Day Eleven.
Re-goddamned-diculous. Malachi 2:17.
We welcome, as featured #ShutTheHellUp contributor, the Rev. Marcus Halley (Twitter: @word_made_FRESH), an Episcopal priest, Rector, writer, runner, and avid reader. He has been a contributor to Grow Christians, #SlateSpeak, and many other online platforms. He is currently a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a D.Min. student at the School of Theology at the University of the South.
There are just some things that should not be debatable or considered partisan politics in the year 2017: Human dignity, safety, compassion, and the ability to live and thrive in whatever human body one happens to occupy regardless of the labels or framework society chooses to place upon it. But here we are, in 2017, fighting battles we thought we had won long ago. Human greed, callousness, indifference, moral depravity, and exploitation are all being hailed as “good.”
Re-goddamn-diculous.
Advent is a time to begin again and to be reminded that, inasmuch as time is circular not linear, there will be times that we, like the Israelites wondering in the wilderness trying to become the “People of God” that God claimed them to be even in their bondage, will revisit these same places over and over again. Maybe we’ve left people behind and must return to claim them. Maybe we have more learning to do before we truly embody our true identities as “People of God.” Maybe it is simply the rhythm of brokenness that continues to ricochet off the edges of eternity, begun when Cain slew his brother Abel and then tried to play God to God’s face.
Re-goddamn-diculous.
Each time we revisit familiar, often painful, spaces we are presented with opportunities to reclaim something we might otherwise have lost.
The prophets’ words cut both ways, however. Not only is it re-goddamn-diculous to suggest that leaving certain bodies in harm’s way, callously exploiting the earth, supporting some narrative of racial or gender superiority, or to claim to “only care about the cross, not politics,” but is also re-goddamn-diculous to suggest that the justice of God is absent because of what we see around us. God’s justice is firm and sure.
The advent of the Christ-child reveals this. God intentionally chooses to move into the human ghetto in brown, colonized, poor flesh. In so doing, God already passed final judgment on the dehumanizing systems of power of the world. God pronounced them weak and feckless, utterly incapable of ushering in the Commonwealth of God.
What we see around us is weakness in the drag of power, except that they can’t seem to afford a sickening wig or some badass heels.
Re-goddamn-diculous.
In Christ, God returned power to people — you and I — to make the difference we wish to see, to strive against injustice, and to pursue compassion with all our hearts.
As I watch systems and powers disintegrate all around me, I choose to believe God. I choose to hold on to the assurance that while “kings and kingdoms will all pass away,” God’s justice stands firm. I choose to renew my faith daily in the belief that the “arc of the moral universe is long” and that it bends towards the ultimate Reign of God.
