14-15

As it is frequently proclaimed, particularly during Lent, you would think the church’s call to penitence, and its assurance of pardon, assumes that God — in classic passive-aggressive behavior — desires to offer grace but only if we submit to humiliation. A web search for images of “penance” reveals many photos of people beating themselves.

So let’s be clear about this from the beginning: God is not a sadist in need of compliant masochists.

Moreover, the community of faith needs to relearn the means of speaking this word in the public arena and not simply behind sanctuary doors and in Sunday school rooms.

Our recent national history is replete with apologies of the “mistakes were made” variety that deny responsibility, offering vague, scattershot “I apologize if I offended anyone” excuses for bad behavior or abusive speech. Such comments actually mean, “I’m sorry you took my [comment or behavior] the wrong way; I hope you get better,” putting the onus of recovery on the offended.

It’s easy to understand public disdain for any sort of penitential language. If absolution comes with no resolution — to live differently, in whatever small and incremental way — confession has been emptied of all meaning. And worse, it has become religious armor for infamy.

Mercy opens a portal to repentance, characterized not so much by apologetic expression as by the hard work of repairing the damage, of reestablishing trustworthy relations.

If we are to envision anything other than a dystopian future, we must recover language for what the Greek New Testament calls metanoia, “to turn around, to change one’s life,” usually translated as “repentance.”

To get there involves attention to seven precepts.

First, distinguish between shame and guilt. Insidiously, in our culture guilt is confused with shame, which is actually a form of self-preoccupation that engenders paralysis and passivity, an escape — knowingly or not — from response-ability. Shame removes agency, whereas the proper function of guilt is to identify transgression and mobilize the work of restoration.

Second, recognize such penance as a public and relational process, not just a private and solitary event. Spirituality always is personal but never merely private. While Jesus spoke in a more intimate tone concerning relations with the Abba than does much of Hebrew Scripture, his is a distinctive word, not a different one. One of our greatest rhetorical needs is learning to announce the gospel word (which is always both a gift and a demand) in the public sphere and not just to isolated souls. Furthermore, the purpose of penitential life is not to wallow in the prospect of loss, but to bask in the prospect of gain—not to dwell in the land of accusation, but to move forward to the land of shared bounty.

Third, comprehend the purpose of judgment as restoration, not retaliation. See it as the reclamation of virtue, not the authorization of vengeance. This framework has ancient antecedents in the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam (repair of the world) from the Jewish Talmud. The new criminal justice paradigm known as “restorative justice,” as an alternative to the retributive justice model, also has insight for the church. Where the demand of retribution is “Who is to blame and how should they be punished?” the restorative principle asks, “Who has been harmed and who is responsible (and how) for repairing the injury?”

Fourth, acknowledge that the process of restoration is often discomforting, frightening, and strenuous. Often, what passes for reconciliation is the desire to “make nice,” to promote “civility” and suppress conflict prior to unearthing root causes of injustice. Peace is confused with order, when in fact the order is structured repression. Truth telling about suppressed history is essential. When accused of fomenting conflict, Dr. King rightly responded that he was simply bringing underlying conflict to the surface. As has been said, when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of justice. Which is why peacemakers, who know that justice is at stake, are sometimes considered troublemakers.

Fifth, resolve no longer to be silent in the face of abuse. Among the many memorable lines from King’s bold and dangerous speech critiquing the Vietnam War is this: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” The #MeToo movement recent years features courageous women coming forward, risking reputations and careers and even retaliation, calling to account the abusive sexual behavior of men. It represents a profoundly healing turn in our culture. This turn also is stressful and disquieting. As has been said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you odd; but first it will make you miserable.” The refusal to be silent in the face of bullying—of every sort—is the first step in flipping that script.

Sixth, ending silence in the face of abuse begins with the ritual work of lament, itself a form of penitence. This precept is among many things to be learned from African American communities of faith. The articulation of grief — whether in speech or music or dance or moaning — contains in its very performance the generative power of assurance that siphons away the power of fear. Our capacity to grieve and lament are directly related to our capacity for hope, much like the circumference of a tree’s canopy is proportionate to its root system.

Seventh, the penitential life, which begins in disillusionment and grief, pushes toward clarity, which leads toward a kind of hope that is more than daydreaming. To hope for something is not a wouldn’t-it-be-nice sentiment. Hope hitches us to a process designed to overcome injustice by forging equitable relations. This final precept is drawn from Rebecca Solnit’s amazing book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, and it brings us back to where we began. Solnit writes, “Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. Hope is an ax you break down doors with in the case of emergency. … The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as of the grave.”

