'Our Tsunami’: Race, Religion and Mourning in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
And when he was come night, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the might works that they had seen; Saying Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it. (Luke 19:37-41)
Some African-Americans have described the devastation wrought
by Hurricane Katrina as ‘our tsunami’… (David Gonzales, “The Victims, Largely Poor and Black” The New York Times)
I. I am sick today, with grief. A grief, significantly exacerbated by a deepening consternation I have for the general health and, from my point of view, the dubious well-being of the church in America today. I am gravely worried, about what I perceive, as a conflict, a contradiction, if you may, between our increasing religiosity, on the one hand, and our decreasing relevance and vitality to change the world’s conditions, on the other hand. I am troubled, this morning, grievously troubled, by the popularity of a commercial Christianity that romanticizes our faith for the sake of capital campaigns, political favor and box office receipts, and misrepresents the journey as fast and furious, when the way is oft-times arduous and long-winded. It is disturbing, beloved, that the measure of our faith today is so often in the spectacle-charm of charismatic display that charisma now trumps compassion as the essential element, the sine qua non, of Christian identity in the most popular churches in America today. Worship is so singularly worshipped, and bells-and-whistle praise so fashionable now, that the experience of church today is all celebration, and no sympathy at all. Which is not to say that celebration is incompatible with worship but any man who only ever celebrates, who treats life as an interminable party, has no time or inclination to contemplate the extreme weight of black urban life and loss incomprehensibly endured in Louisiana and Mississippi last week. His humanity, and the human prospect for godliness within him, is thus diminished by his indifference. The very thing that would realize his divine potential, the praise craze of this current age helps him, tragically, to avert. It is a reflex of the religious I believe I comprehend, but can’t quite understand.
Only one month ago, on the very same day that an estimated ten to fifteen thousand marched along Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Drive to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and to mobilize support for its extension, the Atlanta Georgia Dome, World Congress Center, Philips Arena and International Plaza were nearly filled to the rafters with more than 100,000 predominantly black churchgoers gathered for MegaFest 2005, the star-studded super conference and Christian entertainment event brilliantly conceived by Rev. T. D. Jakes, the most popular, most charismatic, most sermonically adept television evangelist in the last twenty-five years. Now I was not there, but I am given to understand anecdotally that a spirited time was had by all. It was a monumental celebration of Jesus as Lord, like none Atlanta had seen since the first Jakes conference there in 1999. Surely, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago could not have held a candle to 100,000 brothers and sisters, “saved, sanctified, blood-bought and Holy Ghost-filled,” churchin’ together in the black cultural holy city, Hotlanta, in 2005. But for all the celebration there one month ago, I am bothered that I don’t hear the lamentations, the fervor, the loud din of mourning by those who got bought whole new wardrobes and even got their “h’ir did”--shout out to Missy Elliot--just for Megafest (I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice, was it?).
Was that celebration so intoxicating that it numbed all 100,000 celebrants to the horror of Hurricane Katrina, the outrage of official race- and class-based abandonment of thousands to spiritual despair and the cruelest indignities of death? Where is the mega-aid from Mega-fest and its corporate sponsors? Where were the mega-buses to evacuate the stranded and struggling? Worse still, why has there been no exercise of the mega-influence of so many black religious persons, a goodly number of whom cast their vote for the present Administration last November, to demand something from this President, a man who spends more time in Texas, it seems, than in Washington (though it hardly matters where he is anymore since, from a certain point of view, he’s been on vacation his whole presidency). I do not mean to pick on Rev. Jakes exclusively. He is but a symbol for a new black evangelicalism that seems far more preoccupied by gay marriage and “judicial activism” than by human and civil rights. To be fair to Rev. Jakes, it is true that he has not been indifferent to this disaster and has coordinated a relief effort led by his own 30,000 member church, The Potter’s House, in partnership with a dozen other largely black mega-ministries. It is reported they have given $250,000 in food, water, clothing and first aid and Jakes’s church has opened its elementary school to the children of the displaced who end up, intentionally or aimlessly, in Dallas. As generous as this aid may seem, however (or ungenerous, depending on your perspective of things), the new black church in America has left altogether untouched its greatest resource to relieve the suffering of so many who weekly support them. One thing, Jesus admonished the rich young ruler, thou yet lacketh. With more than $400 billion wasted on an unjust war in Iraq, how could the church let our Gulf Coast neighbors be so egregiously insulted by a congressional appropriation of one-fortieth of that sum? What will it take for the black church, its evangelicals especially, to expend its newfound political influence in order to save souls?
