A Prayer for those who serve

Rising to Life: Thoughts from Caribbean region

Rev. Dr. Michael Jagessar

Beyond the tourist myth of the Caribbean as ‘paradise’, is a constant struggle of ‘rising to life’ – to overcome or to ‘overstand’ the forces bent on denying fullness of life. This is not only about history. It is about the ongoing legacies currently seen in social, economic and political ills. One of the most indebted regions, the Caribbean’s vulnerability is not by accident. It has been and is intentional: one borne both from centuries of extractive colonialism and international debt obligations that drain regional resources to fund the rich of other nations and within the Caribbean. The Caribbean is ‘paradise lost’ with the region struggling to emerge from the Covid-19 hurricane that battered Caribbean lives, economies, structures and spirit. What has never been lost, however, is the Caribbean ability to survive, overstand, overcome and (a)rise up always finding some space(s) to breathe before the next set of battering.

Yet in the face of such unrelentless onslaught against full and flourishing life for all in the Caribbean, it will boggle the mind to see and hear the stories of courage, compassion, openness, resilience, solidarity, hope and transformation. No wonder Philip Potter aptly described us as the “in spite of people and region”. Caribbean peoples and churches know fully well what it means to rise up for their humanity – to arise from being labelled nobodies to affirm in style and tempo their humanity and distinctive some-body-ness. Faith and faithfulness, from the treasures of ancestral religions and the colonising mission of Christianity has been at the heart of such. We are here and will continue to be here however others wish to misrepresent, brush-off, and discard the region and its people.

Be it the Caribbean’s gift of intellectuals that shaped Black Radicalism, Pan-Africanism, Non-Aligned Movement, Critical Cultural Studies, and post/decolonial overtures, or the many giftings from the region offered to sports, music, keeping churches alive in the Europe and North America, global, missional and ecumenical institutions, the Caribbean has been and continue to rise to the occasion. Our ancestors have been the ‘rising up-people’ and their progeny continue to embody that spirit.

Let’s begin with power. Power (more visible that we wish to admit) remains the cultural idol holding all hostage. It is the case inside church, mission and ecumenical organisations, as it is outside. We want to own it, to store it up, to expand it, to manipulate it for our purposes. Power has power over us. It is omnipresent. It lures and deceives us. The toughest challenge to rising to life is learning to let go, to give up spaces we have occupied which continue to deny others full and flourishing life. This may be why reparations become such a challenge. We are unable to repair because we cannot acknowledge, let go and give away. We wish to keep and if grudgingly to share it, it has to be among ourselves for in our interest. Hence, not surprisingly some are concerned about the “elite capture” of our good intentions of wishing to redress deficits. Caribbean people know this well. They also know that there another ways to counter this. This is the Jesus way which is an invitation to join-in the work of our giveaway God, with a new mathematics of redressing deficits where to gain is to lose and first will be last. This, though, is too upsetting and disruptive. We can ‘talk the talk’ of ‘rising to life’ exceptionally well, but when challenged to ‘walk the talk’ in reality the politics of power kicks in. Jesus is pushed into a corner, weeps and re-crucified.

Caribbean ‘walkers of the Jesus way’ love their bibles and when they read it they do so with ‘realism’. So, they know from experience and the evidence around them that any ‘rising to life’ cannot, for them, underestimate the power of evil and its hold on us. Years ago, I read Jonathan Kozol’s, Amazing Grace (2012). Kozol recounts a conversation with David a bright and promising young man living in the ghetto in NY South Bronx who cooked and cared for his mother who had AIDS.

“Evil exists,” David says, not flinching at the word. “I believe that what the rich have done to the poor people in this city is something that a preacher could call evil. Somebody has power. Pretending that they don’t so they don’t need to use it to help people – that is my idea of evil.” And “people who let other people be destroyed do evil. People who know but do not act do evil too”.

What holds us captive is created and in place by a dehumanizing evil power which has to be exorcised and cast into the depths. Churches are not immune to this capture. Perhaps, this may be what Augustine and Luther had in mind when they referred to sin as incurvatus in se - being turned in or wrapped up in oneself so one cannot see the other or one’s neighbour. So, the rising necessary (the corrective) will mean to bend that curvature back to a position (to rise and stand upright) where one can meet another’s eyes and look into the humanness of our neighbour. Will we together and in partnership rise- up and upright so that all can flourish? What sort of ancestors we are going to be for our future generations?

Rev. Dr. Michael Jagessar is the Mission Secretary for CWM Caribbean Region.