One Humanity (Ephesians 2:11-22)

Sunday, September 14, 2015

            Well … it has happened again.  This week a story was shared with me and it got me very upset.  A man in Minnesota was waiting for his kids to get out of school.  The school meets in a business park of some sort.  While he waited someone harassed him.  A nonviolent conflict ensued, police were called, and he ended being tased. 

            He had not broken any law.  He was a man waiting to pick his kids up from school and he reacted negatively as you or I would to being harassed for no reason.

            He is black.  All the officers are white.  Much of the confrontation was recorded.  I heard and watched it.  I was upset.

            This is the place where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide.  It all comes together.

            How many more times in our country must a black person be assaulted by the police who are supposed to protect us?  I read of someone who had been an American citizen for 4 decades.  She moved from Miami to Georgia and someone posted on Facebook, “make sure you bring your flag.”  The reference was to an unfortunate phrase, “Would the last America to leave Miami please bring the flag?”  The inference is that people who look like Cubans, whatever that means, are not as American as white people. 

            Then there is a video, a farce, where a white man, a jogger, sees another jogger, a woman with Asian features, in the park.  Both are stretching.  He says, “Hi,” and she responds.  Then he says, “Where are you from?  Your English is perfect.”  She says, “San Diego.  We speak English there.”  He says, “No, where are you from?  Where are your people from?”  He proceeds to ask dumber and dumber questions. 

            Then she turns the tables on him.  She asks this white guy, “Where are you from?”  He names an American city and she says, “No, where are your people from?”  He says, “Oh, well, I am just a normal American.”  But she presses him until he says, “England, I guess.”

            Aren’t we all just normal Americans?

            When I led a youth group in Arlington in the late 90’s, nearly every kid in the group was either Hispanic or Sudanese.  The Sudanese were actually born in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya or Egypt.  Every single one of those tan skinned Latino kids were born in Arlington, Virginia.  How much more American can you be?

            But they didn’t see it that way.  If they discussed a friend at school they might say, “She’s American.”  I’d say, “What do you mean?”  They’d say, “You know, white.  Not Spanish.”  I though not Spanish.  These kids had parents who were Costa Rican and Argentinian and Salvadorian, but some of the kids, Hispanic kids, could barely speak Spanish themselves.  Yet in their minds, a normal American is white.

            Sometimes,  I will meet a person who is Asian or Hispanic.  I will ask, “Where are you from.”  I ask the same question upon meeting someone who is white or black.  It is a way I show interest in the other person.  I want to connect.  Regardless of what they look like, I expect to hear “I am from Detroit or I am from Wilmington or I am from Georgia or I am from St. Louis.”  I see the other as American, but she responds, “I am Korean.”  She doesn’t trust that I see her as American.

            Why should she?  If she has been hit with subtle prejudice or outright racism over and over, why should she believe that this white guy will be a nice one who sees her as a beautiful human being, who wants to celebrate her uniqueness, who wants to hear her story?  Why should she believe my good intentions?  She’s been hurt too many times by people who look like me.

            In the case of the Hispanic youth group kids this is a matter of self-identity.  In the comedy video, it is how we see others.  In Miami, it is a matter of some people deciding that individuals who they think “look Cuban” and probably want to be in this country so much they fought to get here are somehow less American looking than those who had the fortune to be born here.  For the black man who was tased in Minnesota, it is a matter of extreme embarrassment in front of his kids and the unsettling reality that he cannot trust the police to be for him.  In the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the racism that plagues us as a people turned out to be deadly. 

            I said earlier, this where real life, your life and mine, and the Bible and the Holy Spirit of God collide. 

            Ephesians 2 is seen against the backdrop of divided people.  Those called “the circumcision,” the Jews were distinct.  Jewish males were circumcised.  Gentiles males, all men who were not Jewish, did not get circumcised.  Jewish people lived by the Law of Moses.  Those who were not Jewish did not live by the law.  The Jews observed Sabbath.  Perhaps this distinction was the oddest to the Gentiles around them.  Why don’t the Jews work today?  Everyone else does?  What makes today so special?

            These distinctions marked the Jews as separate, holy, the people of God.  But they also marked all non-Jewish people as being not included in the people of God.  Gentiles were vile, unclean, and cut-off.  The division was as dramatic and pregnant withthe danger of violence as are the divisions between people in our country today. 

