They were both 37 years old, murdered by federal agents in Minneapolis, less than three weeks apart. On January 7, Renee Good was sitting in her car when she was shot three times, including once in the head. On January 24, Alex Pretti was filming federal agents with his cell phone, exercising his First Amendment right to protest their presence peacefully. They shoved him to the ground and several of them beat him. An agent removed a handgun from Alex’s waistband, which he carried legally, and a few seconds after disarming him, 10 shots were fired in five seconds into his prone body on the ground.
Senior administration officials quickly labeled both Renee and Alex “domestic terrorists,” claiming that federal agents were defending their lives. Go watch the videos online. Alex never drew his weapon. Renee was unarmed, moving her vehicle very slowly. Once shot, agents did not attempt to stop their bleeding or resuscitate them. Administration officials swiftly declared the shootings “justified,” without even investigating them; didn’t start investigating until public outcry proved too much. You can find plenty of videos online of peaceful protesters being shoved to the ground or beaten by a mob of agents or pepper-sprayed in the face.
There’s a pattern building here of arbitrary and gratuitous violence, of lies and cover-ups.
“Equal under the law” apparently no longer applies to anyone anymore; neither does the idea that no one is above the law. Is this who we’ve become? Where will it lead? Are we being groomed for much worse to come, being desensitized into a new normal, like the proverbial frog being boiled in water?
For those who will accuse me later of preaching a “political” sermon, a “partisan” sermon, this transcends politics. Our federal government, by sanctioning unwarranted lethal force, has made this a matter of faith, of basic morality and decency. This goes well beyond politics. We worship Jesus Christ, an innocent man arrested, beaten, and then put to death by the Roman state on false charges just because it wanted to, because it could, because killing him was more convenient.
Jesus was mocked too by those who tortured him, who took perverse pleasure in his suffering, arrogantly assuming they were untouchable. In their lifetimes, they probably assumed correctly. But I wonder how they fared before the great judgment seat of Christ, where all will answer for their sins.
It leaves us wondering what to do now, and what to do next? How can we possibly respond in a way that’s both effective and reflective of who we are as faithful followers of Jesus? Where do we even start? We start where we always start, with Scripture, and we’ll go to the Gospel first.
Mary and Joseph presented Jesus at the Temple, an important moment in their family’s life. Imagine their surprise when they were accosted without warning by two elderly prophets, Simeon and Anna, whose wisdom, gleaned from long faithful lives, gave them insight. They saw how special Jesus was and shared what they saw, in word and deed, with Mary and Joseph. The words of Anna aren’t recorded, just her joy. But we hear Simeon declaring, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed.”
These dark words might feel inappropriate on such an auspicious occasion, but prophets influenced by the Holy Spirit tend to tell it like it is, and Simeon, even in his great joy, saw what was to be: the struggle, the sacrifice to be suffered by Jesus and his parents—“and a sword will pierce your own soul, too.” And indeed, Simeon’s prophecy proved true.
Many resisted Jesus’s message, especially those who had the most to lose, those obsessed with domination and control. To them, Jesus was a threat because they knew that their lies would not long survive the light of his liberating truth. His message of unconditional love was a menace, and they would go and did go to great lengths to smother what he brought to give, but they failed.
They tried Jesus falsely, humiliated him publicly, told lies to undermine him, and finally killed him, but he rose again on the third day, proving that the love of God always wins. Those who oppose the truth of love, who rely on lies and cruelty and brutality, strive to induce us to abandon our principles, and they do it slyly by contriving to make us hate instead of love.
We all know the temptation. We watch the videos and read the stories. Our outrage rises rightly at the injustice, and before we know it, the consuming fire of hatred surges in our hearts. We despise the people responsible, and maybe even fantasize about vengeance, which is precisely what the hateful in our world want most from us and for us. The hateful want us to hate so that we can be miserable and puny just like them. It’s also the only game they know how to play. Refusing to hate confuses and disorients the hateful.
We must stay disciplined in Christ’s unconditional love, disciplined in prayer for those who persecute us and others, disciplined in our desire for the repentance and redemption of the hateful and cruel and brutal, disciplined in our witness that there is a different way, a way of forgiveness and reconciliation given to us by Jesus, who died on a cross and rose again.
In that discipline, fueled by grace, we find strength, a strength that refuses to stay silent. Jesus didn’t stay quiet. He stayed clever, but never quiet, even though his life would have been a lot easier and safer and longer if he would have just shut up. Jesus always advocated for the Kingdom, and brought it to bear against the selfish, tyrannical kingdoms of this world. If we follow him faithfully, then we too need to act and speak out, however we can, when oppressive forces seek to crush the innocent, the weak, and the truth.
Just as the Psalmist first prayed to God millennia ago, we too prayed this morning, “Happy are those people whose strength in in you! Whose hearts are set on the pilgrim’s way. For the Lord God is both sun and shield; he will give grace and glory. No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who walk with integrity.” And integrity cannot be taken away, no matter how much force is brought to bear; integrity is only ever given away.
We can act and speak with Christian integrity, even as we now know that our government might malign, beat, and even kill us for nothing more than simply showing up and asking questions and speaking truth. We can act and speak because we know that Jesus is with us—not only in this sacred space, but in every time and place where we call upon him. And we know that he understands what we’re going through.
That’s part of the whole purpose of Incarnation, of “God with us.” Hebrews is quite clear that “because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested”; “He himself shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.”
