If anyone has staked their life on the premise that Black Lives Matter, it is every mother, every doctor, every teacher, every missionary in Africa. That phrase is a particular situational paraphrase of the Gospel: For God so loved the world, God gave everything to defeat evil and bring us life. Human beings matter and the Bible over and over speaks about God's particular love for the oppressed, the imprisoned, the lame, the sick, the orphan, the widow, the poor. The signs of the all-things-new that Jesus promised will first be seen in the transformation that begins on the margins. That is justice in real time. Yet living out the day to day slog of work and chaos in a place where a billion mostly dark-skinned people and mostly poor people live and die seems far removed from the Black Lives Matter movement this week in America, the land of our citizenship and origin. In fact 2020 has been one long year of watching America reel from one crisis to another. Scott was born in Minnesota, and before this week I doubt either of us would have anticipated that state being an epicenter of injustice. But, it turns out, the deep wounds of our country are being exposed.
Which medically speaking, is a painfully necessary step towards healing.
Maybe the lock-downs of COVID-19, the particular availability of social media right now, created the necessary conditions for truth to get attention. Ahmaud Arbery a jogger filmed being shot by two men who assumed the right to judge and condemn him, Breonna Taylor a young medical worker shot in her bed in the middle of the night by police who raided her apartment looking for drug-dealing evidence which did not exist, the less violent but sharply chilling power imbalance in a filmed encounter between Christian Cooper, a bird-watcher in NYC, and the woman who used a 911 call to police to intimidate and threaten him with arrest even though she was the one not keeping the law, then the stomach-wrenching 8 minutes it took to suffocate George Floyd as he gasped "I can't breathe" and later "Mama" while 4 police officers, one kneeling on his neck and two others on his back, turned a misdemeanor arrest into a reason to kill. All stories in quick succession where people in power are white and assume their right to control people they fear and suspect, who are black. In 3 out of 4 cases, they wield that power fatally.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, 50 days from Easter, the moment celebrating abundance, harvest, fruit, that God chose to send the Spirit out to explode belief from one cultural group to all. This is a day that showcases diversity of culture and tongue, ironically.
Our Sunday podcast happened to be from Genesis, we are on chapter 9, finishing up the Flood narrative, and as CNN broadcasts pictures of burning buildings and our medical kids in Utah prepare for mass casualties to add to the COVID-19 trauma, it didn't feel relevant. But it was. It is one of the PG-13 stories that get skipped in Sunday School, where the hero of the previous chapters ends up drunk and naked and angry, and curses one of his sons. The rainbow of grace and the fresh-start of earth don't even last a generation until one segment of humanity decides to condemn another segment to servitude. Somehow this story, rather than being one about the fragility of human heroism, the dark seed of sin we all carry and need to be rescued from, the human tendency to divide and suspect others, the generational misery of cursing and justifying violence . . . became a proof text for slavers. Europeans who wanted cheap labor to exploit the agricultural opportunities of the Americas began shipping Africans across the ocean and ignored the entire message of the Bible, choosing rather to see Africans as descendants of Ham who deserved to be crushed. Greed and self-promotion at the expense of others, the opposite of the message of carrying blessing to others. Lord have mercy, we are all guilty of that.
And because the national entity of the USA rests at least in part on this foundation, no matter how much we want to cover it up, the wound is not going to heal without light.
Our former pastor from Lawndale in Chicago posted a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., today, that helps explain why the riots of our childhood (I remember driving through Washington DC and seeing the boarded up and broken shops in 1968) and the riots of today make some sense:
"Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating . . .But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
Fast forward 40 years; here we are again.
Rewind 2000 years; we've been there before.
Jesus cared about the foreigners whose space in the outer courtyards of the temple was filled with money-changers, cared about the oppressive economics of temple-as-market that hurt the poor. So, in John 2, his opening miracle of water-to-wine prefiguring a feast, is immediately followed by a one-man riot. He takes a whip, turns over the tables, and drives everyone out. Property was definitely destroyed, money was definitely lost. But Jesus' priority in this story was righteousness and justice and access to God, instead of merchandise. He was speaking the language the unheard speak to power. And it cost him his life.
