“To the extent that we are not drawn into lament, we cannot be drawn into the future.”
Emmanuel Katongole, Interview with Plough Quarterly, Deep Solidarity
A few years ago Emmanuel Katongole served here at Duke Divinity School as Associate Professor of Theology and World Christianity, and as founding co-director of Duke Divinity’s Center for Reconciliation. Now he is Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. Katongole recently interviewed with the Plough Magazine.
In our world, and particularly in our nation it seems, we feel contained by the present. It’s like being in a bubble. There seems to be no escape. We certainly have freedom of speech, for the most part - we can demonstrate or post our opinions, for example. We even have the opportunity to vote one way or another, hoping to make a difference. However, either way a bright future seems elusive. Who will free us from the virus? Who will move us beyond racism? Who will find answers to the pressing needs that destroy the lives of those who cry out to God for release? Release from cages, walls, overwhelming financial burdens, unattainable health care, violence… How will we ever move beyond, to the love and peace promised in scripture? I extracted the quote above, from Emmanuel Katongole’s interview with Plough, because it struck me personally as the direction I need to be looking for answers. We can’t stride into the future without a deep sense of lament and, might I say, repentance over our current condition. As Katongole says, this is a kairos moment: a moment of decision and action.
Here’s a section from the interview that I found particularly significant:
“To the extent that we are not drawn into lament, we cannot be drawn into the future. I like especially Jeremiah, who warned the leaders and the prophets and the priests for not healing the wounds of the people – “my people” – rightly. They had said, “peace, peace,” when there was no peace. They moved too quickly to “let’s get back to normal.” That is taking healing lightly.
Think of the lament in Joel, after the locusts came. From the priests, to the kings, to mothers, to babies, everybody put on sackcloth. But after the mourning, “the Spirit of the Lord will be poured upon everyone … old men will dream dreams … young men will see visions” (Joel 2:28). This only happens in the context of lament. I think after Covid-19 we desperately need new visions of something more than just the old order improved a little. We need new visions of community, of society, and, in America, of a post-racial world. This can only emerge out of a deep practice of lament, of turning to God, of turning to one another in solidarity. Then, your young men and women will see visions and the old men and women will dream dreams of a new future.
We need this desperately. The old world has run its course. You cannot polish things up a little bit and pretend that everything will be okay. That’s why I take Covid-19 seriously as a kairos moment.
Here in Uganda the lockdown coincided with an extraordinarily powerful rainy season: rivers and lakes flooding, homes destroyed, businesses destroyed. This points to an area in need of urgent attention – it calls us to care for the creation in this new moment. Why haven’t we paid the same attention to ecological degradation that we are paying to Covid-19? Covid-19 and the rains are connected.
In America, it is coinciding with racial tensions, frustrations. Don’t be too quick to separate them! Both Covid-19 and racism call us to the discipline of lament. And it may, if we turn to God, issue into new visions of a world of justice and interconnectedness, of deep solidarity, a world we share together. This cannot happen when we are so full of ourselves and so full of confidence, when we think that we are an invincible people, a superpower, that we are the best of God’s creation. New dreams cannot happen then. I think this is something God is communicating to us in this time.
This is how these things flow into each other. We need solidarity, and not only solidarity with one another, black and white, rich and poor. We need to respond to this kairos moment as a crucial moment in the journey into a new future and a new society that is in the process of being born. God is always at work building his new creation. What we are experiencing right now is part of that. This is a very significant time. But this kind of business cannot happen without tears, without blood, without pain.