In Jesus, God walked the earth, in part to know how it feels to be human: to suffer and to be limited, frustrated, apprehensive, intimidated. That’s the quality of love God has for you and me and everyone. The cross was the pinnacle of sacrifice, yet the Incarnation involved a sacrifice too. Just being here with us entailed loss, and by being here with us, Jesus offered a model for how to show up and be present for others, how to resist temptation and evil, how to live faithfully even when it’s hard and scary.
If we fail to act and speak, then who will? It’s tempting to ignore it all and focus on day-to-day exigencies, tempting to be comforted by modest mollifying gestures, tempting to forget how power-hungry governments consistently throughout history have retreated in a crisis, only to surge back with even greater outrages once people are distracted by something else.
Our sole comfort and strength come through Christ. What the months and years to come might bring, no one knows, and things might get worse before they get better, but our hope will not waver, “because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested,” and Christ has proven through his cross and Resurrection that God’s love always wins. Amen.
First, that was a really nice story, thank you for taking the time to write all of that out
Secondly, yeah, the intellectual colonization of Christianity is a really tragic thing. I was personally raised by people who had been abused by the kind of conservative and dominating religion you described when they were kids and who had left their churches, so I was allowed to believe whatever I wanted growing up and just relate to the Bible as a collection of cool stories and good quotes (as well as some weird and bad ones), imo not as good as Kurt Vonnegut but better a lot better than Tom Clancy (look I read whatever was on the shelves of my local library whether it was good or not).
What I’m trying to say there is it isn’t a personal thing for me either way, because I never really got bullied by a bad church or had a strong family connection with a good one. But I have seen both of these things in other people, and either way, whether they hate/fear the church or associate or with family and community, the reflexive emotional responses those people have had were undeniably genuine and persistent. Those experiences (along with a lot of neurological research suggesting most human beings have brains that are structurally predisposed towards wanting a connection with a god-like force, which is probably why so many separate groups have independently come up with religions) have really convinced me that religious belief is an almost inextricably deep part of a person’s psyche (a lot like sexuality and gender actually).
And yeah, there have definitely been concerted efforts by states and rich people and tyrannical assholes of all sorts who want to use this thing that has such a deep hold on most people to justify themselves since Constantine. But also there’s a bunch of examples of this backfiring and religion causing people to rebel, from Martin Luther to John Brown. And also, there’s a ton of examples of religion bringing people together from sides that shouldn’t have gotten along and getting them to work together, from the Christmas truce in WWI to the American Civil Rights movement bringing white churches from the north to volunteer alongside black churches in the south to register black voters.
So, yeah, religious belief is a really complicated thing with good and bad aspects, but it is a powerful thing and something everyone needs to sort out for themselves one way or another. It sounds like you’re walking your path now and I’m glad to hear it!
This is really interesting. I never really thought about it that way before but it makes a lot of sense. It really is this deeply personal and human thing.
It’s also one of those traits where it’s like the harder you try to pin it down and formalize it, the further away you get from the true origin.
I had a similar discussion with my husband before about the emotional aspect of religion, and we kind of came to the conclusion it might be in part, why we have really different ways of making arguments or explaining things.
We were raised in pretty different backgrounds, and for the most part (unless it’s an inherently emotional discussion), he stays calm and even tempered when discussing things, even when he’s passionate about them. I admittedly tend to get a bit overly passionate? I guess
He normally tends to have the advantage when it comes to making a persuasive argument or point. However, religion is one of the rare exceptions where people often seem to need that emotional fire to make a persuasive argument to other religious people. Like, he knows a lot about religions, but he lacks that emotionally charged capacity. His family went to church some but it wasn’t like a fire and brimstone kinda experience, so sometimes he will need me to breakdown the emotion behind religious debates like a translator.
This isn’t a great analogy, but maybe using a strictly logic based argument (even one based on religious facts) to try to persuade a religious person to change their opinion, might be similar to trying to explain why a joke is funny. Something gets lost in the process and it might miss the mark and just land as disingenuous without either person even really being able to explain why.
So, this is random, but I’m really interested in tracing and understanding the origins of the religious right movement (Heritage Foundation and the moral majority), and your comment really has me thinking about how this could apply to the oligarchs who have funded it since the earliest days.
Specifically, when you mentioned the historical efforts of people trying to capture this really elusive piece of the human psyche, it made me think of the ending of Madmen, and the main character’s big “aha!” moment.
Essentially, throughout the show he’s the epitome of the 1960’s American advertising executive, and as the decade comes to a close, he has this realization that America sort of seems to be losing its infatuation with consumerism in the traditional sense as it transitions into the 1970’s. While out of his typical suit and tie office comfort zone, he meditates and seems to come to a breakthrough conclusion about what he can capitalize big on even if America shuns “consumerism.” So presumably, he will go on to market the spiritualism/guru movement of the 1970’s.
Obviously, that’s just a TV show, but until reading your comment, I never really thought about the fact that those 2 movements (spiritualism/guru and the religious right) oddly seemed to emerge at roughly the same time (early 1970s). Honestly, I can’t help but wonder if something like that was sort of the pitch that got oligarchs involved?
It’s especially interesting when you think about the way marketing tends to exploit bipartisanship in America. You have one revenue source aimed at the left (spiritualism) and one aimed at the (religious) right.
Back in 1974, a year after its founding, Heritage had a staff of five people in a rented office above a garage. That’s when its co-founder, Paul Weyrich, sniffed a big opportunity in West Virginia—in a textbook fight brewing in Kanawha County, home of the state capitol in Charleston. As Weyrich said later: “The alliance between religion and politics didn’t just happen.”