None of us can protest like Jesus. All of our attempts to redress the structural evils of this world will be mixed with mistakes, pride, power. Our daughter's roommate works for a small start-up socially conscious restaurant in Greensboro that employs people with disabilities. They were looted last night too. That is also sorrowful.
No easy answers here. Injustice that has been festering for a half millenia won't be drained in a weekend, or a week. But we do have to ask, is order the pre-requisite for justice, or justice the pre-requisite for order? That's a question that requires dialogue not force, leadership from the highest levels not police and citizens fighting street-to-street.
And that's a question that requires us to zoom out from the details of which shop is looted and what any individual's criminal record was before death. If we ignore the history that stretches back to slavery, even to Noah, to creation, we risk plastering over the putrid wound which will only mean a more difficult surgery later.
Yesterday we climbed up to the ridge that dominates our south-eastern sky. We live on the edge of the Rwenzoris, but we mostly only see them as a dark backdrop, sun on peaks, folds with clouds. It took hours to ascend the 5000 feet from the valley to the ridge. Small dirt footpaths, clusters of homes, curious children, occasional greetings, breathless effort and heat and aching legs. Step after step. But at the top we entered the northernmost edge of the park that contains the nearly 17,000 foot peaks. We were only at 8300 feet, but that is high enough to leave all of our day-to-day behind. We entered a completely alien alpine biome of bamboo and tiny orchid-like flowers, of blowing wind and cloud, of the grunts of colobus monkeys and the singing of unseen birds. Because we are locked down in our district, we had to turn around at the top and walk back down. Soon we left the cool heights behind, and were back in banana trees and bean fields, heat and hassling. Aching legs stumbling, sliding, thirsty, hot, conspicuous, donning masks whenever we passed a home, then gasping for breath between houses. This is where we live, in the lowlands of sick kids and being spectacles, of people who are hungry, others who are drunk, of closed schools and inadequate medical supplies. But the day was a physical reminder of the rhythm of life. Keep walking the dirt paths in the villages of real people with real problems and real joys; sometimes climb up to the strong winds of God's presence blowing in something new. And then go back down.
What is God doing in 2020? We won't know until we can climb out of it and look back. But on Pentecost let us hope the Spirit is opening a new chapter of justice. Let us pray that the intersection of a new virus, a new vulnerability, a new dependence upon each other . . . . with a new awareness of the pervasiveness of abuse of power, inequity, loss, will lead to something new and strong and beautiful.
Which medically speaking, is a painfully necessary step towards healing.
Maybe the lock-downs of COVID-19, the particular availability of social media right now, created the necessary conditions for truth to get attention. Ahmaud Arbery a jogger filmed being shot by two men who assumed the right to judge and condemn him, Breonna Taylor a young medical worker shot in her bed in the middle of the night by police who raided her apartment looking for drug-dealing evidence which did not exist, the less violent but sharply chilling power imbalance in a filmed encounter between Christian Cooper, a bird-watcher in NYC, and the woman who used a 911 call to police to intimidate and threaten him with arrest even though she was the one not keeping the law, then the stomach-wrenching 8 minutes it took to suffocate George Floyd as he gasped "I can't breathe" and later "Mama" while 4 police officers, one kneeling on his neck and two others on his back, turned a misdemeanor arrest into a reason to kill. All stories in quick succession where people in power are white and assume their right to control people they fear and suspect, who are black. In 3 out of 4 cases, they wield that power fatally.
Today is Pentecost Sunday, 50 days from Easter, the moment celebrating abundance, harvest, fruit, that God chose to send the Spirit out to explode belief from one cultural group to all. This is a day that showcases diversity of culture and tongue, ironically.
