Easter Sunday in Black
What follows is a revision (re-visitation) of a piece that I wrote almost two years ago, just after Easter Sunday. It marked my first visit to a church in quite some time. Reading it again reminded me of the value of the spiritual and communal. I decided to revise for selfish reasons—to read it again, and to present it again.
Today was my first Easter Sunday since my family left Nigeria. Today, I celebrated the murder, mutilation, and resurrection of a Jewish cat I never knew. That is the spirit of Easter, isn't it?
The religious undertones, and overtones, permeated by skull as I sat in amazement at a local baptist church, awestruck at the utter commitment of the folks around me.
This post serves two purposes. First, it marks (in digital stone) my journey and commitment to writing and thinking from a concrete place: my experiences, and things that appear, or just happen, to me. Second, this blog, in the long term, will warehouse my thoughts on theology, aesthetics, black life, and the theological-aesthetics of all things groovy (including food and funk).
For now, I want to chart today’s experience. You should know, off the bat, off the cuff, that the church I visited today, again, was predominantly Afro-American. Put simply, it was a black church and squarely rooted in (and yet against) the black church tradition.
I walked in late (and I will argue, if pushed, that it was my older brother’s fault) and sat near the front. Folks from all walks of life sat attentively: truck drivers, accountants, tech salesmen, old church ladies (who didn't need fans because the AC was paid for), young’uns, and college kids looking for something to believe in.
Although immersed in the congregation, I felt as I always do—on the fringe. I sensed that I was observing the church from outside and inside. I simply stared, amazed, flabbergasted, that these people believe, love, and pray so strongly despite the plight.
What plight? I do not mean those vague burdens theologians like Calvin and MacArthur like(d) to write about. Those are important, but that isn't what struck me about this black baptist church in the boondocks. What struck me as these folk, my kinfolk, praised and cheerfully tossed green bills in the offering basket, was their generosity. In other words, these folk, as part of the black church tradition, give radically. Some of them, as the statistics say, probably have family members in jail, and struggle to make ends meet. Their lives, as blacks in America, is struggle in perpetuity—they suffer like no one else. They have risen from slavery, and yet their vulnerability to poverty, health issues, and police brutality lives on.
Nevertheless, this grim back-story melted away as I watched the sisters in purple and white robes dance gracefully, while the band (complete with a beige brother holding the groove) jammed forcefully. So there I was, entranced in the black radical church tradition, watching these beautiful, broken, battered, people praising a God they have never seen. What would you have done? I scribbled more notes on my Moleskine and whispered thanks to (their/my/our) God for bringing me here.
I turned to my big brother, who by now was staring straight at me, all perplexed and grinning. I smiled a bit and turned back to my Moleskine, looking around nervously to make sure no one was watching me observe the church—my muses.
After the dancers stopped swaying and praising, and the musicians stopped jamming, the well-dressed pastor got up.
I don’t trust charismatic people, especially preachers. Maybe, this is because I know the damage they can do. I've seen it firsthand, and I've hurt people with my charm. “You’re so charming,” is a frightening compliment. Hitler was charismatic. So was Mussolini.
So, the preacher-man gets up, and, since I like the guy, I perk up my ears to listen. He calmly, almost sadly, blesses the communion and directs the ushers to hand it out, starting from the pews in the back. When they reach my row, I grab the cracker and glass of the grape juice. I think for a second about the whole transubstantiation jive: “Is this really your body Jesus? Am I cannibal? Is this really your blood?”
I know the theological answer to this teenage-vampire-movie conundrum, because, you know, I've learned my systematic theology and church tradition. But still, I ponder, eyes closed, trying to focus on the somber, ultra-serious, moment. Instead the images I get are: the pastor’s bright purple and green polka-dot tie; the ghostly white cloth layered softly over the table in front of him; and the fine sister I've been crushing on.
I finally succeed. I focus and think about all the bad things I've done and the horrid scenes from Mel Gibson’s movie. The preacher’s voice fades into my consciousness. Slowly at first, it fades in like a Schubert piece; but then faster. Faster and faster, like Bach now, and finally a speedy concerto. I re-focus now on his round, soft, voice which booms over the crisp PA system.
“Take the bread,” he says, and I grab my cracker and press it. I want to break in two, like Jesus did for his disciples, but it’s too small, or my awkward black fingers are too big. So I just press it really hard and imagine it’s the Jewish man’s body, all crumbled and beaten for my transgressions. It works like a charm. (Not a real charm, of course, because this is a church service and voodoo is frowned upon. We can just call it a miracle.
Staring into the small clear plastic cup, a few sizes too small for me, I saw nothing. And yet, I saw something. I saw my face, although it was blackened, darkened, by the dark-reddish pigment of the liquid. In other words, I saw myself, my face, in black. I was blanked out, along with all my mishaps and mess-ups. I know this sounds a bit far-fetched, but what the heck, I am in church.
I’m sitting in pew, and in my cup I see myself in what has now become blood. This is how the church tradition functions, in most circles: the juice or wine becomes blood during the communion/prayer ritual. My face in blood looks red and shiny. Not shiny like a doll, but more like a car after a thorough rinse at the local car wash.
What does all of this have to do with the black church tradition or black suffering? Does this have anything to do with Easter? I do not know precisely, and that is what I want to work out in my writing, conversations, and life-work. In other words, what is the relationship between these spectacular, emotional, experiences, which are so wound up in the black church tradition, and radical message of Christian theology? How is it the black church tradition remains so radically different, and yet transcends denominational lines, at least for black folk? Furthermore, how can these moments, these encounters, be elongated or stretched out, not only for interrogation, but also so that black folk can cull some (more) medicine for their everyday lives? How can we think about Jesus in relation to black life and resistance in America? Here I am thinking along with figures like: Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Cone, Toni Morrison, Eric Dyson, Frank Wilderson, and J. Kameron Carter, to name a few cool black cats.
Black folks suffer like no other — this is a fact I won’t waste time arguing about. The black church has always been instrumental in helping black folks carve out lives from tumultuous conditions.
After I drank my bloody cup of juice, we sang songs together. I didn't know many of the words to the songs, but that was irrelevant. I just stood there, hugging my big brother. I forgot, in that moment, about the racial terror and unspeakable injustice that besets Negroes in this great land. I stood there, at peace like everyone else, remembering that we were not the first to suffer unwarranted violence. We, black folk, are not the first to be abandoned, beaten, betrayed, insulted, and ridiculed. The Jewish cat we call Jesus went through something similar. But, more importantly, in that moment I remembered Simon, the black man who had to help Jesus carry his cross, and the two criminals who died next to him.
It would have been cool, I think, to be any one of those cats, or just sit in the blackened shadow of Jerusalem’s dusk, and see a brave man die for the whole rotten world.
