The Riots and the Cross
I know many of us are tired, overwhelmed, and perplexed by the stories we’ve been hearing lately of race-related violence, police brutality, protests, riots, and counter-protests. I certainly am. When I heard the news from Charleston this past week, all of this hit home for me in a new way. Perhaps this is simply because of my calling and position as a minister entrusted with the spiritual care of a congregation. Perhaps I related a bit more directly to people in a church building joining in prayer and Bible study than I have to those who have “taken to the streets.” I’ve never “taken to the streets” for any reason. I study the Bible and pray with other Christians in a church building weekly.
The murder of nine people in Emmanuel AME in Charleston is a tragedy that stands on its own. However, one cannot help but see it in conversation with the violence and rioting in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, and all across the United States over the past 12 months. As all of this is happening in our country, I join Christians around the world praying, “Lord, have mercy upon us!” We are in need of saving, and only God has the power to save us.
I’ve been disturbed by the response of many Christians, especially on social media, who seem content to wade into this murky and complex conversation without seeming to consider how the Christian story can and should influence the way we view violence, tragedy, and death. As a Christian minister, this alarms me, because the very center of the Christian story has an awful lot to say about all of these things!
I’m talking about the cross—the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to view all things through the lens of the cross. It is to see God’s revelation on the cross as the hinge upon which all of human history turns. We sing the old hymns together in church, “Jesus is all the world to me…” and “All to Jesus I surrender…” Yet, when we’re looking to make sense of tragedy in the world, we often neglect our most precious and valuable resource—the story of the cross! If we do not reflect on our life and the events in our world through the lens of the Christian story—cross, death, and resurrection—then all that is left to us are the counter-stories that our world tells. These stories are wholly unreliable to us if they are inconsistent with the way God has revealed the truth about Godself and ourselves through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
We trust (do we really?) our national media to provide us with reporting from the vantage point of an unbiased observer. When this is actually done—which I believe is rarely or never—it can be a great help to us in understanding the intricacies of complex human interaction.
However, as Christians, we are not unbiased about human suffering and violence. We are very biased! This is because our Scriptures and the witness of the church tell us that God is very biased about human suffering. God is squarely against human suffering. And God shows special favor toward two groups who respond to suffering in different ways: the helpers (“the just” or “the righteous”), who respond to human suffering by doing something proactive about it, and the innocent victims, who respond to human suffering by enduring the suffering and waiting upon God’s vindication. I’d like to suggest that looking at tragedy through the lens of the cross will cause us to give preference to these two voices as well.
Look for the helpers
When I was growing up, one of the most credible public theologians was a man who, to the best of my knowledge, never or rarely mentioned Jesus in his most public platform for sharing the gospel. When he wasn’t sharing the gospel message from a pulpit in a Presbyterian church somewhere around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was the sweater-wearing host of a PBS children’s show. I’m talking about Fred Rogers—Mr. Rogers to those of us who knew him best from his television program Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
Mr. Rogers preached a radical gospel vision in his soft-spoken, non-assuming way. He invited us all to recast our vision of the entire world—with all of its differences and boundaries and separation—into one single neighborhood. A neighborhood characterized by love, compassion, empathy, kindness, curiosity, and emphasizing the unique gifts each and every “neighbor” has to offer others in the neighborhood. Upon further reflection, Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood sounded an awful lot like what Jesus called “The Kingdom of God."
One of the hallmarks of Fred Rogers’ gospel vision was a lesson he learned from his mother as a young man growing up. In many different interviews, he has shared versions of this same tidbit of wisdom:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”
In all four gospel accounts, the description of the cross includes the angry mob, the soldiers following orders, the violent and cruel people abusing their positions of power to hurt others, and the detached politicians. What’s another group all four include? The helpers. Those men and women who follow Jesus all the way to the cross and minister to his most pressing need—which, at that moment, is simply to keep watch and pay attention to what is happening to Jesus. Later, those who watched will tell his story. That’s the story of the cross that’s been passed down to us today. It's not the story of those in power, but the story of the helpers.
To view disaster through the lens of the cross is to look for the helpers. To be a disciple of Jesus is to consider how we might join the helpers in doing whatever is within our power to love and serve our hurting neighbors.
Look for the innocent sufferers
The helpers are one group to whom the cross draws our gaze in times of violence and tragedy. However, they are on the edges of the story. Right there at the center of the crucifixion is Jesus. Although all four gospels differ in certain details surrounding the crucifixion, they all agree on this: Jesus does not deserve to die the way he does. Luke makes this a special emphasis, describing Pilate declaring Jesus' innocence three times (Luke 23:4, 14-15, 22). He is innocent of the crimes of which he is accused. He is the innocent sufferer.
This is the second and most important group of people to whom the cross calls our attention in times of violence, disruption, and suffering—the innocent victims. Look for the innocent victims, and there you will see the presence of Christ.
In the riots we’ve seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, and many other U.S. cities, it’s easy to get swept up into an overly simplistic “good guy/bad guy” story. Whether the rioters are the good guys or the cops are the good guys depends upon your point of view. The shooting at Emmanuel provides an even easier opportunity to demonize the shooter, declare him evil, and then attempt to move on without addressing the complexities of the American history of white supremacist attitudes and the conditions for violence that those attitudes perpetuate. Once we’ve simplified the story, it’s pretty easy to stand off to “our side” and cast stones in the direction of the other side.
Any reduction of these stories into a simple “good guy/bad guy” narrative is absolute rubbish when we’re looking through the lens of the cross.
The story of the cross includes the helpers, disciples who run away, soldiers and guards following orders, political and religious leaders trying to keep the peace by means of execution, a murderous political terrorist who is set free, and—right at the center—an innocent victim.
To view national tragedy through the lens of the cross should draw our attention first and foremost to the innocent victims. For it is there we will see most clearly the presence of Christ. The innocent victims are the children who didn’t ask or deserve to be born into any of this mess. The innocent victims are those gathered for prayer and the study of Scripture who are murdered after doing exactly what Christians are supposed to do—welcoming the stranger. The innocent victims are the men and women who are brutally killed by members of law enforcement whose job is to protect the neighborhood and enforce due process and justice. The innocent victims are the majority of law enforcement officials who are unfairly mistreated and mistrusted because of the actions of a very small minority. The innocent victims are families without access to healthy food, quality education, fair political representation, and economic advantage simply because of the “accident of birth”—they happened to born into the situation into which they were born, and I happened to born into mine, while neither of us did a thing to deserve that. The innocent victims are those who, like Jesus—either by choice or by circumstance—place their full trust in the power of God to vindicate all unjust suffering.
These are scary and chaotic times to be living in the United States. However, for people of faith, we should not lose sight of the fact that our story is already written. We have already been given the gift of a story to help us make sense of all this otherwise senseless violence, hatred, anger, and fear. Our story is cross and empty tomb. Our story is death and resurrection. Our story is the vindication of God for the innocent sufferers. Our story is that the dividing wall of hostility has been torn down, and the two humanities are made into one. Our story takes place in one neighborhood—God’s Kingdom.
We don’t have to create our own story. We do have to live it out in our own place and time.
I’d like to urge all people in the Christian faith to not be so quick to jump to conclusions and cast judgment. Not until we’ve looked for the helpers and the innocent victims, and at least heard their side of the story. Their story is, after all, our story.
