Today's lectionary includes Acts 7:55-60, the story of Stephen’s stoning. And as Phil Harris pointed out to me, it has so much to say to us about what it means to be witnesses to, participants in, and victims of violence—in particular, the violence of the majority, which in America is always also racial violence and always also carried out in the name of God.
All of us are now finally aware of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder. And we should all by now be aware that this is anything but a stand-alone case. If it’s not the rule, it’s certainly also not the exception. And that brings me to what I believe the Spirit is saying to us:
(1) Those who murdered Stephen, like those who murdered Jesus, were not outlaws or sinners, but good people. They did not know it as murder, of course. They did it in good conscience because they did so under the cover of the Law—*God’s* Law, the same Law used to legitimize the lynching of Jesus.
As the story tells us, they stripped off their cloaks and threw them at the feet of Saul, who later tells us he was "blameless" concerning the Law when he met Christ outside Damascus. So, as this injustice was happening—as an innocent man was being *stoned to death*—those who did it did not feel they were violating God's will but felt they were fulfilling it.
That means, then, that our consciences and our laws are not going to tell us the truth about this. It is true, as I have heard so many people say, that racism and the violence it justifies won't end by the change of a law. Our hearts have to be changed. But why is that? Because our laws and the enforcement of them are manifestations of what is in the depths of our hearts.
History has shown, again and again, that those who are "born again" and "filled with the Spirit" are deceived by evil whenever it has managed to work its way so deeply into our lives that it works along, rather than across, the lines of law and order and morality. And that is the case in America, and especially in the Bible Belt. Because of the way we have been "Americanized" by our churches, most of the evil we see and most of the evil we do seems to us as anything but evil. And this should shake us because to call evil good and good evil is to blaspheme the Spirit—the unpardonable sin.
(2) As Stephen is speaking, the crowd covers their ears and rushes to silence him and to remove him from the sight of the public. This is an unmistakable sign of Satan's power over our lives: we do everything to silence and marginalize those who have been wronged.
In America, we "cover our ears" mostly by turning to the voices on the TV and in our pulpits, voices which we pay to tell us what we want to hear. And we "drag people" by smearing their names on the news and in our feeds. Make no mistake: this is Satanic. And it is why we can read stories like Stephen's or see video of what happened to men like Ahmaud and remain unchanged. When it's done, we think, "How could *they* have done this? How is this possible?" When what we should be thinking is, "This is what I have accepted as normal and right. I have done this by allowing it to be done in my name. And I can and will stop it, or die trying."
(3) Notice that no one tries to step in for Stephen or even to speak up for him but Jesus, who does so "at the right hand of God." The same was true for Jesus, at his trial and death. None of his friends cried out against what was being done to him. And the same is true for Paul, toward the end of Acts, when he is attacked in the Temple. Why? Because Christians then, like Christians now, are not only cowed by the power of the crowd but are deceived by the rule of law.
As my daughter pointed out to me, even the person recording Ahmaud's death seems simply to have recorded it, doing nothing to intervene, or even to call for help. I'm sure it was terrifying. And we don't know what this person did just before or just after these 30 seconds we've watched. More than that, it's impossible to say what I would do if I were in the same situation. But it leaves me asking myself if that is who I have become: someone who sees something wrong is being done, but does nothing more than talk about it.
(4) Stephen sees what no one else around him can see, including his fellow Christians. And I believe the same is true for minorities in our country. God rallies to them in their suffering, and so their eyes and ears are opened to him in ways ours just no longer are.
I mean this as bluntly as I can say it: until we realize that those who have been abused—including, but not limited to, African-Americans, Native-Americans, Japanese-Americans, immigrants, women, orphans, gays, the disabled and mentally ill, prisoners—see God in ways we simply cannot, we will never listen to them. And until we listen to them, we will continue to crucify Jesus again and again even while we tell ourselves and anyone who will listen that we are his friends.
Thankfully, they are praying for us. They know what Jesus knows, and what we still do not: we do not know what we are doing.
(5) Finally, Julie had a dream the other night. She saw Ahmaud’s mother, Wanda, sitting alone in a round-backed chair in the dark in her living room at night, arms wrapped around herself, crying silently. And Julie had this realization: She just wants her son. Not justice. Just her son.
And here's what I realized: our hearts won't change until our dreams do.
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