Give Us Barabbas!

And the crowd yelled, “Give us Barabbas!”

Five months ago, while the television in the cafeteria broadcasted Trump’s inauguration and after he took the oath of office, the cameras showed the mass of people cheering for him.  The particular size of that mass of people became an unexpected cause of concern for the new president.  Regardless of whether it was the largest crowd ever assembled for an inauguration, or in human history for that matter ("Period."), a significant number of people did cheer for the Trump that day.

I initially had my back to the TV on purpose, but the spectacle of the moment made me watch.  I felt anger and nausea and still some shock and disbelief.  And, those were the first words that I could verbalize: “And the crowd yelled, ‘Give us Barabbas!’”  A mostly sympathetic and cursorily-biblically-literate faculty audience gave a hearty chuckle, and then I grabbed my Tupperware and headed to my classroom.  My paraphrased biblical verse was not planned.  It was a gut reaction.

   

Two months earlier, on the evening of November 8, when it became apparent that majorities in a sufficient number of states had voted this malignant narcissist man-child for the nation’s highest office, a different gospel image had come from the gut: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem from afar.  

I guess all those years of church stay under your skin, whether you want them to or not.  I don’t quote scripture often (or ever?), but these two images surfaced on November 8 and January 20, and I keep returning to them since.  In the interim, I have gone to look up the actual verses.

November 8: Lk 19: 41-42: As he drew near, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”  January 20: Lk 23:18: But all together they shouted out, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us.”  Or, Jn 18:40: They cried out again, “Not this one but Barabbas!”

No, Hillary Clinton, was neither exactly “what makes for peace” in the former verse nor the other choice vis-a-vis Barabbas in the latter verse.  But, still: Donald Trump?  What the fuck?

The majority of self-identifying Christians in the United States voted for Trump.  Furthermore, the majority of self-identifying Catholics voted for him.  When I first heard these exit-poll numbers, I was not entirely surprised.  The polling had confirmed the emptiness of American Christianity once again.  So many of our churches: homes to “broods of vipers,” as the Baptist might say.  Trump might have been the outsider candidate, or the businessman candidate, or the America-first candidate, or the celebrity candidate, or simply just the non-Clinton candidate, but how the hell was he the Christian candidate?  What gospel are we reading?      

The teacher said, “You’re fired! … Who wants to be a millionaire? (different show I know, but same gospel) … They’re rapists … I alone can fix it!”  And, we replied, “USA! USA! … Lock her up! … Celebrity apprentices, make all of us! … Give us Barabbas!”  Throw in a couple words about abortion and "two Corinthians" amidst the hate and bloviating, and that makes him the Christian favorite.  What a joke.  What a sick, dangerous joke.  Count me out, I say.  

Thus, it has been hard to go to church in the meantime.  Especially a white suburban church like Saint Jude’s when we are visiting Chalfont.  There, the fast-food Eucharist has nothing to say about the bully-in-chief.  All the factors in the election aside—the Clinton campaign’s strategic mistakes, the now-mythical white working class, low voter turnout, potential Russian meddling.  All of them aside, Christians overwhelmingly voted for a bully.  Now, the bully has nukes.

Otis Moss III animates this story, which is as old as religion itself, in a spirited (pre-Trump) sermon, "I Love Jesus but Can't Stand the Church" .

*** 

Despite myself, despite my self-righteousness, despite my estrangement with American Christianity, and despite rational analysis that sometimes points to no hope or no meaning, these are the things and people I have found the most solace and hope in, oddly and sometimes accidentally: Saints Francis and Clare, Pope Francis, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, the Hebrew prophets, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the eco-theology and poetry of Wendell Berry, the spirit of Daniel Berrigan, my mother-in-law’s farm animals, the witness of (friends) Jesuit Sean and Catholic Peace Fellowship Shawn, the nuns, Richard Rohr’s daily emails, Krista Tippett’s On Being interviews, the prayer circles of Standing Rock, and the lamentations of the (black) mothers of the (American) disappeared.  Somehow this stuff has stuck under my skin, too, and these teachers have been patient with me.  

Springsteen writes in his recent memoir, "As I grew older, there were certain things about the way I thought, reacted, behaved.  I came to ruefully and bemusedly understand that once you're a Catholic, you're always a Catholic.  So I stopped kidding myself.  I don't often participate in my religion but I know somewhere...deep inside...I'm still on the team."

So, despite all, count me in.