Ride On
No Kings Day
The sourdough is still warm. I like to slice it myself. There’s that slight resistance to the knife and then the give, the push through into the soft interior. There is something quietly satisfying about bread that asks something of me before it yields. Coffee on the way home too, the sun catching the sidewalk, blue sky, a lick of chill still in the air. A good morning to be alive and paying attention.
At 10:30 the No Kings rally begins nearby. I’ll be there.
And tomorrow, in sanctuaries across the city, some Christians will sing “Ride on, King Jesus.” A few won’t notice the irony. Some will.
Did Jesus ever call himself a king? Others said it of him. Pilate asked it, mockingly. The crowd cried it on Palm Sunday. The soldiers hammered it above his crucified head. King of the Jews. A charge, a joke, a sign.
Jesus did say that his kingdom was not of this world. Not exactly what Pilate was asking him. A kingdom of a different kind. The word “king” ruined and remade.
Nationalism is poison. And the “Christian” prefix doubles the dose. Sanctified oppression is still oppression. There is no righteous fascism.
But there is a Christianity OF Jesus. It’s the faith of the one who stands in solidarity with the condemned, who says “remember me” to criminals and “forgive them” to executioners. And there is a Christianity ABOUT Jesus that wants a triumphalist king to bless armies and baptize appetites, to sanctify our hunger for dominance and validate our fear of the other. There is the Christianity that wields the cross as a weapon rather than bearing it.
We will not seek to save what we do not love. But love, to stay honest, must be chastened. As James Baldwin wrote: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
The only alternative to a politics of care is a politics of carelessness. And we are ruled, and the world is paying the price, for our politics of carelessness.
So I want the rallies across the country to be large and loud today. But I also want our YES to eventually be as loud as our NO. Refusal alone is a held breath, not a life. Our NO needs somewhere to go.
Ride on. But Christian ask yourself the question first. Does your king look like the one on the cross, or the one who put him there?
I need a second slice. I’m noticing the resistance as my knife presses through the fresh crust. My knife is sharp and as I apply pressure and motion and determination it eventually gives way.
Thus endeth the lesson.