            It cannot be so for we who are “in Christ.”  Paul would not tolerate two churches – a Gentile Church and a Jewish one.  He insists that in Christ Gentiles are “no longer strangers and aliens but citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:19).  Were Paul to step onto the scene today, he’d tell churches that divisions are antithetical to the Gospel.  Even if our worship styles are different, we are to be one.  Even if my grandparents persecuted your grandparents, I am to confess and repent, and you are to forgive.  We are to be one in Christ.  Even if our peers don’t seek unity and love, as followers of Christ you and are I commanded to seek unity and love in Christ. 

            In Ephesians 2, Gentiles by virtue of being Gentile are separated from God.  “Remember,” we read in verse 12, we who are Gentiles, “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”  However, in Christ, by the blood of Christ, we are now brought near.  Jesus, is our peace.

            This word peace is central.  I specifically wish individuals in law enforcement would have the inner drive to seek peace and the imaginative creavity to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.  I am sure in a confrontation a policeman feels disrespected.  And if they don’t respect him, he will lose the authority he needs to do his job.  I am sure that’s how he feels.  It is hard.  There is pressure.  I am sure he feels he must show his strength in order to be respected by. 

But, the effort to project strength is resulting in policemen and policewomen doing awful things like shooting unarmed teens and tasing Dads who wait to pick their kids up from school.  I wish more people wanted peace and worked for it.  In Ephesians 2, the word peace is mentioned in verse 14, 15, and twice in 17.

            Jesus is our peace.  “In his flesh, he made both groups into one and” broke down the dividing wall of hostility.  We cannot stop others from hating or giving in to fear.  But we can offer a new story.  We can help break down the wall of hostility through prayer and acts and words of love which include a willingness to listen as others tell the stories of when they were wounded by racism.  With humble patience we listen as much as the other needs us to listen.  What better act of love is there than to value another by affirming his worth as we listen to his story?

            We have to keep faith in Jesus at the center of this because He is our peace.  Without him driving our words, any steps toward peace come up short.  I know religion is a source of division in the world, but that is bad religion, religion built on the destruction of other.  In Christ, our posture is open, humble, inviting, God-focused, Spirit-powered, and aimed at love and unity. 

            This is why Ephesians 2 is so intent on destroying circumcision as a qualifying mark.  This is why Ephesians 2 insists in verse 15 that Jesus has abolished the law.  In the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus as the fulfillment of the law and it is true.  Everything the law intended to accomplish in creating people who worship God and live with each other in peace is accomplished in and through Christ.  So in that sense, Jesus in fact fulfills the law completely.  But when the circumcision and the law are markers that identify some people as insiders and others as outsiders, then law and circumcisions no longer serve God’s purposes.  In that sense, Jesus does away with the distinctions. 

Therefore we see in verses 15-16 that Jesus “creates in himself one new humanity in place of the two, making peace and [reconciling] both groups to God in one body through the cross.”  The next verses insist that Jesus proclaims peace and peace means that we all have access to God.

In Christian faith we see this in Baptism and Communion.  Baptism tells a story that ends with an invitation: I was a sinner, I died in sin, Jesus rose from death, and because I am in Him, I will rise from death; and you can too if you receive Jesus into your life and follow Him.  He came that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life as children of God.  Communion is a share meal and the only requirement for coming to the table is the willingness to acknowledge sin and our powerlessness to defeat sin.  We come to the communion table as everyone comes to it: dependent on God for everything.

Our one humanity is not homogenous and I would not want it to be.  In other letters, Paul brags about his own Jewish credentials.  He is a Jewish man, not an everyman.  In Ephesians 2, he does not want Jews to stop being Jews.  He is not in search of the generic disciple.  There is no such thing.  Our relationship with God is always particular, always personal.  There is no general Christianity.  Christianity is always the story of you, an individual, walking with Jesus, living as his disciple.  It is even inaccurate to say, “The story.”  I cannot tell “the story,” but I can tell my story.

The world becomes beautiful when we hear one another’s’ stories.  I will never say, “Well, black people and Hispanics and Asians and whites – we’re really not all that different.”  We are.  We are beautifully different, but united in Christ. 

