A Liturgy of Remembering Dangerous Memories for The World’s Future

Photo by Timothy Tsui via Flickr

A Responsive Prayer:

In times of danger and darkness,
When suffering and oppression seems to weigh heavily against our consciences and bodies,
We ask, God, for your grace in opening this space for us to remember,
And in remembering, to re-member ourselves and our neighbors into our lives and futures.

In your mercy, God, hear our prayer.

We remember your journey with Israel as exiled people in Babylon.
By the waters of Babylon they wept,
objects of exotic curiosity in a land they were forced to call home.
And in the same way, we remember your suffering with your exiled peoples in our world.
By the dividing walls, in concentration camps, in killing fields, they cry,
objects of fear and hate in lands they called home.

In your mercy, God, hear our prayer.

We remember your journey with Israel as exiled people in Babylon.
By the waters of Babylon they wept, 
       objects of exotic curiosity in a land they were forced to call home.
And in the same way, we remember your suffering with your exiled peoples in our world.
By the dividing walls, in concentration camps, in killing fields, they cry,
       objects of fear and hate in lands they called home.

In your mercy, God, hear our prayer.

We remember on this particular day the massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Their silenced cries still cry out from the Square, 
      Indicting our lustful complicities with power and convenient   
      injustices that forward our interests.
Their laments pierce our placid lives of great privilege,
      Convicting our comfortable silences, purchased with the blood of the 
      martyrs for freedom and justice
Their entreaties continue to perturb our hearts and consciences,
      Reminding us of the ways in which we forward pogroms of hatred and  
      evil, sometimes without knowing, at times without wanting to know.

In your mercy, God, teach us your ways.

The silenced cries from Tiananmen join with those throughout the world,
      In the killing fields of Cambodia, 
      the concentration and internment camps of Auschwitz, Manzanar,
      Tornillo and Donna,
      the genocides, sexual abuses and rapes, psychological terrors that 
      the world sees as normal.
They join together in a catholicity of suffering to confront us of our transgressions;
Our transgressions of active complicity, neutral silences, and “not my business” dismissals.
They beg us to repent, in hopes we do not create new hells for our neighbors to suffer through.

In your mercy, God, help us to see!

Teach us, God, to remember and live courageously so that our lives reflect
        your witness.
Help us to glimpse the depth and breadth of your justice and mercy,
Help us listen to the silenced cries of the unjustly killed so that we can     
        live the justice that was denied to those who called for it.
In fighting for a more justice and merciful world, may the gates to our
        hearts and to the hearts of our communities and nations be truly    
        that of heavenly peace.

Reflections:

June 4, 2019 is the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. And although I had originally intended to write a liturgy focusing on remembering this specific historic event, my theological inclinations led me to consider how Tiananmen is not a unique expression of state-sponsored or politically-motivated massacre.

Today across the world, many societies emphasize “localism” or “local movements.”  Indeed, a lot of identity theologies can be understood as local movements, spotlighting the diversities inherent in larger communities. his is certainly the case with liberation movements in church history that gave rise to Black theology, Latinx theologies, and Asian American theologies, among others.  But for identity theologies to be meaningful for local communities and attest the gospel faithfully, it must not obscure the ways in which our ethnic communities can be complicit in different structural sins or social transgressions.

Many of us are aware of the virulently anti-LGBTQ, anti-women, and many terrible transgressions, attitudes, and microaggressions that fester in various Asian American church communities.  PAAC exists, in part, because those evils are not addressed, and that many - some of whom we know - are unashamed, card-carrying members of the Trump-Evangelical axis who confuse such anti-Christian vices with virtue.  

This liturgy, thus, seeks to open up the Tiananmen Square massacre as a theological way to “en-voice” the silenced voices, silenced not only through state-sponsored violence, but also through our complicity in injustices that contribute to such evils, often in very subtle ways.