Conflict mediation specialist Byron Bland has written that two truths make healthy community difficult: That the past cannot be undone, and that the future cannot be controlled. However, two counterforces are available to address these: The practice of forgiveness, which has the power to change the logic of the past; and covenant-making, which creates islands of stability and reliability in a faithless, sometimes ruthless world.

The awareness that we have been culpable in harm is indeed painful, but the pain’s purpose is not punishment but a penitence that generates the resolve to engage the difficult work of reconciliation.

As King wrote in his anguished essay “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” These cords neither smother nor strangle. Such covenants are essential both for human and ecological flourishing. And this is what it means to be righteous in the eyes of God.

#  #  #

This essay is excerpted and adapted from a longer 2018 article, “The Ties that Bind: The Integrity of Penitence, on the 50th Anniversary of the Massacre at My Lai,” https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/the-ties-that-bind/ as a resource for faith communities marking the 50th anniversary of the massacre in My Lai, Vietnam. The resource was commissioned by the Vietnam Peace Commission, a broad coalition of organizations to encourage commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of the 16 March 1968 massacre by US troops of more than 500 civilians in My Lai, Vietnam.

 

by Ken Sehested

I can almost smell the acrid, thick smoke of diesel engines powering Russian tanks, personnel carriers, and trucks hauling heavy artillery into two eastern provinces of Ukraine’s border with Russia. This afternoon Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the two provinces as “independent states,” and that he was sending in “peacekeeper” troops to protect ethnic Russians in the region.

It’s likely the halls of the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon will stay on all night with a company of aides following up-to-the-minute news and crafting President Biden’s response. The same goes for European and Russian leaders. Dawn is already breaking for many of them.

Ash Wednesday came early for the Roman Catholics in Ukraine. Most Orthodox communions do not observe Ash Wednesday. Their Lenten season, starting this year with a “Forgiveness” vesper service on Sunday evening, 6 March, which is followed by “Clean Monday,” whose liturgical functions is similar to Ash Wednesday.

The Scriptural text for Clean Monday is the memorable lines from Isaiah 1, which begins with YAHWEH’s denouncing religious posturing. “I have had enough of burnt offerings . . . your incense is an abomination to me . . . . I cannot endure your solemn assemblies . . . even though you say many prayers.”

Why? Because “your hands are full of blood.”

Those of vigorous piety love verse 18 of this chapter: “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” Growing up I never heard the preceding lines: “Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, plead for the widow.”

The prelude to God’s beautiful salvific offer is ignored.

So, yet again the elaborate rituals inaugurating Lent will be staged with bloody hands. The penitential promise will again be ignored. Sacred music will compete with the loud recoil of guns. Sackcloth and ashes will be replaced with body armor. Ukrainian and Russians will offer competing prayers for safety and victory. The gods of redemptive violence will receive all the offerings.

Who indeed can save us from this body of death?

#  #  #

by Ken Sehested

The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, commonly referred to as Christ the King Sunday (aka Reign of Christ Sunday) is among the newer observances in the church’s lectionary calendar. It was promulgated by Roman Catholic Pope Pius XI in 1925, as a reaction to the perceived growth of secularism, escalating nationalism, and surging anti-clericalism. As it now stands, it is the final Sunday in the lectionary calendar, ushering in a new “year” beginning with Advent.

Numerous other denominations, which follow the Revised Common Lectionary, also observe the day as the culmination of the annual narrative of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection.

As is the case with most every liturgical observance, this Sunday’s focus has both redemptive and reactionary overtones and implications.

Obviously, all kingly and lordly language is problematic because of inherent misogyny, upholding the historic subjugation of and indignity toward women. In addition, such language upholds the legitimacy of feudal rule in human affairs. The absolute rule of kings and assorted other potentates is said to be divinely patterned and codified according to heavenly precedent.

As in heaven, so on earth. By implication, the notion that “outside the church there is no salvation” became sanction for the church’s exclusive, domineering authority.

This intertwining of heavenly and earthly rule is explicitly asserted by Scottish-English King James I when, in responding to dissident pastor Thomas Helwys’ rejection of the royal religious authority, the king responded “It would be only half a king who controlled his subjects’ bodies but not their souls.”

It would take many generations of discrimination, oppression, exile, torture, and martyrdom to bring about a democratizing of access to the Holy.

Nevertheless, Pius XI’s stipulation of a “Christ the King” observance can also be interpreted in a way that bolsters, rather than hinders, resistance to monarchal privilege and virulent nationalisms of every kind. We can rightfully say that Jesus’ “lordship” undermines and destabilizes every form of lording. And the nature of such lordship highlights the Gospel of nonviolent resistance to all oligarchic pretenders.