I pastored in Arlington for 9 years and I got into a group of friendships with single people or young couples prior to having kids.   Once kids come along and grow into school age you don’t hang out with friends very often.  Everything in life is geared toward baseball practice and orthodontist appointments and PTA meetings.  By the time it is all done each day, you can’t go out to clubs or sports bars.  For one thing, you’re too tired.  For another, it would be irresponsible to leave the house with your children in bed asleep and go out for beers. 

But, years ago, I did have that life and I had my crowd.  We’d go out to eat at Dupont Circle or go to movies in Adams Morgan.  One of the guys in that crowd is married to a woman who is not Caucasian.  I say it that way deliberately because for years, I did not know her ethnicity.  And I was scared to ask.  She is very outspoken, politically far, far to the left of me, and I thought if I ask, “What are you,” fiery laser beams would come out of her eyes and pierce my skull.  So I didn’t ask.

We were part of the same circle, though.  We all even traveled to Honduras together in 2004 when one of our group married a Honduran woman.  So I was around her a lot.  I now don’t remember the conversation, but I remember her figuring out that I had no clue about her ethnicity.  She liked that I didn’t know and that she knew I was uncertain of how to ask.  After teasing me a bit, she finally told me she was Korean.  She had been adopted by a Caucasian family in Ohio.  They had 4 boys and her mother wanted a daughter badly.  So they adopted a Korean girl.

If you go deep enough with people and listen long enough, you get past the uncomfortable issues that plague our world, like the race conversation.  People will find you are safe and they can share their stories with you.  And they do because we all want to share our stories.  And when they do, then the race conversation is no longer uncomfortable.  It is beautiful.

Janessa and I were friends and so when Candy and I were getting ready to adopt, I could talk to her.  I could ask, “Now you are an adult.  What is it like, your relationship with the parents who adopted you?  What do I need to do to make sure my children will want a relationship with me when they are grown?”  And she helped me. 

Maybe it sounds like I am way off topic here.  I have been discussing unity in Christ especially among people of different races and I have wandered off on this tangent about my old crowd in DC.  But this is the point! Janessa and I remained as white man and Korean woman, but as we listened to one another and came to that safe place in friendship, we became something more.  We became brother and sister in Christ, people who listened to one another’s stories and helped each other. 

This is the other story, the alternative narrative.  Ferguson, Missouri is a reminder that there’s a lot of hate in the world.  The body of Christ has another story to tell – the story of the gospel bringing us together, making us one. 

AMEN

A Cop talks about Abuse of Power in Law Enforcement

My friend is a veteran of the Virginia National Guard for over 20 years.  And he has been a deputy in the sheriff’s department for nearly as long.  He is a military and law enforcement veteran. 

I wrote to him to ask for his thoughts on Ferguson, MO and the Michael Brown shooting.   The pretext for my email to him was an article by Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  That can be found here - http://time.com/3132635/ferguson-coming-race-war-class-warfare/?xid=newsletter-brief.

And here are my friend’s comments.

Rob
Kareem is right insofar as:  1. This is not a "race" issue.  2. Disinformation is everywhere and the media is controlled.  3. Government is corrupt.   I also agree that people need to guard against conflating the two issues:  1. Rioting and looting by rogue thugs.  2.  Protests and marches over Police abuse.   
 
Unfortunately, he then goes on to talk a bit too much about "race".   And I can't help but fear that when he says "do nothing politicians" and "promotes economic equality and opportunity"  what he really means is that we need "better politicians" who will give more goodies and handouts.  
 
In my opinion the central issue from Ferguson are this: 
 
1.  You and I have ZERO impact on public policy.  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/12/Study-You-Have-Near-Zero-Impact-on-U-S-Policy .   NO ONE, regardless of class, race, creed..... has the ability to effect social change in this country.  If you are not part of the Ultra ruling class in this country you are not free to effect real change.  Peaceful protests are highly discouraged. 
 
2.  People in Power (Government) are never liable for bad decisions, Deaths, or the unforseen economic turmoil they cause.  The Police Chief for Ferguson will never go to jail or be held accountable, nor will the Mayor.  Most officers who perpetrate unlawful killings never answer for it.  The officer in Ferguson might... he'll be the exception to the rule because of gravity of media exposure of the incident.
 
