How Long O Lord?

"Lord, how long will I call for help and you not listen? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you don't deliver us. Why do you show me injustice and look at anguish so that devastation and violence are before me? There is strife, and conflict abounds. The Instruction is ineffective. Justice does not endure because the wicked surround the righteous. Justice becomes warped." - Habakkuk 1:2-4

Last night the verdict was read in the case against Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18 year old black youth named Michael Brown.
That verdict was the product and the result of hundreds of years of racial oppression, subjugation and segregation that underlines, scores and marks the fabric our nation, our communities and our relationships to this day.

This day, Today.
Today is a painful reminder of just how long the moral arc of the universe really is.
Today many brothers and sisters of color have woken up from the hope of justice and returned to the bleak reality of systemic racism that puts a price on their life and a millstone around their neck.

Today many continue to remark that #blacklivesmatter. However, making the proclamation more often than not feels like shouting into the void.
Yes, #blacklivesmatter.

Yes, #blacklivesmatter. They matter to black people, they matter to me, they even matter to other white people even in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of that proclamation. That even while I proclaim #blacklivesmatter I know that the devaluation of those lives is a very real, persistent, and present threat.

As a nation we need our "come to Jesus" moment. We idle in the sin of racial injustice, too many made comfortable by its false promises. For most white folks, today we wake up and it is business as usual. No assumptions have been challenged, no hearts convicted. We continue to idle in sin while our brothers and sisters cry out, and many of us have the audacity to discount their cries, as if their pain is the true violence which shakes us.

So warped has sin made us that the reality of trials such as this one is that it is in fact the dead who are put on trial. Those who cannot respond for themselves are assessed of their innocence or guilt. Those who cannot give testimony to their version of events are expected to have their full perspective represented by the one who killed them. The result, more often than not, is that the dead are found guilty. The dead deserved to die. Michael Brown needed to die. He was dangerous, though he was unarmed, he was a threat to white lives, and he had to die. What other conclusion can be drawn from a refusal to indict?

By affirming Darren Wilson's decision to kill Michael Brown, the Grand Jury asserted two very powerful messages: Michael's death was justified; #blacklivesdon'tmatter

What other lesson is there for young people, white and black alike, looking in to discern how they should best relate to one another?

That's what hurts the most. Black lives are devalued every time this happens. Black lives are proven to be less valuable than those of their white neighbors, and thus the cycle of violence, systemic violence, marches on.

Indeed, Justice does not endure because the wicked surround the righteous. Justice becomes warped.

Today justice has been warped, delayed, subverted, denied.

Today we again wait for the moral arc of the universe to bend toward justice.

But now it's not for Michael Brown, not for Eric Garner, or Trayvon Martin, Ezell Ford, Orlando Barlow, Oscar Grant, Renisha McBride, Dante Parker, Jordan Davis, John Crawford, Alonzo Ashley, Kimani Gray, Danta Price, Steven Eugene Washington, Victor Steen, Sean Bell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Wendell Allen, Aaron Campbell, Kendrec McDade, Bo Morrison, Timothy Stansbury Jr., Timothy Russell, Jerean Blake, Jonathan Ferrell, Amandou Diallo, Ervin Jefferson, Angelo Clark, Steven Rodriguez, Johnnie Kamahi Warren, Nehemiah Dillard, Stephen Watts, Michael Lembhard, Tendai Nhekairo, Manuel Loggins Jr., Rekia Boyd, Melvin Lawhorn, Marquez Smart, Patrick Dorismond, James Brissette, Jersey Green, Ousmane Zongo, Duane Brown, Justin Sipp, Christopher Kissane, Raymond Allen, Travares McGill, or Sheron Jackson,

Now we wait for Tamir Rice, a twelve year old black child killed by police.

How long O Lord?

Happy Good Friday?

I really do love this time of year. As the weather begins to warm up and hues of green start to return to the world I always get a boost of encouragement to get work done. It may be when I'm most productive. Which is good news for me, since this week is also Holy Week, the final days of Lent, which, I think, is the busiest time of year for clergy. That busyness may be a little self-induced, but for many this is a time of intense spiritual discipline.

