The Upside Down Kingdom, pt. 2

In the New Testament, the books of Luke and Acts are seen by most scholars as two parts of one composition which lays out the story of Jesus and the growth of the community that followed Jesus' teachings. In Mark and Matthew, the first words we see Jesus speak in his public ministry are about the kingdom of God/heaven. In Luke however, Jesus' first public explanation of his mission, parallel to his announcement of the kingdom of God in the other gospels, comes from an earlier Hebrew prophetic text:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
     because he has anointed me 
     to proclaim good news to the poor. 
 He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives 
     and recovering of sight to the blind, 
     to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 
 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

The rest of the narrative in Luke shows Jesus consistently teaching that God is on the side of the poor, oppressed, and outcast. Assuming that the author means to portray the community of Jesus followers in Acts as living according to those teachings, we can see the perception of these teachings lived out when that community is later accused before Roman officials:


'These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also...and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus." And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. [emphasis mine]

I don't mean to be simplistic and say that merely being on the side of the poor put the first communities of Jesus followers in opposition to the Roman Empire. However, empires are sustained by maintaining (or inventing) divisions within the populace to prevent various factions from banding together in opposition to the ruling elite. These divisions can be enacted along many different lines - ethnic, linguistic, economic, religious, social, tribal - lines that determine who has access to the benefits of imperial power and who will be excluded from that power. So, in the context of empire, being on the side of the poor is indeed a transgressive act, as is crossing any other of the dividing lines.

I believe to be a follower of Jesus means proclaiming allegiance to a different kind of sovereignty and citizenship in a different kind of country. It is to challenge and subvert dehumanizing imperial narratives that breed oppression by seeking to be human in a totally different way. It is to belong to an upside down kingdom.

The Upside Down Kingdom, pt. 1

Looking at our respective histories, Christianity and I have little reason to be associated with one another. My father's side of the family is rooted in Puerto Rico, where Christianity made its debut alongside Spanish conquistadores who greeted my ancestral Taíno people with rape, enslavement, and smallpox that by at least one estimate combined to decimate their population by 80%-90% within 30 years ("La tragédie des Taïnos", in L'Histoire n°322, July–August 2007, p.16). My mother's side of the family is rooted somewhere in a forgotten African culture prior to American slavery, Christianity being introduced to them in the context of religiously sanctioned bondage.

Naturally, I was moved as a teenager when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time and considered the teachings of the Nation of Islam that Christianity had been used throughout history to oppress people of color. Irreligious at the time, I remember thinking very clearly, "I have no business ever becoming a Christian." I could see no separation between the religion of Christianity and the empires with which it has been associated throughout centuries of cyclical subjugation and conquest.

Despite my initial stance, I have in fact come to be associated with the Christian tradition. The journey between then and now is too long and complex to detail here, but my initial discomfort regarding Christianity's historical pairing with oppressive powers persists to this day, perhaps even more keenly now that I am affiliated with said history. Most bewildering of all, after 15 years of studying the Bible, I find the overwhelming emphasis to be a critique and renunciation of the very powers with which Christianity has often allied itself in the last two millennia.

How can the history of Christianity be so far removed from the oppression-averse paradigm at its roots?

The biblical writers frame several historical imperial regimes as the quintessential oppressors, most notably Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome. The biblical writers also offer numerous critiques of the impulse within the people of God to emulate or ally themselves with those very empires which sought to subjugate them, including Samuel's condemnation of the establishment of an Israelite monarchy and Jesus' rejection of Jewish nationalist aspirations to violently overthrow the Roman Empire. In fact, J. Richard Middleton asserts that the creation narrative in Genesis in which humanity is created in the image of God is a critique of mythologies used to legitimate imperial oppression (see this brief article or read the fuller examination in his excellent book The Liberating Image). From beginning to end, empires get a bad rap in the Bible.

Many of the biblical narratives are fraught with the tension between the human impulse to oppress others and the divine call to a new way of being human that empowers others. The reason that Christianity continues to be attached to oppressive powers is because that seems to be the natural inclination of human nature. Like every other institution and regime critiqued in the Scriptures, those of us in the Christian tradition have to be willing to hear and respond to prophetic calls to a new way of being human that radically alters how we speak and act in the world. From a Christian standpoint, this prophetic call is exemplified in the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who spoke continuously about a concept that Christianity has often misappropriated or completely forgotten - the kingdom of God.

This is such a rich topic, and I will come back to it in my next post. For now, I simply want to say that historical manifestations of Christianity have far too often been allied with imperial ambitions. In contrast, the call of Jesus to experience the kingdom of God is a call to live in such a way that subverts the oppression on which empires are built.

More on that in the next post...

Born Into Becoming

The seeds of this post were planted more than 15 years ago, when I prayed and admitted to God, "I have no idea what I'm getting myself into, but I will follow Jesus for the rest of my life." It has been a long journey from seeds to roots, and these hidden roots are difficult to articulate, though they are slowly digging deeper and spreading farther than ever before. For years the first shoots have struggled to break the surface and emerge into the light. In the open air, these initial offerings have been somewhat fragile and uncertain, unsure of what maturity looks like as they endured the hard work of being born into becoming fruitful.

Now is the time for pruning, for intentional moves toward that fruitfulness. That is where you come in, fellow thinkers and readers. I need your minds, your hearts, and your convictions to help me shape this life that is emerging into the light. Pruning shears are sharp by nature, so please do not dull the sharpness of your disagreement or critique in the name of friendship. Also, do not hold back because you feel like you have nothing to say. The act of speaking to a plant gives it nourishment to continue the difficult journey of upward growth, and every voice is beautifully life-giving and necessary.