In her recent article in Sojourners magazine, T. Denise Anderson reminds that in 1925, Adolf Hitler published the first volume of his manifesto, Mein Kampf, where he lays the foundation of his racially supremacist views. Also in 1925, 40,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched in Washington, DC. Thought at that time to be the largest fraternal organization in the country, they were already using their “America First” slogan.

In this same period Benito Mussolini assumed power as the fascist dictator of Italy. Joseph Stalin had succeeded Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution in the Soviet Union. Francisco Franco was rising through the ranks of the Spanish military, on his way to establishing his militaristic dictatorship.

Nationalism was contagious, and authoritarian leadership was in epidemic, prompted in part by the chaos and industrialized belligerence of World War I.

In John’s Gospel, when Pilate asks him about his kingship, Jesus replies “My kingdom is not of this world” (18:36). The “world” to which he referred was not the earth. Rather, the world is that complex web of relationships built on exploitation, jealousy, fraud, and violence. Adding, if it were (based on this world order), “my followers would fight” and violently resist arrest.

A few verses prior, Jesus rebukes Peter’s act of violent resistance. In Matthew’s telling of Peter’s impulsive reaction and Jesus’ rebuke, Jesus says he could, if he chose, easily mobilize 12 legions of angels to assure his rescue.

The rejection of every myth of redemptive violence is already underscored in this Sunday’s lectionary reading from Psalms, including the claim that God breaks bows, shatters spears, and makes wars to cease,(46); and in Luke’s testimony, redemption comes by way of mercy rather than martial prowess, to “guide our feet into the path of peace” (1:77-79).

“In him,” the author of Colossians insists, “all things hold together” (1:17). Only under the Way of Jesus/Sway of Christ and its beatific vision of a Beloved Community can the grisly rule of imperial power and dynastic reign be rescinded and displaced. Such is our eschatological confession over the coherence of all creation: no sovereign but the Abba of Jesus.

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by Ken Sehested

At sunset tonight, Muslims around the world begin their observance of Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, which entails fasting (during daylight hours), a renewed focus on prayer and meditation on the Qur’an, and communal generosity. These behavioral admonitions broadly resemble the Christian emphases of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving during Lent.

Such ascetic practices are sometimes understood as a condemnation of all human desiring, as if “spiritual” life and “fleshly” are polar opposites.

Such is not the case. What is the case is that human desiring often disorients and confuses spiritual life. Instead of fostering neighborliness, disorderly desires encourage antagonism, greed, and acrimony.

Creation’s abundant blessing—”May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine” (Genesis 27:28)—devolves into a curse—”[P]ride is the necklace [of the wicked]; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out with fatness, their hearts overflow with follies. They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression (Psalm 73:6-8).

Yes, ascetic practices can themselves become twisted and tortuous. As if God is a sadist and in need of appeasement by means of masochistic acts of human self-denial. As if faith is a surrender to torture. As if spiritual growth is accomplished by bodily distress. As if penitence is reduced to self-flagellation.

In the end, it is a party, not a purge, to which we are oriented. Doing so requires that we humans regularly find ways to check our appetites. In the end, none of us enter Paradise alone but only in the company of those previously deemed unwelcomed or unworthy to sit at the Table of Plenty.

Gloria Dei est vivens homo! (“The glory of God is the human fully alive.”) —St. Irenaeus, 2nd century church leader, in “Against Heresies, c. 185 CE

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by Ken Sehested

I have a vivid memory of the exact moment. I was in seminary, having fled my native South to New York City to finish college and seminary, embarrassed at being a Baptist, at being a white Southerner, and not entirely sure if I was a believer. But the God question wouldn’t go away.

A mighty wrestling match was underway in my soul, trying to come to terms with my adolescent “youth revival” preacher days. Neither the Civil Rights nor the anti-Vietnam War movements had disturbed my piously-furrowed brow.

One Saturday in high school, starting a Saturday 12-hour shift pumping gas and washing cars, I was transferring product displays and stacks of new tires outside as we prepared to open shortly before dawn. I overheard the radio saying something about Martin Luther King Jr.

That Martin Luther King, he ain’t no Christian,” the station owner muttered toward the radio. Everywhere he go there’s trouble.

It would be years before it occurred to me the same was likely said about Jesus.

Entering seminary, I became a voracious reader of the history, details and figures of the Civil Rights Movement era.