Our Sunday podcast happened to be from Genesis, we are on chapter 9, finishing up the Flood narrative, and as CNN broadcasts pictures of burning buildings and our medical kids in Utah prepare for mass casualties to add to the COVID-19 trauma, it didn't feel relevant. But it was. It is one of the PG-13 stories that get skipped in Sunday School, where the hero of the previous chapters ends up drunk and naked and angry, and curses one of his sons. The rainbow of grace and the fresh-start of earth don't even last a generation until one segment of humanity decides to condemn another segment to servitude. Somehow this story, rather than being one about the fragility of human heroism, the dark seed of sin we all carry and need to be rescued from, the human tendency to divide and suspect others, the generational misery of cursing and justifying violence . . . became a proof text for slavers. Europeans who wanted cheap labor to exploit the agricultural opportunities of the Americas began shipping Africans across the ocean and ignored the entire message of the Bible, choosing rather to see Africans as descendants of Ham who deserved to be crushed. Greed and self-promotion at the expense of others, the opposite of the message of carrying blessing to others. Lord have mercy, we are all guilty of that.
And because the national entity of the USA rests at least in part on this foundation, no matter how much we want to cover it up, the wound is not going to heal without light.
Our former pastor from Lawndale in Chicago posted a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., today, that helps explain why the riots of our childhood (I remember driving through Washington DC and seeing the boarded up and broken shops in 1968) and the riots of today make some sense:
"Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating . . .But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
Fast forward 40 years; here we are again.
Rewind 2000 years; we've been there before.
Jesus cared about the foreigners whose space in the outer courtyards of the temple was filled with money-changers, cared about the oppressive economics of temple-as-market that hurt the poor. So, in John 2, his opening miracle of water-to-wine prefiguring a feast, is immediately followed by a one-man riot. He takes a whip, turns over the tables, and drives everyone out. Property was definitely destroyed, money was definitely lost. But Jesus' priority in this story was righteousness and justice and access to God, instead of merchandise. He was speaking the language the unheard speak to power. And it cost him his life.
None of us can protest like Jesus. All of our attempts to redress the structural evils of this world will be mixed with mistakes, pride, power. Our daughter's roommate works for a small start-up socially conscious restaurant in Greensboro that employs people with disabilities. They were looted last night too. That is also sorrowful.
No easy answers here. Injustice that has been festering for a half millenia won't be drained in a weekend, or a week. But we do have to ask, is order the pre-requisite for justice, or justice the pre-requisite for order? That's a question that requires dialogue not force, leadership from the highest levels not police and citizens fighting street-to-street.
And that's a question that requires us to zoom out from the details of which shop is looted and what any individual's criminal record was before death. If we ignore the history that stretches back to slavery, even to Noah, to creation, we risk plastering over the putrid wound which will only mean a more difficult surgery later.
Yesterday we climbed up to the ridge that dominates our south-eastern sky. We live on the edge of the Rwenzoris, but we mostly only see them as a dark backdrop, sun on peaks, folds with clouds. It took hours to ascend the 5000 feet from the valley to the ridge. Small dirt footpaths, clusters of homes, curious children, occasional greetings, breathless effort and heat and aching legs. Step after step. But at the top we entered the northernmost edge of the park that contains the nearly 17,000 foot peaks. We were only at 8300 feet, but that is high enough to leave all of our day-to-day behind. We entered a completely alien alpine biome of bamboo and tiny orchid-like flowers, of blowing wind and cloud, of the grunts of colobus monkeys and the singing of unseen birds. Because we are locked down in our district, we had to turn around at the top and walk back down. Soon we left the cool heights behind, and were back in banana trees and bean fields, heat and hassling. Aching legs stumbling, sliding, thirsty, hot, conspicuous, donning masks whenever we passed a home, then gasping for breath between houses. This is where we live, in the lowlands of sick kids and being spectacles, of people who are hungry, others who are drunk, of closed schools and inadequate medical supplies. But the day was a physical reminder of the rhythm of life. Keep walking the dirt paths in the villages of real people with real problems and real joys; sometimes climb up to the strong winds of God's presence blowing in something new. And then go back down.
What is God doing in 2020? We won't know until we can climb out of it and look back. But on Pentecost let us hope the Spirit is opening a new chapter of justice. Let us pray that the intersection of a new virus, a new vulnerability, a new dependence upon each other . . . . with a new awareness of the pervasiveness of abuse of power, inequity, loss, will lead to something new and strong and beautiful.
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