Yesterday, someone challenged me to articulate how I, personally, contribute to healing the festering wounds in Ferguson. Either I contribute to the healing, or stop the "posturing" of hastag theology.
I think his challenge, though, misunderstands the nature of violence against African Americans (particularly men). This isn't just a Ferguson issue. It could happen here; it does happen here. The ministry of reconciliation given to the church is given to the whole church. Lower income (predominately black) communities often find police brutality in stronger numbers. Particularly where, like Ferguson, there's a predominately white police force. Police misconduct names those communities. I've seen it here, where I live. And when you see it long enough, rage at injustice names what you see.
My interlocutor yesterday said it all comes down to personal choice and personal responsibility. But as Kent Greenfield's Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits has pointed out, the political and social worlds of America just aren't that simple. My interlocutor's simple review ignores genuine analyses of the systemic nature of political, economic and social power wielded by the few. By bringing everything down to the micro-level (an individual), he ignores the macro-level (the individual's place in systems).
I've sat across the table as young black men in East Tennessee talk about police brutality. I've seen hands tremble and tears fall down faces. I've experienced the unique blend of holy rage and sorrow because a black mom described ways in which police already treat her 8-year-old as an "animal".
You see, based on data from communities all over the US, police are killing black men at a rate of nearly two a week. Beyond this, think of the crushing humiliation of being regularly stopped and frisked, harassed by police for simply "driving while black". Generally assumed guilty before proven innocent. Day after day after day.
Describing the way black men were treated during the lynching era (1880s -1960s), historian Joel Williamson wrote, "Their blackness alone was license enough to line them up against walls, to menace them with guns, to search them roughly, beat them, and rob them of every vestige of dignity".
And it's 2014. He could be describing any experience in August, 2014.
All this poses a deep theological problem. Can we see the imago Dei in the protestors? I'm told to see them as animals, nearly-less-than-humans, whose violence is inexplicable, whose rage and revolution is ungodly. But is it that simple?
In 1922, poet Countee Cullen wrote Christ Recrucified: "The South is crucifying Christ again / By all the laws of ancient rote and rule ... / Christ's awful wrong is that he's dark of hue, / The sin for which no blamelessness atones ... / And while he burns, good men, and women too, / Shout, battling for black and brittle bones".
I see the suffering Christ in the lynching tree. I see the suffering Christ in the body of Mike Brown -- shot at least six times while unarmed. I see the suffering Christ in the crowds at Ferguson. And I see the suffering Christ at the hands of a political machinery that turns a blind eye to executions and death, who release a police force in military-style on crowds. I see Pilate and Christ, in a play for power.
As a black friend proclaimed to me recently, "What happens when there are no more cheeks to turn?" What happens, indeed.
Jesus went through a similar experience as my brothers and sisters in Ferguson. So God is with them.
Now, I think the violence from the crowds is wrong. I think there are better ways to stand up to this violence once named "Pilate", now named "Police". So I condemn throwing Molatov Cocktails.
But it's relatively easy to see the suffering Christ in dead black men. They're not a "threat" anymore. What about the crowds? Can I find Christ's powerlessness, suffering, indignity and innocence in Ferguson? What about Knoxville? Can you see the suffering Christ in black men who are still alive and might hurt someone? Can you see the suffering Christ in violent responses to injustice? Can you see the cross in the Molotov cocktail?
As someone who has walked alongside black brothers and sisters, who's witnessed the same things first-hand, who's lamented this treatment all his life, who can see why black men oppressed by the boots of power for 300 years would fight back. I get it.
I still think there's a better way. But I get it.
Can you see the suffering Christ in the oppressed, even the ones who aren't responding perfectly to society's oppression? Christ doesn't just suffer for the innocent, the ones who don't have the energy to fight back, or the ones who perfectly respond to injustice. He suffers for the ones who suffer now and sin in their suffering.
And, make no doubt about it, God is the God of justice. Jesus confirmed that Old Testament prophetic tradition, time and time again. That prophetic tradition, in fact, was behind his act of cleansing the Temple.
The one act of open rebellion against the oppressive Powers that Be that wanted to limit God to those who could pay. The one act that directly got him killed. No, Jesus is with the protestors in Ferguson. The rage they feel is God's rage of injustice. They are imaging forth God's image of justice against the unjust.
Seeing the suffering Christ in these young men isn't achieved by some theological gymnastics, deep pity, or altruism. It's done by listening to their stories, sharing life, standing in solidarity with them, and experiencing their rage.
When oppressed people are angry, we Christian folks should help the privileged listen. Think the Book of James, here.
Can we? Or are we too busy posturing?
My interlocutor yesterday challenged me. And I just cut him off before I could respond. So, today, I respond in the cool rage of the prophets. Of Jesus.
This isn't about posturing toward some American myth about personal choice and responsibility. It's about telling God's story in Jesus Christ. Which, as it turns out, is telling the story of the cross -- in Ferguson, MO.