Then came that vivid moment. I had purchased one of those over-sized books of photos of Dr. King and other civil rights moments and luminaries. Flipping through, I turned to a photo showing Dr. King and his wife Coretta sitting at a piano, their infant daughter Yolanda perched on Martin’s lap as he and Coretta sang from an open hymnal.

The cover title was clear. It was the Broadman Hymnal. The hymnal I grew up with. Published by the Southern Baptist Convention (the same body whose Executive Committee voted down a resolution of sympathy to members of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, one day after the terrorist bombing in 1963 that killed four young children).

At one time I could quote from memory the page number of dozens of titles in that hymnal. As I came to discover, a good many churches that hosted Civil Rights Movement mass meetings—churches that were threatened by cross-burning Klan torches—did their singing from the Broadman. And I also learned that terrorism on American soil has a long history.

That moment—that photo—stands among my life’s greatest epiphanies. I came to realize that the language of faith can have many different, even competing meanings, just as any chemical compound, minus even one element, turns into something else altogether.

The annual commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday provides a perennial occasion to remember the dream that still beckons both church and civil society. And not just in the US: I’ve listened to children in Baghdad sing “We Shall Overcome” in Arabic, and read similar accounts from the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square in Beijing, to South Africa’s Soweto Township. A comic book-style telling of the Montgomery bus boycott, first published in 1958, was translated into Arabic in 2008 and circulated widely during the “Arab Spring” democracy movement in North Africa.

Yet Dr. King was not assassinated because he was a dreamer, though the national holiday-makers have largely domesticated and smoothed over the threat he represented. (“The most dangerous negro in the country,” according to the FBI’s assessment.)

We forget that by the time he was assassinated, his favorable public opinion polling had plummeted to 33%. We forget that his last major speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” when he openly condemned the U.S. war in Vietnam, he charged that our nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

After prophets die, we mold their memory to suit our purposes. We ladle praise on them and put them on pedestals—as a way to distance ourselves from them. There is some truth in that old canard: “A conservative is someone who admires a dead radical.”

Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is not the same as being captured by it. It is not only possible but common to respect the man but relinquish the mission, to revere the dreamer but renege on the dream . . . such that it turns into something else entirely.

The biggest mistake we make is using the King Birthday observance as the occasion to heap accolades on his memory. Diane Nash, one of the many unheralded leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, says it well:

“If people think that it was Martin Luther King’s movement, then today they—young people—are more likely to say, ‘gosh, I wish we had a Martin Luther King here today to lead us.’ If people knew how that movement started, then the question they would ask themselves is, “What can I do?’”

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by Ken Sehested

Advent is the Christian season when the threat of terror and the prospect of trust collide, both competing for our attention regarding prospects for the future. Will it be more of the same; only intensified?

In all times and places the dominant cultural voices (secular and religious) have denied that history will ever break free of its orbit of pain, suffering, and loss—as if history has its own unbreakable sway of gravity. They are called the “realists,” and they champion charity to suppress the demands of justice. Though the church will occasionally read the Beatitudes in public, few put much stock in such a future.

There’s no better summary of such popular wisdom than by the cheeky comment of Countess Violet Crawly (played by Maggie Smith) in the television show, “Downton Abby.”

“Hope,” the Countess insisted, “is a tease to keep us from accepting reality.”

Famously, the Apostle Paul confronted what the realists called “foolishness” with his affirmation that God’s foolishness can be trusted. According to him (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:18-30), the Gospel announcement is that another world is not only possible but is in fact on its way—present already in those with open rather than grasping hands—as the aperitif of an era beyond scorched time.

In Latin, there are two words for the future. Futurus suggests a future constructed out of the past and present. Futurologists are those who rely on extrapolations from present trends, indicators that lean toward sustaining present patterns of power and suppressing alternative visions.

The word adventus, on the other hand, suggests the arrival of the new. Certainly for Christians, the season of Advent brings us to the edge of our chairs, straining for the sound of the announcement of annulment for earth’s agony. This waiting and watching is neither neutral nor passive. It is sustained by a bias, one that governing authorities fear, who want only futurus, more of the same.

Advent is the seasonal marking of adventus faith, formed by the beatific vision of a future beyond all currently available calculations, one that can be receiving only by those with unclenched fists and unclasped hearts, one that does not obliterate creatureliness but arises from its compost.

The stories we tell and songs we sing in our sanctuaries remind us that buoyancy emerges from unseen places, at unknowing moments, in unpredictable ways, beyond present reckoning and prognostication.

