Empire vs. Hope

I am in Sicily. I awoke this morning to images of vigils and protests in Minneapolis and the news that federal investigators were barring MN state officials from investigating Renee Good’s murder, and to messages from friends all over the world – Norway, Canada, California – of prayer, love and solidarity. The news from Minneapolis is reaching around the globe, and I want to share with you how it is meeting me today. 

We headed out our door and made our way to the site of ancient Greek temples where we spent the day exploring a sprawling city of ruins of an ancient empire.   Last week, in Rome, our guide (with a PhD in history) spent three days unpacking for us the Roman Empire, explaining in the process the mindset and mechanisms of empire. We stood at the same entrance into the Colosseum where for 450 years, 500,000 people, one at a time, were forced into the arena to meet their death for the entertainment of the empire. The dehumanization and stratification of society, the mentality of dominance and conquering through might and power, the pursuit of domination and invincibility expressed in the building grand things and promotion of your own name to be remembered and praised, the practice of absorbing peoples and lands into your realm – all of it was laid out for us in stark detail. 

The Old Testament tells stories of empire through the Egyptians and Babylonians, the 20th century saw empire is the mindset of conquest, power and domination that Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini sought to bring about. And now we can vividly see empire, undisguised and bold, in our own nation - our own neighborhood.  

This is an old story, a human story. 

But the ground I stood on today held two other stories, and I want to tell them to you. 

When Paul arrived in Sicily in 61 AD (Acts 28:12-13), the Christian community began here. In the first and second centuries the temple and surrounding land beneath it became a graveyard for an early Christian community.  To reach the site of the temple I walked through caves and graves of our ancestors in faith, and then through “The Garden of Peace,” a symbolic olive grove planted last year, with trees from 21 different countries and counting, symbolizing global harmony and coexistence.

And then, right in between the hulking remnants of a crumbled empire is this: a collection of metal plates coming out of the ground, with names carved through them, and stories written underneath.  A kind of shrine, called “The Garden of the Righteous of the World.” 

A simple 'cemetery' of monuments to ordinary people in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, who gave their lives upholding the humanity of others. Poets and popes, neighbors and mayors, teachers, priests, diplomats, physicians, scientists, civil servants, farmers, writers. 

I stood there, reading name after name, story after story of people who acted locally, but who are now remembered on this hillside in Sicily as part of the same story of loving neighbor, and upholding community, and sustaining shared humanity in the face of various expressions of empire.  And in the ground on which these markers stand, 2000 years ago were laid to rest the bodies of the same living community that they, and now we belong to, those whose lives are shaped by this unstoppable reality that endures and prevails. The Church has always opposed empire by standing for neighbor and building community from underneath. 

In Spirit of Hope, Byun Chul Han writes, “Only in the deepest despair does true hope arise. The deeper the despair, the more intense the hope.”  Then Han describes the very lives and spirits of all those I read about this afternoon, when he says, "Those who act with hope act audaciously and are not distracted by the rapidity and toughness of life. However, there is also something contemplative about hope. It leans forward and listens attentively. The receptivity of hope makes it tender, lends it beauty and grace.” He continues, “The temporal mode of hope is not-yet. Hope opens itself up to the coming, for what-is-not-yet… When we hope, we become creditors to the future.” (from pages 2-5).

In the shadow of crumbling empire, I stood among tributes to people who lived their now-lives led by God’s future, with beauty, grace and tenderness, in their own specific circumstances, with the people they were living alongside, they joined Christ in bearing others’ suffering.  They acted audaciously, driven by hope. Their participation in God’s love spread hope into lives that spread hope into more lives, and more, and it is still spreading, in lives still participating, because we are all connected in a belonging deeper than empire and stronger than death.

Empires always fall. 

Sometimes they last centuries or a millennia, sometimes just 12 terrible years (Nazis). Empires seek to be eternal and never are. They’re held together by fear and fragility and force. 

What is eternal and unbreakable is the Kingdom of God. Because Jesus came into this life alongside us, under the shadow of empire that feared and killed him, and broke the power of death, flipping the world upside down. The steady pulse of life hums in, underneath, despite and through it all, creating, renewing, redeeming, resurrecting. The presence of Christ is felt when we are with and for one another, the love that binds us all together and holds us through and beyond even death. 

Our lives are part of this story.  We are part of this community. As Bonhoeffer would say, we are here to be with and for our neighbor. In the concrete relationships and situations we’re in. 

When empire is spreading lies and tear gas, flexing might and rattling sabors, loving and caring for our neighbors might seem weak or ineffectual because it speaks a deeper language and hears a deeper frequency than power and force. Praying, singing, giving one another food, rides, warmth and shelter, caring for our neighbors and upholding one another's humanity, these don’t seem able to defeat evil, but they are the only thing that does. And I am grateful to be in the community of people throughout the world - now living and gone before - shaping our lives toward love and practicing being guided by hope.

When I awoke on Thursday here in Italy, this message was waiting for me:

“It is almost 3:23 in the morning, and I am awake and writing my pastor. I want her to know that a little more than eight blocks from something horrible this morning, her faith community gathered this evening - to see Christ’s presence in one another. We shared a meal and then our stories. Before departing into the darkness of the night . . . we sang. The evening was reverent, somber- for sure, but no one felt alone.”

Our story is long. The refrains repeat. The call is consistent. 

I want to leave you with some glimpses of our siblings and forebears in the Kingdom of God that I spent my day giving thanks for.  Maybe spending a few minutes among them will invite you into hope too.