Coronavirus and Crucifixion: Community and Forsakenness

At its best, a day like Good Friday could, and maybe should, invoke a visceral sense of discomfort in considering the events that transpired in the midst of a state-sanctioned lynching high above Jerusalem. We often manage to negotiate our way through this day beckoned by the hope of Sunday morning, but ultimately arrive at a prettier and curated experience of this day as a result of our cultural diluting and disinfection of difficult realities. The gore of the cross cannot be lost on us, especially as an instrument of capital punishment, in a time when the insatiable appetite of colonialism and empire in the named “Greatest Country in the World” has allowed for the most vulnerable and afflicted amongst us to fall victim, not only to physical disease, but to the ravages of the cultural diseases of poverty, misinformation, serpentine immorality, continued mass incarceration, and the effectual return of “separate-but-equal” schooling parading under the suburbanized euphemism of “school choice.”

This Good Friday feels so different to so many as the foundational elements of their existence are crumbling under the equal opportunity demon of COVID-19—but to so many, these feelings of terror and unpredictability are so normal. They’re so real. While maybe heightened, the feelings are not unfamiliar, as they are a lived reality for the poor, the elderly, the Black, the brown, and the marginalized everywhere.

But what do we say of a community’s response that, while on the surface seems robust, is still stamped with the control and approval of white supremacy, in determining who requires the most help, when they need it, and why they need it? As we wait with bated breath for stimulus checks, few voices are crying in the wilderness that our streets have become for significant investment in our cultural capital. Empty streets are deceiving. It may help flatten the curve and slow the rate of infection, but it has left many isolated. This isolation is not superficial but has a completeness to it that many of us have never experienced. Folx have been cut off from resources, left without any significant human contact, and possibly very, very alone. The consequences of our own privilege can show up in the most difficult ways and show how little we actually value the idea and the practice of community.

Genuine koinonia, or community, is something with which most of us are strikingly unfamiliar. Jesus saw his mother. Jesus saw his beloved disciple. Two people of significant value to Jesus are standing before him at his execution. In true totality, however, they are actually witnesses to the failure of community to truly embrace and support its own. Jesus comes and declares that his ministry is to those who are poor, bound, oppressed, and left out—but how is it that the entirety of his ministry has been dedicated to the building up of these people and it ends with his death?

We cheapen this question with talk of providence and determinism, as it is, at its core, the result of an empire missing its opportunity to do right by the poor and the oppressed, and feeling threatened by a lowly man, with a menacing royalty, marked by his service to those the empire, and the religious establishment, disregarded.

“Woman, here is your son.”

Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

Many have regarded this moment as Jesus taking care of his final acts of earthly business, but that seems to oversimplify the depth of what is happening in this moment. For those who were witnessing his death, it is logical that Jesus would ensure this mother’s well-being, but in doing so, he redefines the role of community to care for those who are the most vulnerable. Scripture reveals that Jesus had siblings, but it is not to his siblings that he says, “Take care of mama,” but to the beloved disciple. His act, of course, is one that keeps the ravaging of a patriarchal society from possibly leaving her destitute, but it also proves that community is defined by the commitment of the people in it. Jesus did not solely give a role to the beloved disciple, but he also gave one to his mother. There’s a mutuality of care that must be highlighted as we find ourselves attempting to overturn centuries worth of individualism that has stunted our communal growth in the face of the growing number of crises.

The cracks in our community are rapidly filling with those left without the care required to build safe and safe-determined communities. Hourly workers are struggling because governments did not have enough care to put protections in place years ago in case this happened. We’re finding that the school systems could have long provided hotspots and laptops to students and families still trapped in the digital divide. We’re finding that sensible legislation is actually possible, but it took the demon to land on the doorstep of power before anything significant could happen. We’re trapped in a dystopia where the appearance of community is more valuable as it preserves the power of those who wish to keep pimping the poor and vulnerable, but still claim Jesus.

But I wonder how one whose entire life is defined by the preservation of power can identify with a forsaken savior. It requires a particular kind of theological incongruence to hold firmly to power and a savior whose life was defined by his existence on the margins of society. It doesn’t work.

But that’s it, isn’t it? The folks wearing the crowns (and fake tans) were threatened by the populist prophet praised by the marginalized. Their grasp on power was quickly slipping away, as the masses were empowered to live their lives again with the value and humanity—the imago Dei—that had been stolen from them.

