Fragility and resilience | 23 October 2016

Text: Jeremiah 31

Speaker: Yvonne Zimmerman

Over the past weeks, in the company of our worship theme of moving beyond an ideology of colorblindness, into racial consciousness, toward posture of antiracism and lives that work for justice, we’ve been journeying with the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s public witness spanned 40 years before and during the great exile, when Jerusalem and its temple were crushed by the Babylonians.
As we have been learning, this was a time of Israel’s great undoing: The Temple was destroyed; the monarchy was terminated; everyone of social standing was carried away in exile. Only the poor were left behind to work the land.

The theological crux of Jeremiah’s prophetic message is that all of this national devastation is happening because Israel broke the covenant God made with them following their narrow escape from Egypt. In fact, The gist of chapters 1 through 29 is that the events of 587 and the loss of Jerusalem mean that the Sinai covenant is a spent force.  Done. These chapters are brimming with harsh condemnation of Israel’s values and institutions. The monarchy is corrupt. The religious authorities in the Temple are hypocritical. The elite of the city are nonplussed by rampant social injustice. All of this and more is evidence that Israel has refused the commandments, neglected their obligations, and, in so doing, diluted their distinctive identity as God’s chosen people.  Now, God’s judgement is upon them.

And the judgement is pretty horrible. As Joel pointed out several weeks ago, the oracle of Jeremiah 4 presents the destruction and desolation in terms that suggest that what is happening is tantamount to “Genesis 1 in reverse.” An uncreation. The video is playing backwards—people, birds, light—everything is gone. All is ‘formless and void.’

By contrast, chapters 30-33 of Jeremiah are known as the “Book of Comfort” in which the prophet announces poignant visions of restoration and renewal. The same God who called the cosmos into being; who “planted the garden of Eden and crafted humanity from its soil will replant [Israel].”  The new covenant is vision of a re- creation. According to Hebrew Bible scholar Wil Gafney, the announcement of a new covenant “signified the promise of a faithful God to a devastated people for restoration, perhaps even in their lifetime.”  Historically, this new covenant resulted in the eventual homecoming of the deportees from Babylon to Jerusalem, and in the formation of Judaism as an outgrowth of the religious practice of ancient Israel.

As I prepared to write this sermon, I consulted a number of commentaries and other resources on this text, and the one thing all of them had in common was to push back strongly—strongly—against any temptation to interpret the new covenant Jeremiah announces in chapter 31 through a supersessionist lens. By a supersessionist lens, I mean an interpretation that understands the New Covenant Jeremiah announces here as a prophecy concerning Jesus—so the idea that Jesus replaces or fulfills the broken Sinai Covenant. (Now, full disclosure: this is exactly where the writer of the book of Hebrews goes with this text in Hebrews 8:8-13). However, the commentators were pretty clear that this is not what the text meant in its original context or to its original audience. Walter Brueggemann argues that, “In its biblical context,…It is unmistakably clear that the oracle in the context of Jeremiah pertains exactly to the crisis among Israelites in the sixth century BCE.”  He is adamant that Jeremiah’s announcement of the new covenant “is in no way an anticipation of what become the claim made in the Christian tradition.” Rather, it’s theological substance is that “the God of Israel is willing and able to take a fresh initiative of embrace to [God’s] chosen people.”  After uncreation, to create again.

So, it seems that the invitation for us as Christian readers of this text, is to stay present to the crisis in Jeremiah’s context.  The Sinai covenant is no longer in effect. Israel no longer has the attentiveness or protection of Yahweh. They are experiencing what it’s like to be unchosen; uncreated.

Two weeks ago I attended a conference in Montreat, NC called DisGrace: Seeking God’s Grace Amid the Disgrace of Racism. One of the main themes of the conference, a theme that has also come up in our worship over the past month, was the concept of white fragility. This term was coined by multicultural educator Robin DiAngelo. DiAngelo explains white fragility like this
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt; and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.

The phenomenon of white fragility is rooted in the cultural pervasiveness of the ideology of colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits that the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity.  In other words, colorblindness attempts to take race off the table. Moreover, because the primary goal of colorblind racial ideology is to take race off the table, then to talk about race and racism is, following the logic of this ideology, to actually be racist.  Hence the frequent push-back when white people are confronted with the racial dynamics of whiteness:
“What are making this about race?”
“There you go playing the race card!”
“I think we should say ‘All lives matter.’”
These are examples of white fragility. It’s the inability to hang out in hard, stressful spaces in conversations about race. It’s the unwillingness to be confronted with the pain of racism and white supremacy. White fragility is the way white people keep white supremacy installed as the measure and meaning normal, natural, and moral. It is the compulsive need to restore equilibrium and to make everything all right—to oneself be alright—right now.

