Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Advent - It is Difficult to Wait

It is Advent. I love this season. For four weeks, the reading selections from Holy Scripture guide us through our increasing anticipation of the coming of Christ. For four weeks, our Priests and their assistants are draped in regal blue. For four weeks, each week, we light another candle - and the darkness of our world becomes a little bit less dark.

Blue - deep sunset ocean blue - is the color of Mary. We robe our Priests in it because we are full of anticipation. Anticipation. Like them, we are (for this season anyway) covered in hope and memory. Memory of the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem. Hope of the coming of Jesus the King. But Ferguson burns.

If it is really true that by age 23 half of all black men will have been arrested, if it is true that in Ferguson (a city of 21,000 residents) 32,000 warrants have been issued for minor offenses, if it is true that the St. Louis District Court receives 40 percent of its funding from fines imposed on those too poor to afford to mount a defense for petty offenses, if all of these are true, then we have a lot of work on our hands.

Mary - Theotokos, but also Our Lady of Sorrow - remembered all these things in her heart. She who received into herself the Spirit of God also carried the seven sorrows that pierced her own heart. The words of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of the boy in the Temple, the meeting of Jesus on the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the reception of the body, and the laying of the body in the tomb. But Ferguson burns.

If it is really true that our justice system is capable of using a Grand Jury as a Trial Jury so that a failure to indict is treated as a verdict of innocence - in a town where every black resident has been issued a warrant for petty crimes (at least once, often more) by white officers - then we have a lot of work on our hands. It becomes our moral duty, our ethical responsibility, to find out and name the interests that keep the system the way they are.

The seven sorrows of Our Lady of Sorrow are darkly evocative of the whole journey of the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt under Moses. Only here that journey is remembered under the watchful gaze of the mother. Instead of the giving and subsequent breaking of a just legal code, the story line is punctuated by the renunciation of the gift she has been given. Instead of the liberation of a people of slaves into a country tasked with being just and merciful before God, the narrative pulses with the beating heart of the sorrow of the mother who buries her Son. But Ferguson burns.

If the story emerging out of Ferguson is true, then we live in two Americas. This isn't Republican and Democrat, this isn't conservative and liberal, this isn't even Christian and non-Christian. Rather, this is Upton Sinclair's Meat Factory as daily living conditions of those whose lives are hidden from the spotlight of the lives of the accepted moral majority. This is 1984's worst nightmare - Orwell couldn't have imagined two cities living on top of each other. Only in our nightmare, the rich city doesn't know the poor city exists - that is how complete the job of total policing has become. We need to be unsettled into action by this.

And so we wait. We watchers of culture. We wait for the coming of the King who shall judge with justice and mercy. Justice because He calls sin sin, and will condemn those who have vested interest in creating a system so oppressive that Ferguson has no choice but to burn. Mercy because the oppressed shall finally be ushered into a city in which there is no more weeping.

Our lives are filled with hope and memory. Memory of our current and unjust two-halved America. Memory of the black men killed by cops just in the last few months since Ferguson. Memory of the countless others for whom statistics don't exist - because we don't keep tabs on police brutality. Memory of the countless mothers and brothers and sisters working 60 hour weeks in part time jobs with no benefits on a minimum wage that won't support an individual, much less all their dependents. Memory of the sorrows of our lived reality. Memory of our buried dreams.

We dare to hope. We hope that we all won't always have to yell, "Hands up, Don't Shoot!" We hope that those who can write and investigate and agitate will publicly and loudly and continuously name the companies and persons who have a vested interest in keeping the many poor so that the few may become wealthy. We hope because we can participate imperfectly in the just and merciful acts of Christ the King. We hope because our advent will not be forever.