Who but the black church has the moral and political capital to agitate on behalf of the Gulf coast’s disinherited, the likes of whom Jesus was so unambiguously clear about defending? And not only defending, but feeding. He did not, after all, only fly by Jerusalem, and think his duty done. No, as Brother Kanye West recently reminded us, Jesus walked. He doesn’t do fly-bys. Jesus walks, is West’s refrain. He doesn’t make political speeches full of promises come too little too late. Jesus walks. With the shoeless and the shirtless. Jesus walks. With the stranded and the starving. Jesus walks. On the ground. He walks. Through hell and high water. He walks. With neighborly compassion, not executive conceit. He walks. But more than that. He feeds. Four thousand here. Five thousand there. He feeds them who hunger. No signs of looting, no bottleless babies, no outbreaks of violent frustration, though the potential is there. Because he feeds his friends. With only twelve volunteers and the most restricted of resources, he did what FEMA and Homeland Security obviously cannot.
I don’t’ understand it. If the Savior can feed thousands with a team of only twelve and the most meager means, then somebody tell me why the leadership of the mightiest nation on the globe cannot coordinate its unsearchable resources with at least the equal efficiency of an un-degreed Hebrew carpenter? Wait. Don’t answer that. I already know the sad, un-American answer. We all do.
II. It is the Lukan picture of Jesus that I have called your attention to this morning, because it is the picture of the most essential response any of us, conventioneer or president, could have to the Gulf coast apocalypse some have called “our tsunami” in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. For Hurricane Katrina is indeed “our tsunami” as much as it is that of the unmoored masses of Biloxi, New Orleans and—lest we forget—Sri Lanka.
Witness Jesus atop Mount Olive. From that mountain platform, he commanded the full panoramic view of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from the East across the Kidron Valley. Behind him set Jericho. And closer still, Bethany. At his feet fall the praises of them who proclaim him Lord and King, fulfillment of the prophecy. And it would be a thrilling scene, except for the curious disconnect between him and them. They celebrate, but he mourns. Looking down from Olivet , he mourns. Mourns over Jerusalem. He sees a bigger picture, commands a wider perspective and mourns for Jerusalem. Thousands and thousands of churches will conduct worship this morning with shouting and celebration, clapping and dancing, and miss the point made by the example of Jesus: Its mourning time. Jerusalem’s in jeopardy. Its mourning time.
Somehow, we’ve lost sight of the importance of mourning. Of the redemptive value of sackcloth and ashes. Somehow, we’ve been mis-educated, theologically misinformed, led away from of our tradition, and have come to regard mourning only as a sign of hopeless resignation and sinking sadness But I want to suggest that mourning is more than resignation; in mourning is the potential for redress and resistance. It is not the white flag of surrender it appears to be to uninitiated eyes. But it is a passionate protest against the tyranny of death. Mourning is a sit-in against loss, a public petition that will not keep silent. Mourning is the spectacle refusal of indifference, apathy, chauvinism, and injustice. Today is a day of mourning. A day for un-silenceable sorrow and unappeasable complaint against environmental racism, corporate looting by big oil, against presidential arrogance and insensitivity, third-world poverty in affluent America, against the wretched light in which black life in America and Africa is seen, against a political unconscious which perceives New Orleans as Baghdad, and Mississippi as Afghanistan. This is our tsunami.
So let us mourn with those who mourn. Weep with those who weep. Cry aloud with anguish at what has befallen us at the gulf coast. For it is only by God’s inscrutable grace that what has happened miles from here, did not happen precisely here. In any event, this is our tsunami. And it is mourning time. Let us raise our voices in bitter lament, conceding that while our praise may get us goodies from a giving God, it is our mourning that provokes a mothering God to radical action on behalf of oppressed and suffering people. This is our tsunami. And so I mourn with Louisiana. I mourn with Mississippi. I mourn with Alabama. And I have only this confidence for my food and comfort:
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed
And though the mountains be carried in the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.
The holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
God bless you. Amen.
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Maurice Wallace is Associate Professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideology in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995
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