Living as Easter People

In the Christian calendar, we are officially in the Season of Easter. It began yesterday with Easter Sunday and will continue for the next seven weeks until Pentecost. During this holy season, Christians around the world celebrate the central mystery of our faith: that God’s love for God’s world is more powerful than anything anyone on earth can imagine, including death. That hope is of particular comfort as people around the world mourn the passing of Pope Francis today. I want to extend my love and support particularly to our Catholic siblings in Christ.

Those of us who are Christians profess this hope in the midst of profound grief, but I am asking myself in this fraught time: Are we practicing it? 

The last time I wrote a personal note to you was on January 20, the day that President Donald J. Trump took his oath of office. I wrote then: 

As we prepare for an onslaught of discriminatory policies, many of which will be cloaked in the language of Christian nationalism, we can learn from our past and from Dr. King’s prophetic witness about speaking truth to power and acting in faithful resistance to unjust systems. We can remember that apathy and compliance to wrongs makes us complicit in wrongdoing. We can reclaim the zeal of early Christians who upset the status quo in the model of Jesus, who came to disrupt the powerful and preached that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. 

 

Over the next four years, all of us will have opportunities to stand with the oppressed, the marginalized and the most vulnerable to harm. 

Little did I know just how many opportunities we would all have to stand with the people who are most vulnerable to harm in the first 90 days of this administration. The speed with which President Trump and his enablers have pushed us towards authoritarianism is beyond what I or most people could have imagined. Congress has continually abrogated its constitutional duty to provide a check on executive power. The federal judiciary has for the most part upheld its end of the constitutional bargain, but the President and other members of the executive branch, including the Department of Justice, are acting in unlawful and extra-constitutional ways to disregard court orders. We have seen mixed reactions from the private and civic sectors, with some universities, law firms, media companies, business leaders and religious leaders standing up to attacks on civil liberties, and others capitulating and obeying in advance. 

We are living through a hinge moment in U.S. and world history. Today, we are releasing a special bonus episode of the “Respecting Religion” podcast to focus on the still-developing story of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed by the U.S. government from Maryland to El Salvador and has been wrongly jailed there for 37 days and counting. BJC General Counsel Holly Hollman and I discussed Abrego Garcia’s case with Melissa Rogers, who served in two prior presidential administrations, about the injustice and the profound ramifications of this case on due process, the rule of law and freedom for everyone living in our country, including U.S. citizens. We also give ideas on how you can speak out and call on his return. You can listen to the episode at this link or download and subscribe to Respecting Religion wherever you get your podcasts.   

I know not everyone who supports BJC and will read this message is a Christian, but I am writing specifically to my fellow Christians today. These are dark days for our country and our world. But hope is one of our core theological values. This weekend, we celebrated that God’s love for this world cannot be stopped by an empire that will torture and execute love. Six years ago, when we began the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, I spoke with biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann on the BJC podcast about how our theology can inform our political engagement. His words continue to ring true, particularly in this Easter season: 

Good Friday was the pinnacle of the power of the Roman Empire. The execution of Jesus, they thought, was the ultimate defeat of the Good News of the Gospel. And what Easter Sunday morning asserts is that the power of the Roman Empire was superseded by God’s power for life in the person of Jesus. And what the crucifixion/resurrection narrative bears witness to is that the presumption of any nation or any empire has its limits and finally cannot defeat God’s intention for an alternative way in the world. So I see the confession of Easter as being pivotal for political practice in the world because it says that God’s will for life and for well being finally is the truth of the world, and when we sign on for that, we sign on for all kinds of possibilities that the nation or the empire does not want to entertain. 

My prayer for this Easter Monday is that we live as Easter people, in this season and indeed for all of our lives. May we profess the hope of resurrection as we stand against all forms of oppression and injustice. May we love God by loving our neighbors.