This year we'll be worshiping on both Thursday and Friday leading up to Easter, and we're going to worship in new ways. Part of that means that I am building a cross for our Good Friday service. Something has struck me as I've worked in planning and building such an object. In some sense this is a spiritual discipline, connecting to the labor of love that God pours out on creation, both in the way of a "carpenter" and in the significance of God's action on the cross.
However, it is also very much an odd juxtaposition of emotions, much in the same way that Good Friday is.
As a "spiritual but not religious" friend of mine once asked:

"Happy Good Friday?"

Happy Good Friday about sums it up. As I make the first cuts in the wood beams, I am reminded that this is both a symbol of God's love for the universe and also an instrument of torture and death. Those are two realities that don't fit together. They never were really meant to. When I think about what happened on Friday, on Golgotha two thousand years ago, I realize that the cross isn't God making good out of a bad situation. It is the goodness of God destroying the futility of evil. Jesus' crucifixion was an attempt to do away with something holy, but what is revealed on Sunday is that in the worst of human actions, evil sows seeds against itself. At just the moment when the prosecution rests its case against humanity and all possible hope seems lost, the judge throws the book at the prosecution.

As I put the final nails in to secure the beams, I do so with the realization that I have just created a replica of something on which real people have bled and died. I do so with the realization that what I have now built is the same thing that many have built out of reverence and many for evil. I do so knowing the very real human cost that such a thing represents, and millions of people who were and are "crucified" in some form or another in our world. Ultimately I do so with the knowledge that this cross represents the power of God over the evil in our world. Over hatred and violence, oppression and demonization. Over the power of sin and death.

"The power of God over the power of sin and death."

On Friday we will gather at the foot of this cross and lay our burdens down before it. Because, in Jesus, God has taken all of the worst things we could possibly come up with and subverted them, undermined our worst intentions to make something good and whole and beautiful.
On Friday we will morn and we will repent.
But what makes Friday "Good" is that the story does not end on the cross, or in the tomb. What makes Friday "Good" is that Sunday comes, a new day dawns for all of creation and we hear the first words of the day: "Do not be afraid."

SNAP Challenge Review

This is a follow up post to the SNAP challenge that we undertook throughout October. My original intention was to provide a weekly update on our progress, however over the past couple of weeks my schedule would not allow it. So this is a final note on our experience.

Looking back through October I am filled with grief over the congressional decision to go through with the cut to SNAP. I am grieved because millions of families will now have to make their food budgets work with 5.5% less than they had before. For the plan we were working off of, $267 a month for a household of two, would mean a reduction of $14.68 to a total of $252.32 per month. While $14.68 does not seem like a significant amount, when your food budget is so stretched that every dollar is pre-planned, analyzed and coveted, $14.68 means something will have to go. Maybe how that plays out is that the milk has to last a little longer than it already does, or there is yet another night of macaroni and cheese, but what it ultimately translates to is sacrifice in scarcity.

What I learned from participating in the challenge was that I hated being on it. Every day was filled with more stress, worrying about every meal, how much money was left, and what we could or could not buy. Surviving off of this amount of money is not a luxury, it is a burden. It is certainly a burden more preferable than having no supplemental support, but what it did not produce in us was a sense of security or comfort. Rather, every day was filled with anxiety over food.

At no point did we feel like this was a level of food income we would be comfortable maintaining.

Perhaps the biggest oversight in our challenge was that we did not truly experience what 76% of SNAP households do: a dependent. Whether that be a child, an elderly parent, or someone with a work prohibitive disability, we did not have to worry about a mouth to feed that could not provide a source of income. It breaks my heart to think of parents who have to worry about how much food their child(ren) will be able to have on their plate.
Maybe we could have cut $14.68 out of our budget, made it work, squeezed through it. Maybe I could have gone to bed with a little less food one night. But if I had a child I do not know how I would make that adjustment. How could I take food off of their plate?
This was also our greatest insight over the past month. When thinking about how these cuts would effect families with children, I wondered if we would have even tried this challenge if we had a child. The answer is no, we would not have taken this challenge on willingly. So now, more than ever, I am abundantly aware of the privilege I have in being able to make that choice. To say that this would not be right for my child when we can afford more. Which is why it also hurts me to know that those who control how much SNAP money is contributed to each family's food budget find themselves in the same privileged position that I am and yet find it so easy to make cuts.

For all the families that are having to make cuts to their food budgets this month I pray that God would help them find a way to be fed.
For all of those who are in positions of power over our budget I pray that their hearts be warmed and that God's Spirit would work in them so that all people might have access to the food they need and that none would go hungry.