The present world’s futurus rulers always want to limit what is possible to what is available. Adventus people instinctively know that reality will not be bridled by apparent history and its imperial champions.

Advent is the invitation to attentiveness even when the sap isn’t running, in the face of a howling cold wind and the frightful dark night.

So, kindred, carpe noctem—sieze the night.

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by Ken Sehested

Easter is God’s resurrection moment; Pentecost is God’s resurrection movement, the birthday of the church, the shock troops of the Kingdom. On Easter God declares divine intention; on Pentecost God deploys divine insurgents. On Easter God announces the invasion; Pentecost is when God establishes a beachhead. At Easter God announces, “I Have a Dream.” On Pentecost Sunday, the marchers line up, the police close in, the first tear gas canisters fly, the first arrests are made. But the people of God keep on marching, heading for the courthouse, headed for the White House, headed for the jail house, headed for the school house, headed for the big house. Headed for every house that’s not built on the solid rock of God’s righteousness, God’s justice; headed for every house that’s been stolen from the hands that built it; headed for every house in every segregated neighborhood; headed for every house that shelters oppression, every house that welcomes bigotry, every house that schemes violence.

“For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,” said Isaiah, “and the Lord looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry! Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room, and you are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land” (5:7-8).

“Therefore,” says Amos, “because you trample upon the poor and take from them exactions of wheat, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them” (5:11)

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus warned, “for you devour widows houses and for a pretense you make long prayers” (Matt. 23:14).

But at Pentecost, the stolen house, the segregated housed, the house of oppression, even the big house is slated for redemption. Recall this description of the houses of the first Pentecostal powered community: “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:34).

Pentecostal power is an assault on segregation; Pentecostal power is antagonistic to apartheid; Pentecostal power extinguishes ethnic cleansing; Pentecostal power negates nationalism; Pentecostal power wreaks havoc on racism; Pentecostal power triumphs over tribalisms of every kind.

Now, notice here—and this is very important—the Pentecost story in Acts doesn’t say everyone suddenly started speaking the same language. Pentecost does not destroy the various distinctives between and among people. But the story does affirm that these differences are brought under the binding power of the Holy Spirit. They can no longer claim autonomy. They are no longer barriers to community. They are now in the service of God—the very God who repeatedly, time after time after time, has acted to nudge creation back to its purpose in Genesis.

Pentecostal power is the power to overcome ancient hostility, to gather the excluded, to scale the walls of social, racial, even class divisions. Between gay and straight.

I’m convinced that Pentecost is now the most important season for us as Christians. The true energy of Easter is more than, is fundamentally different from the “sugar high” you get from eating chocolate Easter bunnies. That kind of energy burns off within hours, leaving us weary, exhausted. That kind of energy is quickly dissipated. Within a week the Body of Christ is dragging its sparse remnants to a half-hearted post-Easter Sunday service. The resurrection moment is producing very little movement.

A cynical journalist once wrote that a conservative is someone who worships a dead radical. Dead radicals can’t bother us anymore. We quickly domesticate their memories, kind of like the way we do with Dr. King. Of course, we don’t think of Jesus as dead; but he does seem to be safely tucked away in heaven. And from a lot of the preaching I hear, you’d think our job is simply to convince people they need to start making payments on a ticket to join him there when they die. No threatening movement seems to occur when Pentecostal power is preached from our pulpits.

By and large the believing community has become strangers to the power Jesus promised. The subversive character of his life has been entombed in memorial societies we call churches. We revere his memory but we renege on his mission. The proclamation of the Gospel no longer threatens the new world order our leaders envision for us. The erupting, disrupting flow of Pentecostal power has been pacified, rendered harmless, packaged for television broadcast.

There was a time when the redemptive power activated at Pentecost was the power to mend the rips within our social fabric, to restore splintered relationships, to repair broken communities. Pentecostal power once indicated the power to stand in the cracks, to face the hostilities without fear, to confess, repent and repair.

Among the names for God in Scripture is one that means “Advocate.” Or, you could say, “Counsel for the Defense.” In other words, someone who is For Us, a Divine Protagonist—not to get us or trap us or force us into embrace. But One who is in the process of turning us all toward each other, even to our enemies. A Protagonist who lets us in on the divine secret: the world is headed for a party, not a purge. A Protagonist who assures us that we can risk much because we are safe, that nothing—not even death—can forestall the divine purpose of redemption.

This Protagonist, the Holy Spirit, this wind and fire, is taking us into the very heart of God’s and God’s purposes, aligning us with divine intention for creation. In the Pentecostal movement, God is pitching a tent in our midst.

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