“Maybe if you’d share more of the awful things you’ve dealt with, we’d understand and be able to empathize a bit more!” she exclaimed after I explained why I firmly but kindly drew a line to shut down a hurtful conversation about race in America. My heart dropped as I processed the ask. Seemingly, the solution to experiencing racial trauma in conversation is to share past instances of racial trauma with the people causing more of it? I couldn’t rest in the intimacy of being heard, supported, and cared for in my Christian community without reopening wounds for which I continually sought a balm to heal.
After 5 years in the States, my body began to slump beneath the weight of a burden unshared to a point that breathing felt difficult. My heart pounded faster and my skin prickled with sweat as my brain sorted through all the responses rising up in me, in search of the most appropriate and diffusive one. It landed on, “Maybe”, a quick way to end it so I could find space to unravel my clenched muscles and breathe again. The panic that arose was visceral: fear of further shame if I pushed back; fear of marginalization from the good parts of the community that I valued; fear of rejection. But at the top of the pile of fears was the fear that she was right. Would I have to feel this way a hundred times over, share pain a hundred times over, just to be known, loved, and believed?
In that moment, I saw the cross. But not in the way you might think I mean.
My Love of Easter
Prior to moving to America, Easter was my favorite time in the Christian calendar. From the time I was a child, Good Friday services and sunrise services on Resurrection Sunday were in the rhythms of Spring. Chocolate Easter eggs, new dresses, and call-and-response greetings of “He is Risen,” “He is Risen, indeed!” brought me deep joy even before I understood the magnitude of the salvation Jesus had won me on the cross. And when I did understand, it only became more sacred. Captivated by the gravity of Jesus’ sacrifice, Good Friday became a day of solemn reflection, and Resurrection Sunday a day to pour out all the gratitude my very bones could offer. Eventually, it spread into Holy Week practices from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, and more recently, I’m learning the rhythms of Lent.
A sacred feature of Easter, to me, was that it was a time in which I was captivated entirely by Jesus and the wonder of salvation. While the sanctity of Christmas felt smudged by the fingerprints of my own self-interest and hope to feel loved through receiving, Easter had nothing to do with me. I could fully focus on Jesus.
Stuck on Good Friday
After moving to the States, Easter became harder and harder, to the point that a resentment arose in me when I reflected on the suffering of Jesus. The thought of His body bruised, battered, and torn used to bring me to my knees in gratitude, but slowly began to make me uneasy. I’ve finally realized why: I had begun to believe that to be like Christ, I had to be stuck in Good Friday.
Being pushed to repeatedly explain pain in order to receive trust and care; to tear open wounds in the hope of building community only to ask God to seal them up again; to continue being misheard, unbelieved, and deeply alone, in the hope that a white brother or sister may learn and grow to love their neighbor; to have no soft place to land when I was freshly wounded by those who sinned against me—all led to this visceral embodied experience of panic, pain, and fear. I was in a constant state of fight or flight. I was broken. My body, the site upon which these pains were drawn, felt broken.
I no longer looked at the cross and saw Jesus. I saw myself. Beaten, battered, and torn. Yet high and lifted up. Because these pains are often painted as righteous. The unique cross of Black Christians to bear, and to bear well unto God’s glory. I couldn’t look at the cross and see the salvation I had once rejoiced in because all I saw was an unwieldy requirement to be broken as the evidence of my salvation—or worse, as the means of my salvation.
Of course no one says this to you directly, but it is often the silent poisonous cost of being “the only” in white church spaces. Hearing sermons about “the sin of preferring comfort,” hearing leaders say, “We want Black people here, they just won’t come!” Bible study discussions—about picking up our cross, being willing to sacrifice everything for God, and seeking to be like Him in every way—got all twisted up by white supremacy and the devil, and led me to feel obliged to continue in this self-flagellation.
I no longer looked at the cross and saw Jesus. I saw myself. Beaten, battered, and torn. Yet high and lifted up.
White supremacy causes a time loop for Black folks in White church spaces, where every day is Good Friday. Every day we pay the cost for acceptance, pouring out more of ourselves in the hope this offering will be enough to satisfy the insatiable wrath of white supremacy. Especially as we so firmly believe in and long for the resurrected life, a new life, a new creation, new heaven and new earth, all waiting for us. So I lived in the hope that Sunday was coming. One day, it would pay off; people would get it, there would be mass repentance, and I would be at home—fully at home. One day, Sunday will come.
But Sunday never comes. It doesn’t come because white supremacy is bigger and more deeply rooted than the plough of my stories can reach. To be saved, one must recognise the need to be saved. To be free, one must see that they are in chains. And the spectre of race in America leads many white Christians to see Black people as the only ones in chains rather than themselves. Sunday doesn’t come because I am not Jesus. I do not, and cannot, save or deliver myself or anyone else.
Two Spirit-witnessed deliverances have broken my time loop and brought me through to life on Easter Sunday.
