Remembering to Love
By Rev. Betty Holley, Ph.D.
With this world of multiple pandemics—coronavirus, racial inequities, and January 6—still very raw in the minds of Americans, especially African Americans and people of color, remembering to love is what we have been called to do as followers of Jesus Christ. As ambassadors for Christ, love is at the heart of our various ministries. Watching the Inauguration Ceremony for President Joe Biden, and Vice-President Kamala Harris, at times with tears of joy streaming down my face, I thought to myself, “This is a day for remembering—all that we can remember of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful.”
“The American Carnage” of which January 6 is only a small—though not insignificant—part of carnage that reaches back into history, including the carnage brought about by white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia, and other forms of othering. It is a carnage that is legitimized by the confluence of American exceptionalism.
American settler colonialism of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries exemplified in the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville, normalized the displacement, perhaps even genocide of black and brown people of color from their lands. Consequently, there was displacement of Native Americans and First Nations peoples and the incarceration of slaves through panopticon-like slave housing on southern plantations; segregation was mandated by Jim Crow laws. There was the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II and the Vietnam War. Seemingly more, there was benign gerrymandering gentrification and ghettoization of United States global cities in contemporary times.
Our challenge is how and what to remember as we desire a more just world for all. From a Christian perspective, which is only one part of a multi-faith, multi-religious America, “The Last Supper as a remembrance” is my metaphor for a possible orienting practice for political engagement in a world of multiple pandemics.
As a remembrance, the Last Supper represents a community that included hope, joy, and loyalty but also embraced betrayal, fear, and cowardice. As a remembrance, the Last Supper passes through the anguish of Gethsemane and the mockery of divine love by the mobs who accepted the lies of their leaders. As a remembrance, the Last Supper confronts both the agony and forsakenness of Golgotha and the re-assurance of an empty tomb that was both a promise and fulfillment. As a remembrance, the Last Supper embraces the journey to Emmaus where sojourners almost did not recognize their fellow traveler on the road. As a remembrance, the Last Supper witnesses to yet another meal that Jesus prepared for his disciples, this time by the Sea of Galilee. It was a simple “poor person’s meal” but a meal, nevertheless.
Somewhere in this metaphor of the Last Supper, as a remembrance, are both markers of grace and fragments of love. Somewhere, this metaphor of the Last Supper as both markers of grace and fragments of love as a remembrance, could hopefully help us move toward the repair of our world that we desire so much but often serve so poorly.
The Last Supper was a significant event and proclaimed a turning point in God’s plan for the world. Could this time of confronting multiple pandemics be the needed turning point in God’s plan for us?