I see a parallel between, on the one hand, the strong temptation to interpret this ‘new covenant’ passage with a supersessionist lens and, on the other hand, white fragility. The former we might call ‘Christian fragility’ and describe it as the anxiety about, and even intolerability of, the possibility that not everything in the Bible inexorably leads to Jesus. Or it might also look like the inability to conceive that Christians aren’t God’s only or even necessarily most beloved creatures.

In my view, the space between the crucifixion on Good Friday and the resurrection of Easter is a time when Christian fragility is most prominently on display. It’s hard to hang out in that middle space with a dead Savior. To resist moving reflexively to the resurrection takes some doing!
Or another way we witness Christian fragility is the impulse to issue quick reassurances in response to tragedy or grief:
“God works in mysterious ways.”
“I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
“Well, one thing we know is God’s still in control.”
These and other similar cliques restore the speaker’s sense of equilibrium, albeit often at the expense of the person who is suffering. Christian fragility.

The opposite of fragility is resilience. Now, the resilience I’m talking about is not an innate characteristic, but it is a capacity that can be developed by intentionally engaging in practices that build it over time.  And so the antidote to Christian fragility is religious, or theological, resilience, by which I mean developing the capacity to stay present to the issues named in the actual texts rather than applying a comfortable and convenient Christological gloss.

Similarly, the antidote to white fragility is racial resilience, or the capacity to stay present and engaged
in situations of racial tension. Our worship theme last year during Lent and this month are corporate practices of building racial resilience. These worship services initiate and invite us into difficult conversations, to tough spaces to wrestle with painful realities. The discipline is to show up each week without co-opting the agenda; without trying to taking control; without changing the subject; without checking out, shutting down, or becoming defensive. Congregationally, we are learning how to show up for and have hard but important conversations about race. Of course: Showing up for worship is a small thing, but its significance is that its capacity-building. We are learning as a predominantly white community to tolerate and keep company with racial stress, because we believe this is necessary if we are to become an antiracist, pro-justice church.

One of the plenary sessions I attended at the Disgrace conference was on the topic of identifying theological resources for combatting white fragility. One of the resources the speaker explored was the liturgical practice of confession.  Now confession needn’t be some greatly formal or ritualized act, because, at its core, the practice is of confession about being honest. When we engage in confession, we’re telling the truth about ourselves.  As a practice of truth-telling, confession be as simple as telling stories. Indeed, “Sometimes the shortest distance between two people is a story,” the speaker reminded us.

There are many ways to tell a true story. And so there are many truthful ways I could explain my investment in this process of racial justice. Many stories would get at some true aspect of why this matters to me. Here’s one story I’ve been sitting with recently:

My mom’s side of the family are the Brubakers. They immigrated to this country before it was a country, receiving a land grant in Lancaster County, PA, directly from William Penn. They were good Mennonite people. They came seeking religious freedom, but they didn’t understand themselves as political. They wanted nothing more than to be the quiet in the land. They busied themselves with farming and nonconformity. They didn’t fight in any of the American wars; they didn’t own any slaves—this was born out of their religious convictions as Mennonites. About 10 years ago, my mother began reading the diaries kept by her great-great grandfather, Jacob L. Brubaker.  She enjoyed sharing with my sisters and me tidbits she was learning about an earlier era of life on the farm where she was born and raised.  One entry, though, caught her by surprise when Jacob recounted how he had rented several slaves that day from a neighboring farmer to help with an especially labor-intensive farm task.

Rented slaves. Lancaster Mennonites didn’t own slaves—wouldn’t own slaves. But, apparently, they would rent slaves. Mennonites. My people.

A few weeks ago, Joel quoted a passage from the book Between the World and Me in which Ta-Nehisi Coates throws in an unexpected reference to Mennonites.  Coates is explaining that the problem of racism in America really isn’t about skin tone, or differences in skin tone, but about setting up abusive hierarchy. He writes that the category of white—as in ‘white people’—is a modern invention, and that all of the many people and groups who now get to qualify as ‘white’ were “something else before they were white – Catholic, Corsican, Welsh, Mennonite, Jewish.” “And,” he concludes, “if our national hopes have any fulfillment, then they will have to be something else again.”

Reaching back yet further in the sermon archive, some of you will remember that back in July, Joel preached on the parable of the Good Samaritan. “Half Dead” was the sermon’s catchy title.  In that sermon, he referenced an essay by Goshen College history professor Philip Gollner entitled “How Mennonites Became White.”   Briefly, Gollner argues that Mennonite immigrants from Europe became racialized as white Americans roughly around the turn of the 20th century when they began to enter into the already-racialized national social matrix as social helpers of people of color. In Gollner’s words, it was “through their belief in the privileged task of improving the world around them, and their desire for a more universally relevant church” that Mennonites became culturally recognizable as good, white Protestants.  So Gollner’s analysis would have Mennonites becoming white around 1900.

