By Rev. Jazmine Brooks, TCR News Editor
Advent season marks our anticipation of the messiah’s return to usher in the kingdom of God. Though not necessarily on a particular date nor at a particular time (no [person] knows the minute nor the hour), we expect that The Lord’s reign will be accompanied by shalom peace by way of justice and well-being for all of creation. It is a relief from the suffering we have waited on since the crucifixion.
However, in our waiting, the suffering remains unyielding. The endless imagery of white supremacy on public trial was ushered in this Advent season. No American with a television could have missed the Georgia case, particularly of three white men who chased, harassed, physically abused, and murdered 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery while he took a jog through the neighborhood. The case put a fundamental privilege of white supremacy on trial as it questioned the delegation of authority to every white citizen to do bodily harm against Black citizens as a civilian duty.
The nature of such a case demanded the attention of local Black pastors, a demographic with a long history of standing with the Black community in the face of racialized trauma. The resistance and communal sense of identity that the Black Church was born from, and so long as Black communities suffer, there will always be a need for those pillars of support.
As local Black pastors invested in the Arbery family by their presence in court, they were called out for “influence and intimidation….” The need for such a stand-down is not lost on me. No matter how impotent some have rendered the Black Church, it is clear that opposers of our freedom recognize the power we possess, even if/when we do not deploy or mobilize it.
In response to Defense Attorney Kevin Gough’s efforts to discourage the Black pastoral presence, hundreds of Black pastors from across the United States organized outside the courtroom in a symbolic demonstration of solidarity with the Arbery family and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Five hundred Black pastors and preachers, many older with established community presence, gathered from across the coasts and beyond jurisdictional borders. This demographic remembers most adeptly the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement. Yet, together—across generation, gender, racial, and socio-economic lines, those gathered prayed and made declarations of hope toward justice, and the ultimate conviction of all three perpetrators in Ahmaud’s murder was realized.
Many recognized the moment as a win by which our hope toward justice could be restored. Still, many others recognized the moment as legitimizing an inherently corrupt and eternally illegitimate system. Either way, it goes, we recognize that the justice of The Lord’s reign would have been Ahmaud’s presence among us still today, Atatiana’s presence, Trayvon’s, Breonna’s.
Collectively, we must realize that there must be total eradication of the systemically manufactured suffering that Black and African people experience locally and globally, lest we, and generations after us, continue holding our breath for the conviction of white supremacy a white supremacist court. Collectively, we must build the world necessary to free ourselves from the manufactured suffering of white supremacy.
Luke 3:4 says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In other words, we have a responsibility to create a world fit for the coming messiah. Whatever peace there is will come by way of our work in our local churches and local communities. Our preparation must mark our waiting for what we expect to come. It must be marked by our preparation for whom we expect to come.
The cooperative economics of a socialist gospel must be made evident in our support of local organizations already leading the way. The collective work and responsibility of a low Christology must be evident in our showing up when there are no cameras, and all we have is ‘us.’ Finally, the purpose of our faith in Emmanuel, God with us, must be made evident in our unwillingness to compromise our quest toward liberation. God cannot be confined, and God cannot lose.
Bishop Reginald Jackson wrote on November 18, 2021, “I believe that prayer not only changes things, [but] prayer changes people. Nobody’s going to turn us around. We continue the work,” and I believe him. I believe in us. I believe that the pastors who descended upon Brunswick’s grounds in a statement of solidarity with the Arbery family will go back to their hometowns and local churches to do the work of dismantling systems of oppression on all fronts- policing, courts, housing authorities, economic and employment authorities, and build community with those who hang from their crosses.
So, we continue the work in our local communities, national and international solidarity, and the work of dismantling the white supremacy that was on trial just before Advent began. We—sisters, brothers, siblings, elders, youth, poor and unknown, rich and high profile—must continue working until a new heaven and earth emerge. Let our hands be busy preparing the way of The Lord.
