Today's Memories, Tomorrow's Questions

Scripture: Joshua 4:14-24 (NRSV)

Song: God Will Take Care Of You by Walter Hawkins and Love Center Choir

Meditation:

Joshua and twelve men selected from the tribes of Israel have been instructed to pick up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River. They are making their way from Egyptian bondage and journeying towards a land of promise and complications. Some Indigenous scholars have interrogated a God who frees people from slavery but instructs them to drive out other nations and take the land others are already living on. I don’t know what we make of this question but I know that we must wrestle with it. We must wrestle with the possibility that one community does not have to flourish at the expense of another and the possibility of land as a resource to be communally shared rather than property to be seized. Yet even as we wrestle, I believe this text has something to offer us.

Joshua instructs the tribes to stop and take a moment to lay these stones together before they journey forward. These stones will serve as a way to mark where the flow of the river stopped in its tracks as the people of God crossed over on dry ground. Joshua doesn’t just push the people to keep moving forward but he calls them back to the place that they just crossed over. I know the tension in the word memorial. In small rural spaces, memorials and monuments are often reminders of your oppression rather than a celebration of your people. Yet Joshua impresses upon people who survived slavery that they deserve spaces of sacred memory. Joshua takes them through a moment of memorial-making ensuring that their journey will be remembered for future generations because sometimes finite beings can have fickle memories. After these past two years we can relate. A raging pandemic, racial injustice, assaults at the nation’s capital, rumors of war. We have seen hard times. We have seen difficult moments and we have so little time to pause and reflect on it all. We just keep doing stuff. We keep filling up our calendars. We keep finding ways to keep going. Maybe Lent is a moment to pause in sacred memory. Before we charge full speed ahead into tomorrow, it would do us well to fully reflect on the grief and the gratitude of today.

So these men lay these stones together. They create this memorial and Joshua tells them that these stones that they are placing together will have significance not just today but they will be a cause for reflection tomorrow. Joshua tells them that in the future your children will ask their parents what these stones mean. All Joshua tells them with certainty about the future is that young people will have questions. In the words of Dr. Brittany Cooper, “dogma is a ready response to trauma.” After facing deep uncertainty, dogma puts the world in a clear set of rules, expectations, and categories. Yet we see Joshua leading a community by telling them not to hold tight to dogmas, but to make space for the next generation’s questions. After you have survived communal trauma, it becomes your responsibility as free people to help the next generation make meaning out of the legacy they have inherited. As Joshua imagined a future of freedom for his people, this future had the curiosity of the children in mind. Children ask questions naturally. As they grow older we program and punish the curiosity out of them. Survivor Victor Frankl expressed meaning making as the last stage of a community emerging from trauma. It is always the job of emerging generations to look at our rituals, our practices, and our culture and have the curiosity to ask us: what does all of this mean? It’s necessary for our liberation.

And Joshua assures us that when tomorrow has questions, we are not left responseless. Joshua reminds them that when it comes to making meaning out of their survival, they may not have all the answers, but they do have a communal story. Tell them that Israel crossed over the Jordan on dry ground. Tell them that when we had the courage to step in troubled water, God worked a miracle for us. When they ask the hard questions tomorrow, tell them about the courage we had to possess and the miracles God performed today. Tell them what my mama often hums while washing dishes, “God will take care of you” as Lynette Hawkins & the Love Center Choir sings in the background. May our children rise up with questions. May our courage and faith in God today provide a heartfelt response.

A memorial created by the St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn,NY for the Maafa Suite: A Healing Journey. The MAAFA is a ministry of SPCBC designed to engage the community in remembrance of the Translatantic Slave Trade.

Reflection Questions:

1. In covid times, what rituals and practices have you incorporated to engage in sacred memory? How have you honored the sacrifices of your ancestors, acknowledged your own struggles, and expressed gratitude for the journey?

2. What questions from your own difficult experiences, familial history, or religious context are still lingering and feel unanswered for you? What are you struggling to make meaning of? Answers may not come but you are free to raise your questions.

Call To Action: Legacy

Write a letter to a young person in your life. It can be your child, a niece or nephew, a younger sibling. Tell them what you want them to know about your perseverance in such difficult times and the potential you see in them to do the same. Give this letter to them or a trusted guardian who will pass it along at a significant time in their life. For inspiration see “A Letter to My Nephew” by James Baldwin.

About the Author

Rev. Racquel Gill (she/her) is currently a campus minister in Durham, NC journeying through life with college & graduate students.

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These Black Lent devotionals were originally curated by IG: goodneighbormovement.