I have been intentional about not saying anything about last Wednesday’s terrorist attack on the U.S. Capital Building. I am still in a state of numb shock–disbelieving, incredulous (I guess those are synonyms), sad, troubled, and not just a little nauseous. Call them what you will: Traitors, terrorists, bigots, White Supremacists, cult members, murderers. And that’s all the attention this blog will give to them.
Our preacher, preaching the Spirit-breathed word this morning, uttered a sentence that I cannot shake out of my head: “And then came Wednesday.”
For many of us, the year came in on a good start, a hopeful start. In fact, my word of the year is “hope.” We knew realistically that 1 January wouldn’t bring a magical end to the pandemic, nor would it prove to be the panacea to fix Washington and the ills in our society. All we knew is that we were leaving 2020 behind. We were leaving behind the continuous crisis condition of the year with its sudden pandemic, shut-downs, monstrously high death toll, and physical separation from people with whom we don’t live. We were leaving behind the grief from all those losses. We were leaving behind the senseless, violent, racially-motivated deaths of innocent Black people at the hands of White racists, both cops and civilians (though mostly cops). We were leaving behind peaceful protests and destructive riots, an extremely contentious election cycle and the false claims of invalidity and fraud by a would-be dictator who can’t accept his loss gracefully. We were seeing news about vaccines and we had hope.
We had hope that we’d see the end of the pandemic. We had hope that the transition of the presidency would bring more help to those people who are suffering so much throughout this pandemic. We had hope that we would never have to see or hear anything else from the current president after 20 January (hope still springs). We had hope that we could coast into 2021, sailing along the last three weeks of the current administration and thinking of new ways to love others.
And then came Wednesday.
Social media blew up with the news. I was teaching, just hitting the peak of our school day after a late start due to a Zoom Bible study. The day had gotten off to a hopeful start. We learned that the state of Georgia had elected two Democratic senators which was enough to flip the Senate to a Democratic majority. Only my cynical fear of two branches of our government being controlled by one party tempered my happiness and hope about new changes. I was also proud that a Black person from the south had been elected to the Senate for the first time in our nation’s history–and a preacher, at that. I thought that was enough history making for the day. Well, that, and Congress finally certifying the electoral college votes which would officially seal Joe Biden’s win. The hope for many of us was that Trump would finally accept his loss, concede and fade off into the end of his administration.
And then came the afternoon. News of a protest by a bunch of sore losing nationalists didn’t warrant any of my attention. Then things turned violent. Innocent lawmakers were being threatened. The political “sacred space” that is our nation’s capitol building had been invaded for the first time since 1814–and it was the British then. People were being hurt. One died. We later found out four more died. And all the while, the president was silent. When he did speak, it was to send the terrorists home with an “I love you.” No kidding.
While some of the domestic terrorists wanted violence, it seems their main agenda was to disrupt the certification of votes. It didn’t work. Congress reconvened later that night and worked until the wee hours of the morning to complete their task. As Wednesday faded into “then Thursday happened,” the men and women of Congress worked while we slept after surviving a frightening, nerve-wracking day.
Sometimes, that day that comes brings a whole new way of seeing life or it marks a day that we will always remember. I was thinking of some of those days.
Then Tuesday came. Tuesday, 11 September 2001. If you were alive on that day, you remember it and can tell people exactly where you were. If you’d traveled by air prior to that, you know how much it changed how we fly.
Then Sunday came. Sunday, 7 December 1941. The bombing of Pearl Harbor. This unprovoked attack got us into World War II.
Then Monday came. Monday, 23 November 2015. I was having a wonderful day with my girls when I slid down in the kitchen and dislocated my knee. That changed all of Advent for us and its festivities.
Then there was that Tuesday in August when our little we-some became a three-some as we welcomed our first daughter into our lives.
Then Friday came. Jesus had warned his disciples multiple times that it was going to happen, but they didn’t really know when, exactly, it’d happen. On that Friday, Jesus died. His disciples were terrified, devastated, heartbroken. Their lives as they knew them had changed.
Then Sunday came. Those same disciples couldn’t believe when the women came back and said that Jesus’ body wasn’t in the tomb anymore. Then they were a whole different kind of shaken up when their teacher who’d they’d see die on Friday was standing right there with them. Before they even had a chance to adjust to Friday’s new normal, Sunday’s newer normal was happening.
Before we had a chance to adjust to the newness of 2021, Wednesday happened. This shook us up. It shook us as a nation. It showed us that the seemingly impenetrable citadel of lawmaking that is our nation’s capitol is just as vulnerable as any other building. It showed us that the despotism and hate-motivated “othering” that we saw plague nations in Europe and Asia in the twentieth century could, in fact, attack us, too. I would like to think that a lot of life-long Republicans were also shaken to their very cores, as the ideals of fair government they held dear and their faith in those ideals ran right into a terrorist attack on the very building that represents those ideals, empowered and encouraged by a Republican president they’d defended and supported. They learned the hard way that they cannot have it both ways: These Republicans cannot have their ideals while supporting the very person trying to destroy them.
Yes, Wednesday came. It gave us some impressive paragraphs for future history books. It held moments of pride, moments of fear, moments of disgust, moments of sadness, and moments of bravery. I hope history will remember the Senate aides who grabbed the box of ballots and carried it to safety, as well as Capital Police Officer Eugene Goodman, the Black cop who led the terrorists away from the unsealed Senate chamber doors. (Take a moment and appreciate his undeniable courage in being the sole Black man confronting an armed and violent White Supremacist mob.) Wednesday proved to us our vulnerability, and this not only shook Americans, but our allies around the world are scared for us. (I hear the shakiness in an Irish friend’s voice whenever we speak.)
But today is Sunday. Today we wait and hope and pray. We pray for a cease to violence. We pray for justice. We pray that a smooth transition will mark these next ten days until the Biden administration begins. We pray for the leadership that has to work to mend the rift in our nation. It wasn’t a new rift. It didn’t happen in the last four years, but it was a little tear caused and perpetuated by centuries of White fear and white supremacy that the last four years made bigger.
Today we hope. Tomorrow we hope. And every day we hope for something new to begin. Let us be harbingers of that “new.” Let us share our renewed hope in Christ as the one who’ll get us through whatever 2021 brings.
