“Look at ships,” I read in the book of James, “though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire.”[1]
I listened to the radio on my way home from Mount Olivet cemetery on Wednesday afternoon, and only after a few moments of confusion and disbelief did I begin to realize what had actually happened at the Capitol. I was very upset, but I wasn’t surprised. Words matter. Words have consequences. And I can’t remember a day during the past four years when government leaders, beginning with the head of the administration, didn’t lie to the American people or insist on presenting “alternative facts” while denouncing any media that didn’t parrot their caustic narrative as “fake news.” I thought about the Senators, Representatives, and others who for weeks had kept repeating lies about the election for political gain.
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all … Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”[2]
Our representatives swear, many of them with their hand on the Bible, to protect the constitution, but apparently those are just words when political calculations make an assault on the constitution the preferable career move. Many of them love to appropriate the Ten Commandments for their purposes, but knowing or observing them is a different matter. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, the ninth plainly states.[3] And in Exodus 23, in what reads like a commentary on this commandment, it says, “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing.”[4]
Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter how, at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday,
heavily armed guards escorted the lawmakers back to the Capitol, thoroughly scrubbed by janitors, where the senators and representatives resumed their counting of the certified votes. The events of the afternoon had broken some of the Republicans away from their determination to challenge the votes. Fourteen Republican senators [, among them Sens. Blackburn and Hagerty from Tennessee,] had announced they would object to counting the certified votes from Arizona; in the evening count the number dropped to six: [Ted] Cruz (R-TX), [Josh] Hawley (R-MO), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), John Kennedy (R-LA), Roger Marshall (R-KS), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). In the House, 121 Republicans, more than half the Republican caucus, voted to throw out Biden’s electors from Arizona. As in the Senate, they lost when 303 Representatives voted in favor. Six senators and more than half of the House Republicans backed an attempt to overthrow our government, in favor of a man caught on tape just four days ago trying to strong-arm a state election official into falsifying the election results.
Prof. Richardson, a historian, ended her newsletter with the words, “Today the Confederate flag flew in the United States Capitol.”[5] She didn’t mention “that if Black people had [breached the Capitol like this], the hallways would be red with their blood.”[6] She didn’t mention that this happened the day after Georgia had elected its first Black senator and its first Jewish senator. She didn’t mention that someone had set up a noose outside and that “a few of the marauders wore T-shirts that said ‘MAGA Civil War, Jan. 6, 2021.’”[7]
Many have declared that “this is not who we are”, that “this is not America” — but what else would this be? Somebody else’s country? Someone else’s history? Some kind of alternate reality we accidentally fell into? Roxane Gay wrote, “This is America. This has always been America. If this were not America, this would not have happened. It’s time we face this ugly truth, let it sink into the marrow of our bones, let it move us to action.”[8]
Wednesday was the feast of Epiphany, when churches of the East celebrate the birth of Christ, the manifestation of God in human flesh, and churches of the West, the visit of the wise men who come to Bethlehem in response to this birth. The word epiphany has connotations of seeing something shine forth, seeing the full reality of an event, its truth; and in that sense, the events of Wednesday, bringing to a head multiple chains of events and developments, have epiphanic potential — if we have the courage to face the reality they show us and let it sink into the marrow of our bones.
In the Gospel of Mark, there is no Christmas story at the beginning. There’s the long-awaited messenger who appears in the wilderness. There’s John who calls people to repent and be baptized. He calls them to orient themselves toward God’s future: the promise of liberation, the promise of redemption, the promise of the kingdom. And he calls them to repent. Repentance is our capacity to see who we are and where we are, and to turn away from habits of thinking and doing that we know go against God’s will for human kind. Not that our capacity for, or our track record of, repenting are great, but there is promise in holding the gaze of the prophet, or our own when we look in the mirror and see who’s there, who’s really there, and not turn away until we let the truth sink into the marrow of our bones. It’s the beginning of not bearing false witness.
According to Mark, people came to the Jordan in droves to be baptized and to be prepared for the coming of the stronger one who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and life. They came from Jerusalem and from the Judean countryside, city folk and rural folk; they were all headed down to the banks of the Jordan to listen to the wilderness prophet and be baptized by him. One by one they stepped into the water, said what needed to be said, and let him plunge them beneath the surface, into the silent depth: Long ago, their ancestors had entered the promised land crossing this river. Like them, they wanted to begin anew. They wanted to live as God’s people on God’s land as though they had just crossed over. They prayed that the mercy of God, like a river, would wash away their wrongdoings and their guilt and the terrible shadows of all they couldn’t undo. They prayed they would emerge from the chilly depth with their lives scrubbed clean as new, prepared to face the holy One who would renew all things in righteousness.
Jesus came like the rest of them had come, walking on dusty roads, waiting in line in the heat of the day, and finally stepping into the water, like the rest of them. He began his ministry where sinners gathered, ordinary people who were ready for a fresh start and needed a space where they could be honest with themselves. So many were gathered at the river, you couldn’t have picked Jesus out from the many faces, and the way Mark tells the story, neither could John. Standing in the water, he didn’t realize that his arms were holding the one whose coming he had been announcing. He plunged him beneath the surface like the rest of them, into the cold silence, down into the darkness at the bottom.
As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
This is the first, big epiphanic moment in Mark’s Gospel. The beginning of the good news of Jesus is like the beginning of creation: the face of the water, the Spirit, and the voice of the One who creates, beholds, and names. In Genesis we read,
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth darkness covered the face of the deep and a wind from God swept over the face of the waters, and God said: Let there be light! And there was light. And God saw that the light was good and called it Day.
There’s the face of the water, the Spirit, and the voice of the One who creates, beholds, and names. God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good. God was delighted. And when Jesus emerged from below the face of the deep, God was delighted. It was a new beginning for the world, a new day. In this man’s life, Mark proclaims, God has come to us, stepped into the river with us, in loving solidarity with humankind, disappearing in the deep not to be washed, but to drown and rise. The moment Jesus stepped into the river, he made us all his own. Because of him, we emerge from the water affirmed in our identity as beloved children of God, assured of our kinship with God and with each other and with every last one on the river banks who longs for new life. Baptized into Christ, his death becomes our own and his life ours. As we come up for air, his Holy Spirit becomes our breath.
True repentance takes honesty and courage, and all who want to hear rousing words of healing and unity must first know that we won’t get there without telling the truth — not about them, whoever they might be in our self-centered worlds, but about ourselves.
My hope, when I’m able to cling to it, is rooted in God’s faithulness. I cling to the hope that love frees us to be truthful and humble.
[1] James 3:4-5
[2] Matthew 5:33-37
[3] Exodus 20:16
[4] Exodus 23:1-2
[5] from Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From an American” email newsletter at https://billmoyers.com/story/today-the-confederate-flag-flew-in-the-united-states-capitol/
[6] David Brooks https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/capitol-riot-republicans.html
[7] Michelle Goldberg https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/trump-capitol-attack.html
[8] Roxane Gay https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/opinion/capitol-riot-trump-america.html