3. Police forces have been militarized by design to enforce the first 2 points.   The federal government has bred a generation of Police that have too much power and abuse their authority against anyone who bucks the system.   This is why over the last decade Police depts. have militarized vehicles, SWAT teams  based on Military infantry squads, militarized weaponry, and use military tactics.
 
4.  Couple all this with a news and information system designed to entertain and tell us we are to obey those in authority no matter what.  Few will pay attention and the ones that do will be lied to by the information system and won't have the capacity or desire to investigate it any further. 
 
I agree that poorer people and racial minorities get the brunt of this policy.  But the "poor" is not simply one bloc yet he keeps referring to them that way.  
 
Unfortunately, the Ferguson incident will probably end up being diverted into a complete racial issue instead of one that galvanizes the average American against the real issue.  Which is police accountability, abuse of power, criminal justice system in general and the corruption in our Federal government in particular.   That's too bad. 
 
It is my belief that it is because of our education system that has bred generation after generation that has little to no critical thinking skills and relies on Authority figures to tell them what to think.  You can't worship authority and at the same time correct corruption of authority. I believe some think the Bible teaches this tripe as well, which is why I have some issues with my Christianity these days.    
 
Instead, we are taught to fear our neighbors instead of love them.  We highlight our differences instead of our similarities with tripe such as "diversity",  champion consequences of birth and nature over our talents and what we have in common as human beings.  We then worship our Authority to fix all that is wrong and they fail us and we wonder why?  
 
Also, on a final note:   Isn't it ironic that Kareem is making a case that our information sources are corrupt in one of the most demonstrably corrupt and biased disinformation filled magazines of all "Time".   I wonder if he recognizes that?  
 

What will We Become? (1 John 3:1-3)

What We Will Be (1 John 3:1-3, 11-24)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, August 17, 2014

        How great is the human need for love?  How far do we reach?

·        Holocaust survivors separated from family members search for years until the reunion happens; they won’t let go of love. 

·        Children given up for adoption seek out their birth parents.  They want to know that even though they were given up, it was done for love.

·        Online matchmaking is a multimillion dollar industry that profits from lonely folks looking for love. 

“See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (3:1). 

It is as if we who know Christ are in on a secret – the greatest secret!  It is so great that when we share it, some who hear simply cannot believe it.  Either they cannot believe it is true, or they cannot believe it is great.  So they reject Christ, or more likely, they reject us, the messengers.  Deep down, every person who ignores the invitation of God or turns away from Jesus is a person who needs love.  Every human needs the love only God can provide, and God does provide.

“See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (3:1).  God’s heart is a heart of love for us. 

Immediately after the elder, the narrator in 1^st John, declares that we who are in Christ are children of God, he then says, “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”  What we will be has not yet been revealed.  He’s already said we are God’s children and throughout the essay he says we will live forever in God’s presence.  What will that be like?  It seems he is not completely clear on this nor is he all that worried about the things he does not know. 

Take that phrase, what we will be has not yet been revealed, and put it to the world today – to people specifically and humanity in general.  Now, imagine life with Christ, and imagine life apart from Christ.  What will we be?  What will “we” who are of HillSong become?  What will “we” Americans within our American society be?  What will “we” Americans be in relation to peoples and nations?  What will “we” humans become?

Remember, there is nothing we need more than love and specifically the love God gives in creating us and redeeming us through the cross of Jesus.  Apart from love the picture is dreadful.

A police officer in St. Louis shot dead unarmed, 18-year-old Michael Brown.  A young life with so much ahead, so much living to do, was cut tragically short.  An unarmed black teen was killed by a white police officer – AGAIN!  Now that police officer has to live with it.  Michael’s family has to live with it.  His friend, the witness, has to live with.  The continued riots suggest that America is not living with it well.  That this whole story is one we’ve seen before many times is testimony to the devastation of a world apart from God.  It keeps happening; apart from God’s love, evil reigns.

The comic genius Robin Williams took his own life and his daughter had to take down her social media accounts.  She not only grieved the loss of her dad in the most awful of deaths; she became a target of trolls whose depravity led them to try to add psychological torture to her pain. 