But it seems to me that if the Mennonites in my family were renting slaves in the mid-1800s, then Mennonites (or at least some Mennonites) were white at least a good 30 years before Gollner suggests Mennonite racialization was accomplished.

The process of confronting racism and dismantling white supremacy reminds me of the process of stripping a piece of antique furniture for refinishing. It is scraping away layer, after layer, after layer of white supremacy culture. And it’s not always possible to tell at the outset of such a project how many layers there are underneath the top coat before the original wood. But I am convinced that if, using Coates’s words, we are “to become something else again”, all of the layers will need to come off. All of them.
Only then can the original wood be refinished; can we become that “something else” again.

When Jeremiah announces God’s resolve to make a new covenant with ancient Israel, it’s less the content of the covenant that will be new. In fact, the content of the covenant Jeremiah describes stands very much in continuity with the Sinai Covenant. What is distinctly new about the new covenant is its “mode of transmission and reception.”   According to Jeremiah, the new covenant will not be taught. It will be internalized—implanted directly within each person, not, in a sense, unlike the way humans bear the image of God. Bearing this image is not something that is taught. It is something that comes from within. The image of God is implanted directly within each person, connecting each one of us with the divine goodness and blessedness in which—and, importantly, for which—we were created. ‘Written on their hearts’, is the metaphor Jeremiah uses. The imagery is of God writing God’s law directly on our hearts—the center of our beings.

Of course, God’s law isn’t the only thing written on our hearts and minds. Part of the movement from color blindness to racial consciousness is growing awareness of the extent to which white supremacy has come to be inscribed there as well.  We are working at acknowledging, reckoning with, removing those layers. Even when it is painful to do so. Even when the removal process is so hard, so painful, and so uncomfortable that it seems our very hearts might break.

You see, if God’s law is written on our hearts—written first, as our original blessing before any of the other layers (call it sin, or simply “baggage”, if you prefer)— Then when our hearts break open, God’s law will tumble in. Not just on our hearts, but then truly in our hearts. When our hearts break, God’s law tumbles in.

White supremacy, white fragility, and a racist culture is killing us all. Our increased woke-ness to white supremacy and the moral crisis of whiteness awakens, too, a growing cognizance that we desperately need a new covenant—a new agreement—about what just peace looks like in the church and the world. And because congregations are communities that are uniquely capable of helping people tell the truth, this is where we need to do the work.
What layers need to be stripped away in you?
What are your stories related to race?
What does it mean for you, or for us, to tell the truth about who we are?

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Citations:

Walter Brueggemann, “Texts that Linger, Words That Explode,” Theology Today 54, no. 2 (July 1997): 190.
  Amy Erickson, “Commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34,” Working Preacher, October 28, 2012, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1432
  Joel Miller, “From Loss to Celebration,” Columbus Mennonite Church: Columbus, OH. (September 11, 2016).
  Will Gafney, “Commentary on Jeremiah 31:27-34” Working Preacher, October 17, 2010, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=705
  Ibid.
   Walter Brueggemann, “Jeremiah 31:31-34: The Oracle of Newness” The Huffington Post, October 26, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walter-brueggemann/jeremiah-31-31-34-on-sc…
  Walter Brueggemann, “A New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34)” Bible Odyssey, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/new-covenant-jer-…
  Ibid.
  Robin DiAngelo, “White Fragility,” International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3, no. 3 (2011) p. 54. http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/viewFile/249/116
  Monnica T. Williams, “Colorblind Ideology is a Form of Racism” Psychology Today, December 27, 2011, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201112/colorbli…
  J.C. Austin, “Engaging White Fragility” DisGrace Conference: Montreat, NC. (October 10, 2016).
  Ibid.
  See Joel Miller, “To Uproot, Pull Down, Destroy and Overthrow. To Build and Plant,” Columbus Mennonite Church: Columbus, OH (October 2, 2016).
  Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, NY: Spiegel & Grau, 2015, 7.
  Joel Miller, “Half Dead,” Columbus Mennonite Church: Columbus, OH (July 17, 2017).
  Philip Gollner, “How Mennonites Became White: Religious Activism, Cultural Power, and the City” Mennonite Quarterly Review 90 (April 2016).
  Gollner, as quoted by Joel Miller, “Half Dead.”
  Amy Erickson, “Commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34.”