A Picture is worth…

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem,  and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. Luke 24:13-14

There is nothing particularly unusual about a President of the United States using the Bible.  Jimmy Carter gave Sunday School lessons.  Thomas Jefferson made his own rendition of the Gospels known as “The Jefferson Bible”. James Garfield was a lay preacher before he became a politician.  I’d wager that a quotation from the Bible has been used by every President while in office at some point during their administration.  This week’s use of a Bible by the current occupant of the White House, however, was the most offensive display of Holy Scripture since Gutenberg put it into print.

I have spent most of my adult life devoted to the accurate representation of the teachings of scripture.  For 36 years I worked on a sermon every week highlighting some text–except when on vacation or when a colleague was in the pulpit–nearly 1500 sermons in all.  A parishioner in my former church wondered on FaceBook if I was having a hard time not having a pulpit from which to comment on the current crisis in our country.  True, I was trained in the tradition of Karl Barth, to have the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.  One cannot proclaim Good News while ignoring current news.  One way or the other, Christian faith is about news.  

On the one hand, I am not missing the toil of a weekly word to the flock in my new life as a non-profit executive—I am quite content with the discovery of this thing called “weekends”! On the other hand, there was something about that discipline of preparing a weekly commentary connecting faith with news–the life of Jesus with our lives today–that has been nagging at me since I walked away from the pulpit on that Easter Sunday just 6 weeks ago.  So I will try my hand to see if I might go from preacher to blogger, pulpiteer to pundit. In so doing I hope to connect with those who share a common concern for the state of our world and who believe that faith still has a role to play in building the commonwealth of humanity, or what Jesus called the “Kingdom of God”.

And that brings us back to the use of the Bible by a man who has absolutely no understanding of what it says and yet no hesitation to use it as a prop for a photo op in front of a church for which he did not have the decency to notify its pastor as if both, Bible and church, were subjects under his personal domain and absolute rule.  This from a man whose Biblical illiteracy is so complete that he infamously quoted scripture to impress his audience at a Christian university by citing, not once but twice “Two Corinthians”, apparently completely unaware that which anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in a church knows, that the notation on his teleprompter reading “2 Corinthians” means Second Corinthians.  God bless the speech writer who at least tried to give him a way to sound Biblically literate.

In case you missed the news, about 1000 demonstrators, gathered between the White House and St. John’s Episcopal Church, and peacefully protesting as is their right, were attacked by police in riot gear (including some military personnel) to clear the way so that the President could pose, ceremonial Bible in hand, in front of the church that had been damaged the night before during the protest.  In the shadow of this “Church of the Presidents”, he did not honor George Floyd or any of the other people of color who have been killed by police and other citizens.  He said nothing about America’s original sin of racism that continues to rob people of their humanity to this day.  He made no acknowledgement of the legitimate grievances of the protestors shoved out of the way for his photo op and the hundreds of thousands who have been demonstrating all across the country.  Given the chance to promote healing and to show any empathy for those who have suffered for far too long, he instead chose to promote the sheer power of armed force to intimidate protestors into submission.  Memo to the President: such is the method used by slave owners and tyrants, not by those who believe in democracy.

Yes looting is wrong and violence whether directed at police or cars and buildings is not OK.  But those who are quick to condemn the violent protestors need also to listen to the reasons for the violence.  For heaven’s sake, here we are 156 years after the end of slavery, 56 years after the Civil Rights Act, and people are still being killed simply because of the color of their skin.  A bird watcher in Central Park cannot politely ask a dog owner to leash her dog without his race being weaponized against him by someone not just using her white privilege to break the rules, but falsely charging a person of color with a serious crime.  Only when you understand that such is not a rare but a common occurrence for most who do not have the privilege of European ancestry in this country, will you understand the rage that has been unleashed in the current unrest.  

Two black teenage brothers were caught and arrested for trespassing.  In the New York police station they were taken to a back room for a “beat down” where they were repeatedly kicked in the groin.  Deeply embarrassed and ashamed, they told no one of their experience for years.  One of those young men said his urine was red with blood for a full week.  For years afterward he would panic anytime he saw a police officer or heard a police siren.  One of the brothers developed a mental illness from which he never recovered.  The other, remarkably, found the strength to work through his police-inflicted PTSD and became a police officer himself, working for change from within. He told his remarkable story this week on National Public Radio.

There are not just hundreds of such stories in this country today, there are hundreds of thousands such stories. Over 4,000 African-Americans publicly lynched in the century after the Emancipation Proclamation with no consequences for the killers. And for every lynching, there are hundreds more humiliated, demeaned, wrongly arrested, spat upon and beat up, and not just by random racist thugs, but also by the very people whose duty it is to serve and protect all citizens.

As Trevor Noah has eloquently pointed out in his comments on the current crisis, the looting and violence is not simply the actions of criminal elements, it is the inevitable result of a broken social contract. The contract in its simplest form is this: I follow the rules and I will be treated fairly. But such is not the experience of people of color. Greg Evans, a local city councilor and resident of our community for 35 years, shared in his testimony at our Black Lives Matter rally what it is like to be black in Eugene, Oregon. Since coming to Eugene at the age of 10, he has been stopped by police 45 times. Let that sink in. 45 times! On one occasion he was questioned as a murder suspect in front of his wife. Though she was driving the car in which he was a passenger, the officer did not ask for her identification. Might that be because his wife is white? One has to wonder.

For people of faith this is not the time to hold up a Bible; this is the time to stand up for justice. And if you are looking for Jesus in the midst of the turmoil, do not look to those who stand piously in front of damaged churches with Bible in hand, calling for justice to be brought down on the looters and rioters with an iron fist.  That is not the Jesus I know or the one found in scripture.  No, the Jesus I know would be in the midst of the crowd, healing people of their pain and anger by listening, really listening, to their stories and sharing their grief.  The Jesus I know would say to the police, put away your weapons, and to the violent protestors, put down your stones. The Jesus I know would mock the armored police vehicles by riding down Fifth Avenue on a defenseless donkey in solidarity with victimized people. The Jesus I know would go to the family of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and cry with them. And then he would go with them to the streets and police precincts, to the court houses and state houses, and proclaim, “Let justice roll down like mighty waters!” And it is there, on that journey, for those who will go with him, that Emmaus happens and we discover the presence of the Divine in our midst.