living in coronavirusworld 78: Lynching as virus

6/8

Morningside Park bulletin board

Spend most of the day trying to deal with the Presbyterian Church.  Every two years it has a General Asssmbly made up of equal numbers of clergy and lay representatives, or teaching and ruling elders in Presbyspeak. The GA deals with ecclesiastical  issues, but more seeks to exegete the time we are living in for both the broader church and the general public. There is a long tradition of Presbyterian engagement with social issues as part of the church’s reformed theological perspective self understanding of being commissioned by God to act in stewardship of God’s creation. John Calvin, for example, believed that serving as a civic magistrate was God’s highest calling.  This years’s Assembly was to have been in Baltimore, Maryland, a city much maligned by our current President. 

The onset of the Coronavirus led the church ultimately to shift the church from a week long event in Baltimore to a three day event on ZOOM. (The convention center that was to have housed GA has been turned into an emergency field hospital) However, the Committee on General Assembly, responsible for GAs, decided  that the business needs to be restricted to institutional maintenance only. NO social action. No commissioner resolutions or new business, preventing commissioners from affecting the agenda. My Presbyterian Health Education and Welfare Association believes that this is  a crucial moment in US history, perhaps definitive for years to come for country and church. To us it seems  a dereliction of our commission and violation of our historic identity not to speak. And we have been seeking to find the way to do that. 

A beautiful day for a walk.

Morningside Park pond

Tonight’s Bible Study is the Mathew passage form Trinity Sunday. Which means we’re talking about the Holy Trinity. But also the Great Commission (Matthew 28:20):9 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.1

Which Leila refers  to as the last command…

Russ sees the writer of Matthew trying to present Jesus as the new Moses, who led people to a new reality. And Jesus, too , seeking to create a  whole new way of life. With the outward sign of Baptism as introduced by John the Baptist. Russ sees Jesus as a disciple of John, which seems apparent. i also see John’s Baptism as a propaganda of the deed, an act proclaiming its own meaning. In the use, for John (or Matthew) the traditional institution had become so compromised and corrupted as to require its follwoers to go through a conversion ritual again to begot renewal. Baptism, a for of the Mikva, cleansing bath. 

Marsha sees that commission where things went wrong. She sees and responds to the imperial colossal history pf Christianity with its forced conversions, lacruz y la espada (cross and sword) and Doctrine of Discovery. Both perspectives are of course correct. As Wes Howard Brook pointed out in Come Out My People, the Bible has a constant tension between the religion of covenant and creation and the religion of empire. Christianity has both. 

I share the different aspects of relationships with God….awe and wonder, service and human solidarity and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’s statement in verse 18 about being ..given dominion links directly back to the prophetic words of Daniel 7: 13-14 and the Son of Man idea. ….a new kind of kingdom, not based on power an control but “…as a human one…” based the best of human community. Long before communism, Christianity had an ideology based on a positive humanist view. 

As we talk about the Spirit, Leila talks about the necessity of breath.  The horror of George Floyd having his breath taking away. And as she says, the centrality of breath issues  with covid19, that’s how we die. This clearly connecting the two critical issues defining our present moment.

I’m very happy that West Park will be returning to worship next Sunday after a very long time. 

I make sure to conquer my fear and return to the Songwriter’s Exchange tonight. At first it feels good just to be back. And I’m feeling relaxed.  But as I hear my colleagues, the anxiety comes back. Most of the songs are responding to the moment. One is George Floyd looking down form above, “Not a good day for me” riffing on Trump’s unbelievable announcement that the job report was “…a great day for George…” These singer-songwriters are good. I envy the discipline, the commitment to craft. I’m almost afraid to share.But I do my remake of “hard rain”…

and I'll call out the man who says law and order over all

and all who stand with him in the congress hall 

and l'll sing for the ones who take a brave knee 

while congress is silent while black bodies bleed

and I'll give it to you straight before it's too late

it will take a strong love to turn back this hate

and it's a hard

it's a hard

it's a hard

it's a hard

it's a....I can't breathe....

hard rain's a gonna fall 

The best criticism starts with the thought that all folk music is derivative, takes from an existing source. And I should write my own song based on this, maybe with a ‘…hard rain..” reference at the end. And we talk about how several  songs came from the perspective, even voice of the back victims and that we cannot do that anymore unless invited to. As allies, we can not presume.    

Did the city do the first step reopen today? Did 250000 go back to work? 

My housemate returns home . Reports a solid lie of police I riot gear between Adam Clayton Powell and MalcolmX Boulevards on 116.