We read 1^st John 3:11 and then 3:23 & 24 - “This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another”.

        “And this is his commandment that we should believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as He commanded” (1 John 3:23).”

        “By his Spirit we know he abides with us” (v.24).

        We Christ followers see the world around us.  We who are in Chapel Hill, NC hear the cries of anguish all the way from Ferguson, MO; all the way from Northern Iraq where people seem destined to suffer.  We see the world and we hold up 1^st John as an alternative.  We do not have to succumb to the bad news all around.  We have another story to tell, a story of love.  At the center of the story we have been given is an invitation to the love and to the life of God. 

You and I are invited to live with God, to live in God, and to live with God in us – God as we know God in Jesus Christ.  These New Testament works, the Gospel of John and 1^st John, show us what God is like.  God is associated with love of one’s brother in the church.  In the context of the entire New Testament and especially Luke’s Gospel, this love of other Christians is extended to love of neighbor. 

Jesus is asked who is my neighbor? Jesus answers with a story; the neighbor is the person who needs us.  The neighbor is in need and we stop to help and then we are neighbors.  Love from God; love of fellow Christ-follower; love of all people; it turns out that love describes God and as Heather said quite accurately two weeks ago God defines what love is.  We look to God’s story to see how to live in love.

        This is where our hearts needs to stay this morning – in that place where we know that God invites us into life and into love.  God does that, he loves us. 

        Can we?  Can we become love – conduits of God’s love as it flows into the veins of a humanity that is crying out in pain?  What will we become?

Think on what keeps you awake at night.  Your child who is now away from home?  Maybe your father had a heart attack at 55.  Now you are North of 50 and not in great shape.  What fears cause you to choose left instead of right?  Is life so harried and hurried we fear we will never be able to stop and rest?  Is life so set and stuck we fear that this is it, nothing new and exciting will ever come again?  What are your real fears?  Surely what bothers your neighbors is nothing to you and what unsettles you seems silly to them.  But fear is one way sin becomes an enemy that would rob us of the life of love God has for us.

        I am pretty sure Michael Brown and Robin Williams never met.  Both mattered equally to God.  He loved each enough that he sent his Son for them.  To each man, sinful fear gave rise to hate and hate brought a tragic ending.  In Iraq and Syria, fear and hatred conspire to create chaos, to destroy the world. 

First John 3:15 is so plain – “all who hate a brother or sister are murderers and we know that murderers do not have life abiding in them.” 

What human being or group of humans or category of humans awakens the hate in us?  Here hate is as bad murder.

Note that 1^st John was written before the events of Michael’s Brown’s death and Robin William’s suicide.   First John was written before there was such a thing as Isis.  First John was written before there was such a thing as Islam.  When the elder put pen to paper under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration and wrote about the life to which we are invited, life in God’s love, he touched on themes that speak today.  He appealed an ancient story that sounds eerily familiar. 

“We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother” (3:12).  One human killing another?  Where have we heard that before?

First John says Cain did this because he deeds were evil.  What does that mean?  For more detail we turn to Genesis 4 where we see that God rejected Cain’s offering and accepted Abel’s.  Genesis does not elaborate on why Abel was accepted while Cain was not.  Genesis focuses attention upon Cain’s angry response.  God warns Cain about the bursting anger inside of him.  That anger takes over, and after he kills Abel, Cain is paralyzed by fear.  What fears paralyze us?  What fears have unmade us?  What fears lead to the demolition of human community?

God said, “Well, Cain, I am sorry, but you’re on your own now, you filthy murderer.”  No, God did not say that.  Genesis tells us the Lord put a mark of protection upon Cain (4:15).  Even after we give into it and do the hideous things fear leads us to do, God still loves us, protects us, and invites us to turn away from sin and back to Him, to His love.  

Who do you hate?  I remember a week or so ago reading of the way ISIS works and feeling hatred for them.  They had the Yazidis pinned down on the mountain, starving and dehydrated.  Rescue came in the form of U.S. warplanes and Kurdish evacuation helicopters.  Isis was content to thoroughly annihilate an entire people group, the Yazidis.  Yes, I was reading from the safety of a vacation house on a secluded lake, a safe distance, but still, deep inside, hate burned in me toward ISIS. 

How does God feel about ISIS? 

I think God hates them too – a radical, violent, singularly minded group bent on killing all who oppose them.  Yes, I believe God hates ISIS.

However, God doesn’t see only ISIS.

God also sees individual Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis, men who are poor, without hope of education, and very, very young, many younger than Michael Brown.  If they grew up in Chapel Hill, they’d be in the marching band at Chapel Hill High.  They’d attend the youth group at HillSong Church.  But they didn’t grow up here.

Where they grew up, all they have heard since they started walking and talking is “America put the Shia in power and now we are dirt poor.”  The parents they love as much as we love our parents have taught them that life is cheap, that America is Satan along with the Shia who run Iraq, and their best hope is to die as martyrs in a Jihad type of war. 

I am here in church telling you our hope is that we are invited into God’s love.  In Christ, we are children of God.  This is the message we give our kids.  Those kids who become soldiers in ISIS who I want to hate have been told their hope is to kill Americans and Shia and anyone else who does not practice Islam the way they do.  Is it any wonder we go on mission trips and they have fired killing shots by the time they learned to shave?

What will we become?

This is the message we have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

        And this is his commandment that we should believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as He commanded.

        By his Spirit we know he abides with us.

        Because of who God is we become people filled with God, that is, filled with the Holy Spirit.  This filling explodes into stories of love – us in the world, helping people, forgiving when we are hurt and wronged, and building communities in Chapel Hill, in Carrboro, in Dominican Republic and South Africa and Ethiopia.  We cannot stop ISIS or senseless shootings or suicides or other tragedies.  We don’t have the power.

        God does have the power and the intention of stopping it all in God’s timing which we have to trust is better than ours.  We don’t have in us the power to fix all the world’s problems.  But we do have the love to try as hard as we can to fix as much as we can.  We do have story – the story that says we are already children of God because of God’s love.  And we will be something more than we are now.  In resurrection live forever, celebrate unending joy, and discover the depths of love we cannot fathom until then.  What will be become?  That is to be seen.

        For now, we offer an alternate story.  We tell the world what God is like.  First John’s greatest contribution in this story is to show that God is love and everyone who will receive Jesus is invited into the love of God.  This truth is bigger than all the bad news that can be so depressing.  The bigger truth is we have lasting joy that explodes forth from God’s church and by the power of God’s Holy Spirit this joy fills the earth.

See what love the Father has given the world that we should be called children of God; and in Christ that is what we are”

AMEN

Something is Broken in Me

This was written by my friend, an author and blogger.

I kept waiting to hear from the predominantly white evangelical church in America. I kept waiting for someone from that community to chime in and say something—anything. Even something like, “I see what’s happening in Ferguson. I don’t understand it, but I want to. Can someone help me understand it?” One person contacted me to ask a question that sounded something like that.

But, for the most, part, days passed, and I was hearing nothing (http://www.deidrariggs.com/2014/08/14/why-weve-got-to-go-there/).

I respect her so much that when I hear her put out a call for words from “white evangelical church in America,” I feel like the professor has given an assignment.  As a pastor, I consider myself “evangelical.”  Even though the word is freighted with political baggage and is often misunderstood by many who have a secular worldview, I still embrace.  To me, evangelical means one who believes Jesus is the full revelation of the triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit; and salvation is in Him; and finally, the Bible is the true revelation of who He is and is instructive for a believer’s life.  By that definition, I am an evangelical.  I am also a white, middle class, suburban American male.  I don’t think any of those terms require definition or qualification.

Michael Brown, a black teenager, unarmed, was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, MO.  The officer who killed him will have to live with this the rest of his life.  He shot and killed an unarmed teen.  Whatever the young man did, was it necessary to shoot him?  Every night that he goes to bed, he sleeps with the knowledge that while doing his job, trying to maintain law and order, he pulled his gun and killed a young man/big kid.  I consider 18-year-olds young men and don’t accept calling them ‘kids’ as so many sports commentators like to do, but that’s for another column.  This policeman killed someone whose whole life was ahead of him. 