This is how we arrive here—watching Jesus struggle to take each breath and wondering where God, his parent, his keeper had gone. The God whose throne rests, in the words of the Psalmist, on righteousness and justice seems to have walked away from him.

“My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus is in a position where we often find ourselves. We are looking at a world whose heart is broken by abandonment. We ourselves are crushed under the weight of betrayal we have experienced at the hands of those who claim to love us the most.

It is a world broken by the inability of some to maintain bodily and spiritual autonomy. It is broken by vicious hate speech that incites violence against Black and brown bodies, immigrants and refugees, and an overwhelming sense of self-righteousness that still makes it okay for a woman to be subjected to vulgarity from men—and worse having her body, her wellbeing, her livelihood, and the parameters of her career determined by cisgender, straight, white men who would rather sell their daughters up a river than to have her make the same, dollar for dollar, as the crop of mediocre, undereducated, unprofessional, racist, homophobic, deaf-eared white men who’ve managed to take control of our government!

Like Jesus, we still choose to stand against the status quo, even as the status quo tries to break our bones. It tries to break our resolve. It tries to destroy our spirits. We look around and seeing no change, we exclaim, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We are looking for God’s justice to prevail. It has failed to explode onto the scene of the collective crucifixions of the oppressed. The absence of justice makes it appear as if God has walked away and let go of us all. We lament—for what else is one to do on a cross? We lament because our lives have been upended—our plans, our hopes, our dreams have been greeted with the glaring realities of a pandemic. We lament the failure of community to support the most vulnerable amongst us. We lament the inability of churches to see the value of existing outside of four walls until they are forced by circumstances out of their control. We lament the mediocre response of our community institutions to the well-being of its constituency. We lament that tomorrow is drastically different because we still can’t make sense of yesterday and today is simply too much to bear.

But we cannot underestimate the power of Jesus’ lament—neither can we underestimate the power of our own. It is in Jesus’ example that we must realize that one laments because one knows that better is possible. Even in our weariness, our lament keeps pushing us to stand up even when the weight of communal forsakenness makes it all the more difficult to stand. We keep pressing on because we KNOW that we are better and worth more to God than what we are experiencing. We KNOW we are worth more, and that’s why we still have hope. The spine, the essence of lament is hope.

That’s why Jesus cries out—because there’s still hope, even in his pain. He takes the words of the Psalmist, and unable to sing them as he was taught, he just cries out!

We might not always be able to formulate the verses to the song, but we can cry out. We might not even know what might happen if we do. But if someone didn’t cry out, slavery would still be reality. If someone didn’t cry out, the principalities and powers of Jim Crow would never have fallen.

With that one cry from the cross, the voiceless and forsaken ones among us have a voice that still rings through eternity. The lament hangs in the thick air of our lives and somehow manages to bring perspective to a moment in time when the talking heads would rather us acquiesce to the powers that be—having our destinies controlled by the power players—but the cry of forsakenness breaks the chains off of our imprisoned goodwill and shakes the world, forcing it to pay attention to the pain it tries to hide. It forces attention upon the misguided intentions of those still attempting to limit the rights of women to choose, the rights of LGBTQ persons to live fully and without fear, and the continued conspiracy to pommel the voices of those whose laments have taken to the streets to demand equity in our schools, the cessation of police brutality, and the willy-nilly participation of elected officials right here in this city to actually do what is right.

Community cannot function without mutual care and forsakenness can only endure where care is absent. The role of God’s Church is not to play into the hands of power and suppress lament, but to hold space where the forsaken can find community and care in the outstretched arms of the one who was lynched for teaching us that

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

The forsaken are called in to the kinship community of God—that beloved community where moderates and fake allies will cease from troubling. Where tyrannical leaders are brought down by their own pride. Where economic injustice is vanquished as the wealth is shared amongst the nations. Where Beckys and Karens will cease from troubling those gathered in the name of sacred community around the grill. Where the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will break forth into the world and shut down the turbulent waters of trouble that have swept too many away. And like Jesus, we will cry out in the midst of our forsaken places:

The Lord is my light and my salvation! Whom shall I fear?

Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations!

Walk together children!

Kenneth Pettigrew

Winston-Salem Urban League, Winston-Salem, NC