1968 and 2015

    
So NPR interviewed a couple of First Responders from the days after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, drawing a parallel between what happened then to what is happening now.  It got me thinking.  Here are a couple of observations.


In 1968, our cities were a warzone.  One of the Responders likened walking through the streets of Baltimore and Washington D.C. after the riots like walking through the cities of Germany that were wiped out in the bombing campaigns of the Second World War.


In 2015, our cities are ‘thug-fests’.  Legitimate, necessary, desirable public protests are hijacked by looters and hooligans, more intent on busting into a CVS than expressing anger and grief to a nation.


1968 gave us riots of anger.  2015 gives us riots of hooliganism.  I see more parallels in 2015 to the soccer hooligans in the United Kingdom who are just out to cause trouble than parallels to 1968.


In 1968, the ‘information age’ put the war in Vietnam into our living rooms.  Every night, we saw the raw, unedited footage of our draftee army fighting a war that no one could explain our presence in to the satisfaction of a nation.


In 2015, the ‘information age’ puts the police actions of our nation into our living rooms.  Every night, we see the raw, unedited footage of our cops fighting a war on the thin blue line that no one can presently explain to the satisfaction of a nation.


In 1968 and 2015, violence sells.  The worst of the worst is what attracts viewers to our media outlets.  In 1968, hundreds and thousands of positive interactions between US soldiers and the Vietnamese went by the way, forgotten and uninteresting to the people at home.  In 2015, hundreds and thousands of positive interactions between US law enforcement and public go by the way, forgotten and uninteresting to us.


In 1968, the My Lai Massacre caught the attention of the nation, American soldiers doing horrible things.  They were caught, they were prosecuted.  Not everybody was.  In 2015, our police are catching the attention of the nation, doing some horrible, some questionable, some hard things, some inexplicable things.  Some were caught, some were prosecuted.  Not everybody was.


At the end of the day, we are the United States.  Sometimes we do it right, a lot of times we don’t.  But we are going to keep trying.






  

One Minute Sermon: Give it the Minute.

Wow....just wow.

Preaching on the Violent Jesus

Jesus drove the moneychangers out of the temple.  That is my passage from John tomorrow.  I have heard more commentary on this passage regarding the fact that John places it early in his gospel account versus the Synoptic gospels that place the story near the end of their gospels, as a trigger event for his final arrest.  More pages have been devoted to the possibility that Jesus did it twice in an attempt to harmonize the gospels, rather than deal with a Violent Jesus.


We do not want to deal with the fact that Jesus committed violence, against property and against the persons of the moneychangers in the temple.  And, since by presumption, Jesus was without sin, he committed violence without being sinful.  In John, the disciples would remember the Old Testament quote, "Zeal for his house consumed him" as the reason for the Violent Jesus.


"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."  That is us.  This is the line in the Declaration of Independence that justified the use of violence by the colonial governments against the government of England.  Funny I should be reminded of that from the movie "National Treasure".


There was a line across which a response of violence would be provoked.  That happened to Jesus.  It could happen to us.  For some, it is an expected response. 


We train up Peace Officers and War Officers, our police and our military, to proceed violently when the need arises.  They act in the name of the state, justified and protected when their actions are justifiable.  It is a tremendous responsibility.  The roots of that responsibility are found in Jesus himself.


With the Violent Jesus, one might look at the merits of the case.  It was not permissible to give money to the temple that was tainted with images of other deities, including that of the Emperor.  The Jews looked to the Law of Moses to protect the Temple from the influences of other religions, even from their money.  But the Jews who pilgrimaged to Jerusalem had only the money of their hometowns.  Thus, the moneychangers were present to exchange their currencies for what was permissible in the temple.  On the face of it, a very workable solution.


But the extortion that resulted, the entire Temple environment was dominated by these moneychangers, living off the backs of the pilgrims.  They and the purveyors of sacrificial beasts for Temple sacrifice.  The Temple had become a place of this religious commerce, and crooked commerce at that.  The injustice of this perverted worship of God drove Jesus to violent ends. 


Did it stop the practices?  No.  In fact, the demonstration of the Violent Jesus is a contributing factor to Jesus' final arrest and execution.  But what it showed the world, the willingness to put your life on the line for what is truly important, such a lesson of power.  And amazingly, the great leaders who have followed the lessons of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, they have changed their nations without resorting to violence.


What is the line you are willing to cross to become a Person of Violence?  Have you truly considered where that line lies?  Are you justified as the Violent Jesus was?  Are you willing to pay the price, as Jesus did? 

A Failure of Training

It is the nightmare scenario.  In this case, it was a 73 year old volunteer reserve deputy.  He was going for his taser and he drew his service weapon.  He was going for his taser and he shot a suspect, killing him during an arrest.  He was going for his taser, seeking to protect the public and enforce the laws and a man is dead.  That is the face this volunteer reserve deputy is going to carry around in his head and in his sleep for the rest of his life.


This is not Ferguson, Missouri, nor Staten Island, New York, and certainly not North Charleston, South Carolina.  Tulsa, Oklahoma is something worse. 


It is worse because, from what I can see, it is not a racially motivated shooting.  Criminal intent, race hatred, a human hunting culture, a bully-boy police department, they are not in play here.  Yes, a lot of people will try to bring them into play.  And maybe there are details I do not know that make it appropriate for them to be in play.  But I haven't seen them.


The reason this is worse is because an officer was trying to do his job and the power of life and death that he is entrusted with led to an incident of failure.  There are a lot of reasons that might be drawn upon to cite for this incidence of failure.  There was a failure in his training that he was unable to distinguish between the two weapons in a moment of high stress.  There will be questions of the legitimacy of being able to train a 73 year old adequately in the stresses and needs of law enforcement.  Even if such training is deemed to be legitimate, there will be intense scrutiny of a volunteer officer of his age being utilized in the higher stakes and stresses of a 'drug bust'.


It is worse because this is not a bad man hiding behind the authority of law enforcement.  And the court of public perception will not be able to accuse him of such, not as it has accused those other officers, not unless there is something we have not yet seen.


It is worse because the system that is designed to bring justice and enforce the law and protect the citizens of the United States broke down. It is the nightmare scenario for every officer and every police force that seeks to legitimately serve and protect the public.  It is the nightmare scenario for every citizen.  It is the nightmare scenario because it could have been fixed in the training, but it was not, not until someone paid the ultimate price.


It is akin to Columbine, when police training was designed around hostage taking and not the active shooter, when the cops created a perimeter and did not intervene, when they stood still and children died, because that is what they were trained to do-then.


So pray for the family of Eric Harris, a life tragically cut short.  But pray also for Reserve Deputy Robert Bates, who will be living that moment for the rest of his life.  Pray that he will not choose the barrel of his gun to silence the pain.