This week, fellow citizens in Minnesota did something that most of my friends who are members of communities of Color considered near impossible: An officer of the law was convicted of murder. There is joy, relief and gratitude, of course, but many of us are also humbled and acutely aware of the magnitude of the work ahead of us. We can take consolation, but we must be poised to do the whatever it takes to unravel the complex, systemic injustice that has been unchecked for centuries in our nation. We need to keep our shoes on and our sleeves rolled up. For Christians, our faith must be a primary lens through which we look at the issues of race, prejudice, oppression and violence.
Rather than reflect myself on the readings this week, I offer you this pointed and poignant excerpt from the work of the great African American liberation theologian James Cone, PhD. In Cone’s view, wherever people are suffering, the Good Shepherd must be there, and as one with those people, he will, in the words of Ezekiel, “feed his sheep with justice.” I pray to live to see this vision in greater fullness.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree: Words from James Cone for this Week
To understand what the cross means in America we need to take a look at the lynching tree in this nation’s history–that “strange and bitter crop” that Billie Holiday would not let us forget. The lynched black victim experienced the same fate as the crucified Christ and thus became the most potent symbol for understanding the true meaning of the salvation achieved through “God on the Cross.” Nietzsche was right: Christianity is a religion of slaves. God became a slave in Jesus and thereby liberated slaves from being determined by their condition.
The real scandal of the gospel is this: humanity’s salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity’s salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst. Faith that emerged out of the scandal of the cross is not a faith of intellectuals or elites of any sort. This is the faith of abused and scandalized people—the losers and the down and out. It was this faith that gave blacks the strength and courage to hope, “to keep on keeping on,” …. The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching of the Christian gospel must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree…..
As I see it, the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians. When we see the crucifixion as a first-century lynching, we are confronted by the re-enactment of Christ’s suffering in the blood-soaked history of African Americans.
Thus the lynching tree reveals the true religious meaning of the cross for American Christians today. The cross needs the lynching tree to remind Americans of the reality of suffering—to keep the cross from becoming a symbol of abstract, sentimental piety. Before the spectacle of the cross we are faced with a clear challenge: as Latin American liberation theologian Jon Sobrino has put it, “to take the crucified down from the cross.”
Yet the lynching tree also needs the cross, without which it becomes simply an abomination. It is the cross that points in the direction of hope, the confidence that there is a dimension to life beyond the reach of the oppressor….
Though the pain of Jesus’ cross was real, there was also joy and beauty in his cross. This is the great theological paradox that makes the cross impossible to embrace unless one is standing in solidarity with those who are powerless. God’s loving solidarity can transform ugliness–whether Jesus on the cross or a lynched black victim–into beauty, into God’s liberating presence.
—James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
With gratitude for who you are in the world,
Trish
Pastoral Director
Charis
An Ecumenical Catholic Community
http://www.newcatholiccommunity.com
cháris Χάρις khar’eceOur name means grace, good will, loving-kindness, favor; of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues.