Putting On the Mask: A Holy Week Reflection John 18:38 (cf. Isaiah 59: 12-15)

It’s Holy Week in Christendom. This is the week we live for, the week we celebrate our foundational myth, about Jesus the Christ, who ended a three year ministry of radical, feather-ruffling, temple-table-turning love, nailed to a cross, being executed by the Roman empire. In our telling, the tomb cannot hold Jesus. Somehow, after a journey into hell, he emerges the victor, unensnared by the tomb, and the death that finds all of us, eventually. He gets up, as many a preacher will proclaim come Sunday, “with all power in his hand.”

We live, today, in the clutches of an evil empire, that is unrelenting – indefatigable – in its force and violence. It is we who are beset with fatigue, fighting back with our puny facts, and truth, hope and faith, “thoughts and prayers.” “Yea, truth fails.” (Isaiah 59:14)

Closer to home, many of us are worrying about how we can find masks. Early in the misinformation/disinformation campaign that characterizes the federal government’s response to the Corona Crisis, we were told not to wear masks, and to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline healthcare workers. Still, many of us were disturbed to suddenly see more and more folks moving through public with masks on. When last I flew on March 5th, every Asian person on the plane, was wearing a mask. It was still early in the crisis; a global pandemic had not been declared. But racism never takes a break. I sensed that these Asian passengers, decked out in LSU football gear, were wearing masks as a way to signal to a hostile public that they were aware of the perception of their bodies as threat, and that they were participating in protecting the public from themselves, in hopes, I’m sure, of protecting themselves from the public. It made me mad.

Now, one month later, federal guidelines have changed, and we are all being encouraged to wear masks, to help “flatten the curve,” as it were. Those who sew are dusting off their trusty Singer sewing machines, sewing masks in beautiful fabrics, or functional ones depending, making protective equipment for themselves, family, friends, and a frantically soliticous public. If you are like me, I am missing my grandmother who sewed clothes for me every summer. Mostly I’m missing that I never took an interest in learning her craft.

But really, during this Quarantine-Holy Week mashup, I am thinking about how the world feels upside down. I am thinking of all of us who have the privilege to hole up in our houses wishing and hoping for a return to normalcy, and those of us who wish us for us to spring forward to something better, and those of us who can do none of this, because we’re just trying to make it. Because now, even though we have a clearer sense of who is essential, we have built a world that, even in knowing this truth, cannot protect those who matter most.

James Baldwin famously said, “love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without, but know we cannot live within.” Even as the evils of late capitalism are being unmasked, Baldwin could not have foreseen, this world, one in which love actually requires that we put on the mask. Not merely to protect ourselves, but to protect others from ourselves. (Future of “Mask Off” fame perhaps could not have foreseen this world either.)

Love requires that we put on the mask.

What do we do this Holy Week with a Love that requires that we put on the mask, that we not share from the same communion table, that we not shake hands or hug, or even breathe too close to each other, that we lock the doors of the church and haul away those who defy lawful orders not to assemble, that we stay holed up in our houses participating in the world on computer screens?

The world feels upside down but maybe finally it is turning right side up. Putting on our masks is unmasking so much about who we are as a country and as a body politic. In public, now we have to look each other in the eye, if we look at all. We are refused the comfort and absolution of smiles that don’t reach the eyes. The eyes are all there are. But for our collective Islamophobia and our aversion to religious covering whether of the hair only or the whole face and body, we might have ascertained this truth earlier. Putting on our masks reminds us that even though healthy relationships demand intimacy and openness, they also demand boundaries, an accounting for oneselfm our human limits, and our potential and power to do harm. There is no intimacy without risk.

I have long thought that perhaps the most dangerous outgrowth of the Trump presidency would be the structural triumph of the most dangerous lies that white supremacy and capitalism tell about which lives have value. We live on a merry-go-round of changing truths and shifting facts; its hard to get our bearings.  It’s not that America has ever been very interested in telling the truth. But it is important for us to recognize that there is something unique, and dare I say, singular happening with Trump, a man who lies about things that aren’t even worth lying about, a man who lies about things that can be immediately fact-checked. Masking things is a perpetual mood for this man. In some ways, with him as our leader, we were always going to end up here, masked in public. And the thing about masks is: they are flimsy best. They betray us often. They cover some things, but they don’t cover very much, and you have to tend to them with great vigilance. So it is with lies, too.

Among many things that have been unmasked is the way the truth, whatever it may be, seems to matter less and less. It is this thing about what the truth means that I have reckoning with since January 2017 and that beckoned my churchgirlself to the biblical text for reflection during this Holy Week.

Permit me to do a little close reading of a Biblical text on my way to the point.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 18, Jesus has been brought to court by the religious establishment. So he and Pilate, a Roman official, are going back and forth about what exactly Jesus has done to be dragged before the court. Pilate asks, “are you the King of the Jews?” And Jesus, ever coy and not one to be caught slipping, says, “who told you that? Do you think that or did you hear that from somewhere?”(v. 34) It’s so interesting that church folks think Jesus only answers questions. All of us have met (or been) those Bible thumpers, who like to proclaim that “the Bible is clear…” right before saying something that the Bible seems far more undecided about.

My experience of knowing Jesus really has been that sometimes Jesus be like: Who told you that? Is that what you think? Did you come up with that on your own or did you hear that somewhere? Those are a good set of questions to begin asking yourself as a way to ascertain what feels true for you. What do you think about Jesus? Who told you about it? Is any of what you know about Jesus something you have come to for yourself? Or are you just repeating what you heard?