So, this is my invitation, no matter your religious, political, or cultural affiliation -- please join me in breathing life into this blog, guiding it toward maturity and action.

The Moment in the Corner

Three months ago I attended a workshop on writing and performing our stories. Thank you to Paula Morell and April Gentry-Sutterfield for sharing their gifts to stir new levels of creativity in our writing. The Jorge Luis Borges quote below was the prompt for our writing exercise.  

"Any life, no matter how long or complicated it may be, is made up of one moment - the moment a man finds out once and for all who he is."

   There are many moments that try to form alliances and narrate the story of one's life. They push and jostle like children at the ice cream truck, screaming to be heard. Then there are other moments that stand quietly in the back of the room, watching with a gravity that reveals their movement beyond such childish reckonings. Their very presence shifts the taste in the air, laces it with a tang of permanence and regret.

   These memories will not go back inside when the carnival music disappears over the hill. They stay seated on the front porch, watching, knowing. These moments see the story we cannot, reveal themselves because of their "oughtness", their truth. In the times when I can step back from the throng and look over my shoulder, they gaze back at me knowingly. They do not beckon or call to me. They simply know me. It is always a trial for me to acknowledge them.

   The moment who sits in the seat of honor has been around for nearly 15 years. He is partially covered in shadow but his darkness illuminates my blackness. In the winter of my senior year of high school I ask a girl to a dance. I am not romantically interested, but we've been friends for a long time. All goes according to plan - I ask her, she agrees, we both look forward to it. But there is one small problem in her parents' eyes - she is white and I am black.

   The moment is baffling in its truth. The girl is sitting in front of me, crying slow motion tears, and the words coming out of her mouth are all wrong. "Because you're black", "It's against God's will", "I can't believe my parents are so ignorant", "I'm so sorry, so embarrassed". None of it makes sense. Who thinks these things at the end of the 20th century? Sure, I attend a private school that is nearly alabaster in its whiteness, but I've adapted, right? I've shed the rough Jersey attitude and Yankee vowels and even joined the youth group next door. I am well liked, some might even say popular. Other than the odd redneck bigot, nobody is so blatantly racist as these things her parents said about a boy who goes to their church would suggest.

   Even as I recognize what they were saying is false, I also realize the truth of the matter. The moment sits down next to me in the principal's sterile office, watching impassively while the girl sobs her disbelief. I can feel him turn toward me, waiting for my acknowledgment. He follows me around for three days before I can look at him, and when I do he just stares back. No words, no tears, no reassuring smile. Just truth, silent and cold and persistent.

   I knew then what I'd been trying to hide from. I am an AfroNuyorican man, and I don't fit anywhere. Not with bilingual boricuas in New York, not with black folks in Little Rock whose speech cadences eluded me for years, and certainly not in a nearly all-white private school where I adapted so effectively that months would go by without anyone mentioning our difference. Our ethnicity. Our race. Our respective statuses in society.

   My blackness, my boricua-ness is omnipresent. I'm not ashamed of it and never have been. I have tried to hide it at times, or at least forget, but that was mostly to survive. It is always with me, like the moment when the girl's weeping opened my eyes to my true self -- my otherness. Always. Everywhere. Sometimes it's too much to take in, so I keep pushing my way up to the ice cream truck, keep drowning my senses in the clamor of the raucous crowd. But still he waits on the porch, watching and knowing.

It's Hard Down Here (a poem for Advent)

Holy, holy, holy!
Lord God Almighty!
Now might be a good time to say
we miss you in the worst kind of way,
'cause it's hard down here--
hard, I tell you!

Holy, holy, holy!
All the saints adore thee,
throwing down Crown Royal every night
in crystal glasses filled with ice.
We drink 'cause it's hard down here--
hard, I tell you!

Holy, holy, holy!
Thou the darkness hide thee,
we come bowed down with grief,
barnyard shepherds in need of relief.
See, 'cause it's hard down here--
hard, I tell you!

Holy, holy, holy!
Merciful and mighty,
have mercy on us who thirst for this--
peace and justice joined with a kiss.
It's just so hard down here--
hard, I tell you!

Holy, holy, holy!
Lord God Almighty!
Oh! How we await thee,
'cause it's hard down here--
hard, I tell you!

A Common History

I just finished a powerful collection of poetry by Natasha Trethewey called Native Guard. Her poems are haunting, filled with the paradoxical beauty and brutality of the South as experienced both historically and personally. In addition to her content, I love that many of her poems have more formal structure than the free verse that I'm used to reading.

Her collection is also dear to me because it adds one more elegant voice to the relatively few who tell the story of what it means to be biracial in America, particularly in the South. Though she was born in a much different, much harder time than me, there is nevertheless overlap in our stories. One of my favorites from the collection is below:

Southern History

Before the war, they were happy, he said,
quoting our textbook. (This was senior-year

history class.) The slaves were clothed, fed,
and better off under a master's care.

I watched the words blur on the page. No one
raised a hand, disagreed. Not even me.

It was late; we still had Reconstruction
to cover before the test, and -- luckily --

three hours of watching Gone with the Wind.
History, the teacher said, of the old South --

a true account of how things were back then.
On screen a slave stood big as life: big mouth,

bucked eyes, our textbook's grinning proof -- a lie
my teacher guarded. Silent, so did I.

Pillow Frame

I am driving, cutting
through fields of sorghum
and soybean, but
all I can see is the dying
day fire, glowing behind
clouds pink and blue,
a familiar hue,
like pillow shadows
framing your face flushed
and drunk after
making love.