Make No Peace With Oppression

On Saturday, hundreds of peaceful protesters occupied the lawn of the Denver state capitol building, and for 9 minutes they lay face down with their hands behind their backs chanting “I can’t breathe” in remembrance of George Floyd. Their cries reached the heavens in what can only be described as gut-wrenching worship. And whether they realized it or not, they were mourning not just the body and blood of George Floyd, but the sacramental equally destroyed presence of Christ in this murdered human being. What started out as public protest on government land turned into corporate worship on holy ground as hundreds of individuals gave voice to the palpable pain, agony, and anger boiling over after 400 years of systemic injustice, grieving that the way things are cannot be as God intended them to be.

What they participated in and what we witnessed was the spiritual and public act of lament, a defiant plea of resistance from the lips of uncredentialed people up to the very ears of God. Lament is compassion given voice. It is announcing to the world that the hurt George Floyd’s mother feels is to be taken seriously and must never be accepted as normal. Or, as Dr. Rebekah Eklund describes it in her book Lord, Teach Us How to Grieve, “Lament is a persistent cry for salvation to the God who promises to save...Lament calls upon God to be true to God’s own character and to keep God’s own promises.” 

Scholars estimate that over one-third of the Psalms are prayers of lament, prayers of protest leveled toward the only God who listens, responds, and saves. Thankfully, the Psalms aren’t the only place in Scripture bearing witness to lament. Our sacred texts are replete with stories of lament which in turn give birth to resistance.  

Speaking truth to power and resisting the principalities and rulers of this world is the normative response to injustice throughout the biblical narrative. As God’s people, resistance is in our DNA. In the book of Exodus, it’s Shiphrah and Puah’s overt act of political defiance that sets the stage for the Israelites’ liberation from bondage. It’s Moses contesting Pharaoh. It’s Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to give fealty to Nebuchadnezzar. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den, Nathan chastising King David, Elijah confronting Ahab, and Amos unloading on Israel. 

The theme continues in the New Testament. According to pastor Robin Meyers in his book Spiritual Defiance, “Our Gospel was birthed in resistance to the brutal normalcy of the Roman Empire.” Scholars now realize just how far those early followers of Jesus went to subvert the spiritual, theological, and social claims of Rome. As historian John Dominic Crossan writes in his treatise God and Empire:  

There was a human being in the first century, who was called divine, son of God, God, and God from God, whose titles were Lord, redeemer, liberator, and savior of the world. Who was that person? Most people who know the western tradition would probably answer Jesus of Nazareth. And most Christians probably think those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ. But before Jesus ever existed all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus. Therefore, to proclaim them of Jesus the Christ was thereby to deny them of Caesar Augustus. Jesus’ followers took the identity of the Roman Emperor and gave it to a Jewish peasant. Either that was a peculiar joke and a very low lampoon, or it was what the Romans called “majestas” and we call high treason.

Unfortunately in today’s America, the Bible has been used primarily to support the status quo rather than to challenge it. President Trump recently took an uninvited, tear gas laced field trip to St. John’s Episcopal Church where he awkwardly brandished a Bible for what can only be described as one of the most cringe-worthy photo ops in American history. He did not pray. He did not worship. He did not ask for forgiveness. He used the Bible as a prop, as a sort of catch all absolution to sanction the actions of the establishment. 

Making matters worse, the Church continues to believe the lie that the Gospel can be personally redemptive without being socially responsible. We still hear Christians talk about the “social Gospel” as if there were any other kind. In the 1960s, evangelicals hid behind law and order in support of segregation. And now, Christians are calling for a false peace, a peace without justice as they long for everything to just get back to the brutal normalcy of the American Empire. 

We dare not. The soul of our nation is crying out that we must not. And so the church must lead the way by reclaiming our ancient posture of resistance. “The place of the church is thus not in the seats of the establishment but in the camps and marching columns of the protestors,” wrote missionary Lesslie Newbigin in his seminal work Foolishness to the Greeks. As God’s people, we have work to do, holy work in Minneapolis and Washington D.C., in Los Angeles and Atlanta, in Denver and Dallas. In the modern world, making disciples means calling and equipping people to embody God’s justice on our blood-stained streets. 

That is why, for Jesus followers, private beliefs must always lead to public action. A faith that is not lived is not real. Communal practices of lament, resistance, and protest shape our collective consciousness in a certain direction. In Charles Campbell’s book The Word Before the Powers, we get a sense of how such public acts of resistance frame the very fabric of the Church in a hurting world: “Not only are such practices necessary to enact and nurture the church’s vision, but through such practices the church itself becomes a concrete, communal embodiment of resistance to the principalities and powers.”

Christians are a people birthed in resistance, whose countercultural way of being calls into question every dehumanizing force, person, or system. When we march, when we lay down in solidarity with the dying, when we use our privilege to protect our black brothers, when we black out our social media feeds, we are joining Jesus in his prayer, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

Last week on the lawn of the Colorado State Capitol, resistance turned into worship. As you slowly return to church in the coming weeks, our prayer is that your worship will turn into an act of resistance. When you are finally able to receive the Eucharist, as you eat the bread and drink the cup, do so in remembrance of a young brown man executed by the State, an eternal victim of imperial violence who now stands in defiant solidarity with George Floyd. As author Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix.”

In this season of violence, division, hostility, and fear, our hearts are with you, urging you on to do the work of the Church. To that end, we leave you with a blessing from our friend Reverend Brendan E. Williams: 

Go forth into the world in peace, be faithful and courageous. Hold fast to that which is good and beautiful. Render to no one evil for evil. Support the weak. Comfort the afflicted. Shield the joyous. Be patient and loving, but make no peace with oppression. Seek and serve Christ in all God’s creation. And above every end, pursue the way of sanctity and truth, that holy wisdom may illumine your hearts forever. And the blessing of God almighty, the creator, sustainer, and redeemer, be upon you and remain with you forever. Amen.