Today’s Gospel opens with a litany of the strong and mighty – the political and religious powerbrokers of their time. Ruthless men whose cruel governance in partnership with their corrupt religious lackeys oppressed the people in a thousand different ways. A violent alliance based on greed and domination with no tolerance for resistance or rebellion.
Does this sound familiar?
Today’s political and corporate tyrants embrace the same imperial imperative – to crush and control – by any means necessary. Here in Detroit, water has been used as a weapon in the hands of those who have crafted a well-woven matrix of subjugation and theft that includes water shutoffs and home foreclosures. This is part of a violent gentrification project that has created a diaspora of displaced citizens and a web of private security and surveillance systems to keep people in line.
As in the time of Jesus, many religious leaders either look the other way or are actively complicit. They profit handsomely from a relationship based on a mutual love of money.
But this is Advent – a time to turn away from the mind-numbing noise of downtown diversions and the superficiality of the commercial season. A time to get quiet and listen deeply. A time to look to the margins where the water flows wildly and anything is possible. This is the promise of Advent.
And so it is this year that voices once again cry out in the desert.
On this Advent night, the voices of those who have known the violence of shutoffs are not stifled. They know what is means to live in a place that is dry as a desert as a result of shutoffs.
Despite the heavy yoke placed on the backs of people by unscrupulous politicians who refuse to implement a water affordability plan, those who have struggled to keep the water flowing organize town hall meetings in their communities to build circles of resistance one neighbor at a time.
These are the ones who fought for a shutoff moratorium during COVID. The ones who delivered water and information to their neighbors at the start of the pandemic. The ones who remain vigilant as the scourge of shutoffs spreads to the suburbs.
On this Advent night, people gather to organize against the World Economic Forum setting up shop in Detroit. As if it were not enough to destroy the city through harsh austerity measures that enrich the powerful and crush the poor, the same players now plan on setting up a Global Centre for Urban Transformation in the city they destroyed.
On this Advent night, the people of Benton Harbor demand water untainted by lead, while water protectors on our northern shores call to us to awaken from our slumber and see the reality of Line 5 and what its continued presence portends.
On this Advent night, friends in Flint continue to call for justice after being ravaged by a former governor and his accomplices who worship a god created out of the profits of poisoned water. They have been waiting for far too long.
It doesn’t take a prophet to recognize these voices crying out in the wilderness for water justice. All it takes is a heart attuned to the real power in our world. Not the power of mayors and big money. Of presidents and prelates. There is another kind of power – resilient and bold – that lives on the edge of things.
Advent calls us to the desert where we can better hear the voice of the One who calls us to a bitter but blessed baptism of resistance to the tyrants of our time. Tyrants who have not yet learned to humble themselves before the sacredness of the water and the fierce tenacity of everyday people committed to waging love in the wilderness where the real power lives.
Detroit People’s Water Board Interfaith Justice Committee; first version published in Radical Discipleship, Advent 2018 (Lukan cycle – Luke 3:1-6)