I am not God
First, God in His mercy whispered to me, “You’re supposed to be like me, but you are not me.” We are not made to bear consistent and endless pains. Part of the image of Jesus on the cross is that He bore more than a human body can bear, and even He did not survive it. Jesus was killed by very real bone-shattering, side-splitting, pain. In anticipation of it, He sweat blood! He overcame the grave, but to do so: He went to it first. Harm breaks the body. Our finite fragile bodies are built to recover from injury, yes, but not to thrive under constant pain. This is true of emotional pains, too.
I so longed to be like Christ, I couldn’t allow myself to want His good gifts, particularly a community of brothers and sisters who “weep with those who weep,” “have a word in good season,” and could point me to the truth of scripture in deep ways that call me higher into righteousness and holiness. Those who could help me discern when I am called to give of myself, and when it is time to walk away. A space in which I could be loved and known, where I could serve and sacrifice my time and energy unto the Lord rather than on the altar of white supremacy—and never sacrifice my imago dei. These are good and righteous gifts that I denied myself out of fear that wanting them made me less of a Christian.
This one sentence, “You’re supposed to be like me, but you are not me,” forced me to see the ways in which the lies I had believed made me self-righteous, believing that I could be the means by which people were freed from their racism if I just gave enough of myself. But the truth is Jesus gave everything for all sins of all people, including racism. This doesn’t mean it has erased it or its weight from my life, or the way the world and church communities work, but it does mean that God is NOT asking me to pay for it some more.
My responsibility is to steward the faith He has placed in me, to nurture and protect it, and to open my hands to Him with a hunger and thirst for more of Himself. My responsibility is to cast off all that hinders me in pursuit of Him, and to inconvenience myself in the ways He asks: To give generously, to love my neighbor as myself, to love Him with all my heart, soul, and mind, and to obey His commands. Sometimes His commands are hard and require giving things up, but they do not destroy us.
The Kingdom of the Skies
The second revelation came through the Bible Project’s year-long series on The Sermon on the Mount. Tim Mackie, Bible scholar and co-founder of The Bible Project, has worked alongside others to create a new translation of The Sermon on the Mount. In it, they translate “Kingdom of Heaven,” as “Kingdom of the Skies,” and righteousness, as “doing what is right towards God and others.” These linguistic tweaks changed everything for me. They argue that Jesus was not telling us about some utopian version of Christianity, but offering a mandate and invitation to an upside-down Kingdom in which the lowly are brought high with dignity and respect, and the high are humbled. Jesus is calling his followers to live differently, in this Kingdom manner, and this, when we live it, is heaven invading earth.
Having been in charismatic churches my whole adult life, this lesson blew my mind. I had always understood “heaven invading earth” to mean supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit in day-to-day life: healing, prophetic words, authority over spiritual attacks, all of the crazy and unexpected. “Heaven invading earth” had always remained in the arena of things that have nothing to do with me outside of submitting to the Spirit. But what Tim Mackie is suggesting here is that loving your neighbor, living in right relationship with God and people, giving generously, offering mercy and compassion, pursuing justice, and even loving my enemy, is Heaven invading earth. All these things are the work of the Spirit, all these things are supernatural as they are the complete inverse of earthly power dynamics—and are only possible through submission to the Spirit.
Jesus gave everything for all sins of all people, including racism. God is NOT asking me to pay for it some more.
So giving of myself in any way that is not Spirit driven is fleshly and an attempt to earn my own salvation. And any system or community that suggests otherwise is not a place in which spiritual thriving and growth can occur. More than this, the things I longed to find in community were NOT wrong to hope for. Being heard and loved, protected and cared for, are entirely features we should find in a community living by the commands of Jesus. In the Kingdom of God, those oppressed by the systems of the world, whatever they may be, are to enter and experience a reversal. The orphan finds family, the widow finds support and safety, and the foreigner finds home and belonging.
The Resurrected Life is Better
These are features of Easter Sunday. This is the resurrected life! There is no biblical requirement for us to live on Good Friday, or to shatter ourselves in the hope that people will see the truth of the Gospel and the call of Kingdom-living. Jesus did that. While people can learn and grow, it is not wrong to need a life-giving community. It is not a sign of your lack if you can’t sustain the relational wounds of sustained racial trauma for the hope that someone may see the truth.
To leave is not inherently an act of giving up, nor to say that people are irredeemable. It can be an act of hope and trust in God, a surrender to the truth that it is not I who changes people, it is God. It also frees me up to be obedient when God asks me to offer something of myself that will require sacrifice, and frees me of resentment.
It hasn’t been a quick fix. Yet, I look at the empty cross and the empty tomb and my eyes are filled with the glory of Him and Him alone.
Scriptural Meditations
Jesus did not pay for our sins only in part: He paid for all our sins. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
John 8:36, NIV
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 be shown mercy.Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
Matthew 5:3-10
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
John 13:34-35