Way, way,
way back when times were tough for God’s people—in bondage, in Egypt, under the
threat of death, not because of unfair labor practices but the threat of death
because Pharaoh declared a war on male Hebrew babies—stories not often retold
these days reveal that Hebrew leaders actually banned having children. The image of Egyptian soldiers or agents
killing infants was too much for them to bear.
So to avoid infant deaths, as this surely was not what God wanted or
intended, they chose not having babies.
Seeing themselves as unable to change the system, they admitted their
powerlessness and made themselves complicit with the Egyptian edict.
Husbands and
wives refrained from relations. The
Hebrew population ceased to grow. And
the lack of resistance kept a good people down.
I’m grateful
to John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, whose book entitled The First
Christmas introduced me to some of this tradition.
Where the
turning of the story began, they suppose, was when a young Hebrew man and his
wife chose resistance. They resisted
Pharaoh, they resisted their own leadership, they stood in the face of infants
being killed and chose life—intentionally.
They made a baby and named him Moses—and dared Pharaoh to snuff out what
God had inspired.
I write
this, horrified by the violence that erupted in the United States from
African-American men dying at the hands of white police officers and innocent
white police officers gunned down as they protected what was widely reported as
a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas.
I don’t
condone the violence. I don’t condemn
police officers. I don’t blame #blacklivesmatter. I recognize every day that the violence we
abhor is violence we have helped create ourselves. It’s the violence of not loving our neighbors
as ourselves. It’s the justification of
privilege, somehow thinking we’ve “earned it.”
And it’s only a matter of time before the violence explodes in so many
different directions. We are all at
risk. Not just because of the color of
our skin, but our refusal to love one another as Jesus teaches us as
Christians. We are also dying because of
the color of our skin or the color of our politics or the color of our
religious affiliation or the color of our sexual orientation and
lifestyle.
There is
many a good reason to give up hope that we can end this cycle of violence. For us to give in to the idea that this will
go on and on and on—much like we have said that the peoples of the Middle East
will always be fighting, that the poor will always be with us, that there can
be no real peace for human beings. That
someone, somewhere, will always take up arms.
I’ve spent a
lot of today reading online, trying to find out exactly what happened in Baton
Rouge, in Minneapolis, in Dallas. I’ve
read facebook posts and tweets, news stories, reflections from friends and
colleagues.
I was moved
by a woman who hoped that her son would not have to see her die, like the 4-year-old
daughter of the girlfriend riding in Philando Castile’s car watched him
die.
I was moved
by a colleague whose eldest child, having gone off to college in Minnesota was
going to participate in rallies in the Twin Cities; how words from her dad
encouraged her to speak loudly and feel free to get arrested.
I have spent
hours this week thinking about my own children, and in particular, a friend of
my eldest son, they both enter 6th grade this fall, the friend who
is African-American, whose mother is white and greatly fearful (and for so many
good reasons) of what awaits him in this world.
I, too, am fearful about what that will mean for my son and our families,
knowing their years of innocence will likely be impacted now by things they won’t
be equal in sharing in because of the color of their skin.
I have one
of those experiences myself. I remember
my own experience in college. My
roommate was African-American, also a Presbyterian preacher’s kid, but
adopted. I was there the day my roommate
was arrested for robbing a baseball card store.
My roommate and I both had been on a college-sponsored mission trip to
Eastern Kentucky over spring break, the time the robbery had taken place in Arkansas
while we were in Kentucky. When the
white police officers asked me if there was any way my roommate could have
committed the crime I laughed and said how preposterous it was, “No. He can’t time-travel, or be in two places at
once. He was with us all night.” But to my dismay, they believed
otherwise.
In this
world where people seem to have no honest chance and hope is fleeting, …I hope
a bright young couple is thinking this is the perfect time to have a baby!
Because it
will mean hope is not dead, and life is not in doubt; that someones would be choosing life, and witness, and resistance.
#makelovenotwar
#killemwithkindness
#loveyourneighborasyourself
#thegoldenrule
#teachthemtoyourchildren
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder
and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
No comments:
Post a Comment