an easter elegy for the tennessee three:
silver gun/hangman brown/american flag/Mary weeps for her son/the cross is gone/whitewash/ed tomb/what do we/who are we do/now?—make my words dance so others, forget; this is the kind of revolution they want to televise.
We live in dire times.
The poem above has lived with me, written in my Notes app for months, awaiting in/completion. The events that recently transpired at the Tennessee House brought me back to it, as I reflected on the odd juxtaposition of Holy Week and the anti-democratic expulsion of Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, the only Black members of the dubbed “Tennessee Three.” The poem became an elegy, a word of lament for what appears to be the stifling of American democracy as we know it.
Arguably, American democracy has already been stifled since its conception. Race theorist Saidiya Hartman describes how the formation of American democracy, or the protection of the individual’s right to have freedom, was founded on the unfreedom and subjection of certain others (notably, enslaved Africans). In this way, the ideals of democracy and freedom in the U.S., or the American citizen’s right to liberty, is simply an absurd contradiction. Is freedom truly “freedom” when possessed at the site of oppression? Is freedom truly “freedom” when captured at the unfreedom of the enslaved?
For Hartman, the “afterlives of slavery” as they manifest today challenge the seemingly democratic reality of American life. While slavery has been emancipated, various sociopolitical moments over the past few decades (Civil Rights, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, etc.) have only shown how the scourge of anti-Blackness remains visibly and materially present. One prime example is the expulsion of Black Tennessee Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for protesting against gun violence — the “leading cause of death for American children.” According to Jemar Tisby, the ousting of the two Justins is reminiscent of a larger “anti-democratic, authoritarian” (and anti-Black) politics embedded in the formation of American democracy. Indeed, why oust two Black lawmakers for calling the state to pursue the protection and well-being of American children, unless there is a much larger racial project that undergirds their expulsion?
I must admit: it is odd that their expulsion happened during Holy Week, one of the most sacred seasons in the Christian liturgical calendar. This week, Christians gather to reflect on Christ’s passion — his death, burial, and resurrection — through which Christians believe our broken, distorted world is restored to beauty and wholeness (“made new”). The strange yet revealing juxtaposition between the ousting of the Justins and the events of Easter weekend reminds me of the now-and-not-yet reality of new creation. While Christ has already accomplished the work of resurrection, and though the Kingdom of God is “at hand,” it is also “not yet.”
Though Holy Saturday’s tomb represents abject death, there can be a life beyond the tomb if we dare to dream. Indeed, Easter represents the possibility to dream of an alternative mode of life together, of belonging together.
Easter exposes how modern society forces us into the tomb, to be enclosed and entombed by the tomb. However, Easter also is a reminder of the possibility to inhabit a world beyond the tomb — to dream of the possibility of the impossible, to imagine an “otherwise world,” as Ashton Crawley describes it. It is to work within the tomb in order to disrupt the tomb, as we seek what is beyond the tomb. Easter Sunday is all about subverting what is normative, which is the normativity of death as symbolized by the tomb. What would have been “natural” for Christ is to remain dead in the death-tomb, to be entombed within the death-tomb, and to be held captive by the death-tomb. Yet, the resurrection calls us to new life, life in Christ, that is signified by the empty-tomb — the Untombed Christ.
While we “see through a glass, darkly,” as the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, we will soon know that our future is the untomb. While race and racism, anti-Black politics, and the anti-democratic “democracy” of the Tennessee House pervade and seek to entomb us, the resurrection reveals the possibility of our “untombing.”
Our task now is to dream of resurrection, to disrupt the entombing of the tomb-prison, and to struggle for the untombing of the tomb. In other words, our task now is to envision and enact an “otherwise world,” an improvisational mode of being (like jazz music), and a radical resurrection-creativity that calls this death-tomb system to life and embodies the resurrection-abundant Kingdom of God in a world that desperately needs love, and deep love.
A short announcement: I will be going on hiatus starting today (04/11) until early June. As a seminary student, with the school year coming to an end, and with work, tasks, and papers beginning to pile up, I will need to take a pause from Sacred Sonder. But I will see you all again in June!