In the era of COVID-19, surviving is hard enough.
Yesterday, it felt like we went from sweatshirts and fuzzy socks in the morning to, “Moooommm, my room is so hot, can’t we turn on the air condition?” by late afternoon. The heat made everyone crabby. One child was quick to tantrum over misunderstood homework, another picked fights with her brother, the third turned pro in dart shooting with her eyes. I wanted to shred the leftover loner socks who seemed to mock me with their unwillingness to be paired and put tidily away.
Luckily, Uncle Hugh served as a peacemaker by nodding sympathetically to our stories of woe and driving the children to Bethesda Row for take-out frozen yogurt. Our “problems” were small and fixed by a small gesture. I was grateful for the peace it brought.
But there are small problems and there are big problems, right? And regardless of the size of the problem, what’s the right approach? Sometimes I struggle with knowing when to be a peacemaker and when to get angry.
Jesus showed us both sides of that coin. He showed us how to bring unexpected protectiveness and mercy into relationships when he spoke up on behalf of Mary Magdalene, challenging anyone in a haranguing crowd to parade their perfect record of behavior in comparison to Mary’s imperfection. By holding up a mirror, so to speak, Jesus brought peace in the crowd, Mary’s transformation and our own heads bowed in awareness of our shameful behaviors.
But what about when there is no transformation, only continued wrongs; when there are no heads bowed in shame, only defiance and increased threats of violence? And I’m not talking about hitting one’s brother. When Jesus entered a temple and found it had been converted into a “den of robbers,” he got angry. He flipped over tables.
After reading the news about George Floyd being killed by a white policeman, I wish someone powerful would flip over tables. I know I want to, especially after hearing stories from friends of mine like Jen about living as a brown woman in the United States. COVID-19 is just the latest terror for her to navigate while raising her family in an often hostile country for black and brown people.
Her teenage son, for instance, hopes to go from the Maryland suburbs to the beach for a couple of days with friends, which is a tradition in these parts when the school year ends. “My husband is having conversations with our son about how to behave, how to survive, how to come back home,” Jen said. Jen’s daughter, in elementary school, has been sent contorted photos of herself made grotesquely ugly with a caption, “hey sexy.” Jen is exhausted, depleted, sad and scared.
Such cruelty to blameless little girls, such everyday threats to our young people and fatal violence to our neighbors—these are big problems that are worthy of being angry about. What would Jesus’ response be after flipping over the tables on these realities? I don’t know. But I do know that every mom brown, black, yellow, white or purple, deserves the chance to be mad at nothing more than lost socks and the chance to earn a little peace by getting fro-yo without feeling in danger along the way.
@theterrace 