How reliable is your own testimony? And how reliable is the testimony of the witnesses you are relying on? Do you listen to Trump or Dr. Fauci? Do you listen to Fox News or a credible news outlet? Are you reading what the science says about 5G or listening to baseless conspiracy theories not rooted in the facts?

Pilate ultimately says, “What’s with all these questions?! Your own people brought you here. Basically I don’t care if you’re the King of the Jews or the Queen of Timbuktu? But why are these people so mad at you, Jesus?”

So Jesus starts talking about this Kingdom he has, one not rooted in violent overthrow and coercive politics. Jesus is less concerned with defending himself, because he already knows that empire gone empire. You can’t use its own tools to defeat it, saith the Lorde. You have to invoke a different logic altogether. He is, therefore, more concerned with whether Pilate can entertain the notion that another world is possible, that there is a different way to do things, not rooted in violence and dominance and imperial catastrophe. Despite the discomfort, destruction, and devastation we are all experiencing to greater and lesser degrees, we are all being asked in this season of quarantine and upheaval to imagine that another world is possible – a world where healthcare is abundant, all people are paid a living wage, frequent vacation and reasonable, sustainable labor expectations are the norm, folks have food and shelter, and corporations don’t rule the world.

Each day, we watch Trump lie brazenly and unapologetically. Each day, we watch as the Republican Party and a conservative SCOTUS act in ways that are wholly about protecting their power than about serving the American people, even as it is clear that what we all should be doing is reckoning with our collective brokenness.

I have ceased praying about Trump (I never really started), because the only prayers I have for him are imprecatory. And while the Bible is clear on my right to pray such prayers, on this matter, I mostly try to be on my Michelle Obama. These knees can’t get that low anymore.

So Jesus tells Pilate, “for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate let’s Jesus finish with a rolled eye or two I’m sure, and then kind of ethers him with a nonchalant: “what is truth?” Knowing Jesus was innocent, Pilate, unencumbered by the truth, let the people decide that Jesus should still be executed.

What do you do when the truth can’t seem to help?

We are living through the aftermath of what happens when truth ceases to matter. Abdicating the throne of truth is the prelude to doing all manner of evil and injustice. When truth ceases to matter, custom steps in. If your customs are rooted in sexism and racism, hatred of the poor, violence toward the powerless, and a total lack of justice, then these are the practices that take the place of truth. In order to treat people wrong, you first decide that what is true doesn’t matter. We know grocery store workers and mail delivery folks and restaurant workers are essential. But when the truth doesn’t matter, then there is no priority to protect these people.

In another favorite biblical passage, Isaiah 59: 14-15, it reads, “judgment is turned backward, justice stands afar off, for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth.” In The Message translation it says, “Justice is beaten back. Righteousness is banished to the sidelines. Truth staggers down the street. Honesty is nowhere to be found, Good is missing in action. Anyone renouncing evil is beaten and robbed.”

Truth has been beaten up so bad, that it’s staggering down the street. It’s off balance. It can’t find it’s footing. Righteousness, Justice, Truth, Goodness. Everything is on the ropes. The people who are doing good in the world seem to be the ones dying the quickest. Meanwhile, Trump is still here wreaking havoc and throwing us all into a collective anxiety attack at every news conference, while getting joy from doing it. So many people are dying that there aren’t enough body bags or places in the morgue for them all.

That’s the thing about Easter Season. You spend most of it feeling defeated. You’ve thrown everything you have at the problem. You speak the truth to it. You try to do some good. You advocate for justice. And nothing helps. People still suffer; they lose their jobs; beloved institutions close; folks die.

You see people carted away by the hundreds and thousands all over the country in body bags, because those in power decided that the truth didn’t matter. You watch a Savior being given over to a bloody violent death because those with power decided truth didn’t matter.

We are perpetually, to quote, Christina Sharpe, “in the wake,” keeping digital vigil by our dead, telling stories of those we love, not getting any sleep, tracking the flotsam and jetsam left by the ship of state, waiting to exhale.

Is there any hope?

I always think our hope is in the people, the ones who keep showing up. Come Sunday morning at Jesus’ tomb, a bunch of women will show up to tend to their dead. In our current lives, care workers, doctors, nurses and first responders keep showing up. Restaurant workers and grocery store clerks and delivery service workers keep showing up. Churches are going virtual and figuring out innovative ways to show up and serve their people. Teachers are showing up to teach. Students are showing up to learn. We are checking on our strong friends. We are connecting with our families. We are resting and slowing down. The earth is taking a knee.

We are putting on our masks. First. We are sheltering in place, as all of America’s secret and not-so-secret sins are being unmasked to a watching world. The cross was nothing if not an unmasking of the sheer brutality of the Roman Empire.

We are showing up in the gap between what was and what will be. This is what faith is – a present expression toward a future hope. (The substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not yet seen.)

We are not yet out of the woods. The first Easter, lest we forget, happened for all intents and purposes, in a graveyard. Easter season reminds us that we do not get to declare victory prematurely. It will probably get worse before it gets better. But our hope is that as long as Truth, Justice, Righteousness, and Goodness are in the fight, we have a fighting chance.

 

Shout out to my thought partners: CT, LC, and TM for this piece. Thanks for the critical pushes, y’all.