Matter

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
-James Baldwin

Today, James Baldwin gets the first and the last word. As the news stories continue to roll in about a supermarket in Buffalo and thirteen people targeted for their blackness by a young white man filled with racist hate and armed with killing bullets. Ten dead, who were selecting groceries or guarding the store or just walking through the parking lot. Lord, have mercy.

Have mercy, Lord. On us. Nothing is fixed. The earth is always shifting. We are responsible to them because we are–we may be the only witnesses they have.   

The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. Put another way today, the moment we cease to see each other as equally human, the moment we lose faith in the dignity and honor inherent in the beautiful blackness of our neighbors’ bodies, the chaos which God’s loving act of creation spun into a space of vibrant and delight-filled life–that chaos rises within us and around us.

Keeping the light burning demands our passion. It demands that we hold each other–not simply in our thoughts and our prayers but with our bodies, with our matter. And what matters to us must be real. Real people. Real neighbors. Real children–not simply ideas. Not simply possibilities.

The incarnate Christ, who came among us as one of us, who held us, who held faith with us, who clung to us while the sea ground the rocks and the chaos blindly pounded the land, this same incarnate Christ is the risen one who invites us to find our faith in the marks of the nails on his body; in the places where he was pierced. 

Here’s part of a prayer from The Book of Common Prayer, from the order of worship for Good Friday:

Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their fulfillment by him through whom all things were made.

Amen.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling
-Philippians 2:12

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
-James Baldwin