Why could he not resolve the confrontation with Michael Brown in another way?  Call for back up.  Use a Taser.  Use pepper spray.  Shoot the kid in the knee.  I am not a policeman.  I do not know the techniques.  I do not know what happened that day in his confrontation with Michael.  One of the reasons I have not commented is I do not know happened in this specific instance.  Maybe this was entirely a race-related event.  Maybe race had nothing to do with it.  Maybe it did.  Did Michael Brown provoke a policeman who has been disrespected one too many times by one too many young persons?  Was this about an overaggressive cop, or was it racism through and through?  It is just as possible that what happened was an example of racism that still lurks like a demonic agent of destruction bent on bringing our society down.  I just don’t know.  

I don’t know Michael Brown.  I don’t know the officer.  I wasn't there.  And I don’t know how trustworthy the news reports are.

I do know that it is tragic when a teen dies.  Truly, someone’s baby died.  Even if he did something wrong, it should not have come to this.  It is very sad that a young man died in this way.  Our culture’s violent reaction is an extension of the tragedy as well as an expression of wounds that continue to afflict America with pain.  The death of Michael Brown is awful for his family and at another level it is awful for America.

We have to acknowledge that something is broken.  Inside all of us, sin arises because we are apart from God.  We choose our way instead of God’s way.  Given Eve’s opportunity, every one of us eats the forbidden fruit willingly.  Something inside Michael Brown was broken.  

Something broken in the police officer led him to pull that trigger.  I know the voices who defend law enforcement officials would cry out that the policeman did nothing wrong.  He was using the necessary force to do his job.  I cannot deny or affirm that.  But I know that before he shot Michael Brown, something in him was broken – and now that which was broken has shattered even more. 

Deep in me, I know there is much that is broken.  Every time I demand my wife be someone other than who she is it is an example of my brokenness spilling out.  She is remarkably strong and loving to endure my self-centered, shallow tirades.  Every time I yell at my kids when a calmer response would accomplish more and be less destructive to their psyches, I know it is my brokenness on display.  Deep in every human, something is broken.

Jesus did not come to fix what is broken in us.  Jesus came to show what was always true – that which is broken in us leads to death.  This is why in baptism we go under the water.  Every time I baptize, as I sink the believer under I say, “Dead in sin.”  As I bring her up I say, “Raised to new life in Jesus.”  Jesus did not come to mend us.  Jesus’ arrival sheds light on already true fact: we are already dead.  But in Him, we are born again. 

The wounds of Trayvon Martin have not yet healed, and Michael Brown is upon us, awakening us to what is broken in all of us.  By the way, this means we (and here I mean “we whites,”) cannot, cannot, cannot talk about Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown as “they” (as in “those blacks”).  “We” and “they” does not work in this conversation.  This conversation will never gain any traction in drawing humanity together if “we” and “they” continue to be used.  We are heartsick about Michael Brown because he is one of us.  He is a human being.  He was made in the image of God.  Jesus died on the cross to cover his sins.  I feel my brother has died. 

As we have moved from Trayvon to Michael (and all the awful news that has popped up in between), Michael will barely fade from our lips when another incident will arise.  What can we (“we humans”) do?  Maybe we start with a question. 

The next time a tragedy happens, ask what is broken in each person involved.  What is broken in the victim?  What is broken in perpetrator?  What is broken in our system that allows such rush-to-judgment news reporting?  What is broken in social media that makes it such fertile ground for creative expressions of hatred and evil?  What is broken in me that I react the way I do, feel the way I do?

If, instead of anger, we recognize brokenness, we may feel compassion before we feel rage.  The compassion in us may have greater pull on how we express ourselves.  We may be more inclined to pray than we are to vomit our rage with confrontational posts and tweets.  And maybe, if we make asking what is broken in him an everyday practice, we might be more compassionate all the time.  We (“we humans”) might be intentional about seeking ways to be compassionate with each other all the time, and not just in times of turmoil like our current crisis. 

That is my thought.  I don’t know anyone in Ferguson, MO.  Beyond praying, I cannot do much there.  But in my life, in my town, in my interactions with people, I can be guided by the question what is broken in him or her.  As I process that question, I hope, no I pray, it will lead me to be compassionate.   In compassion, maybe I can do my part to present the world with an alternative story one in which people turn to Jesus and are born again to live forever with each other in God’s love.