Why it Matters

Since we have hung the “Black Lives Matter” banner on the front doors of All Saints, and posted a picture of it on social media, there has been a huge and continuous response. Maybe it’s because my friends on Facebook are predominantly, predictably… algorithmically of like mind as me, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of the respondents are African American, thanking us for our support. To date some twenty eight thousand people have seen the picture. More than three hundred people have shared the post with their friends. There have, of course, been a few negative reactions. One person called me a Marxist and an anarchist. No one ever guaranteed that the Gospel is without controversy.

There have been some who argue that it is better to say, “all lives matter.”  Didn’t Jesus give his life for all? You’ve seen the explanations about why we say “Black Lives Matter:” “If your house is on fire, and you call your neighbor for help… you don’t want them to say, “all houses matter.” At the moment, your house is the one that matters. There are countless other analogies. This, I think, is a teachable moment for us. So let me say why I think we are called, as followers of Jesus, to embrace the “Black Lives Matter” movement, why it matters.

Salvation, at least in the time in which the Gospels were written, was not about going to heaven. The Gospels are almost mute on the subject of life after death. Salvation was about having well-being and dignity in the present day. God’s kingdom was not something to hope for after our earthly life. It was a present hope that God’s abundance would be shared among equals in this earthly life. Jesus challenged the intractable hierarchy of his society as oppressive and unsustainable. Jesus’ ministry was to bring the good news of God’s imminent kingdom of equals to those of his world who were left out, the outcasts, the sick and unclean, the abused, the socially and economically excluded. It would have been congruent with his teaching for Jesus to say, “Lepers’ lives matter…. Demon-possessed lives matter…. Children’s lives matter… Samaritan lives matter… Canaanite women’s lives matter”…. You get the point.

In 1964, at the Second Vatican Council, Pope John the twenty-third proclaimed that “God has a preferential option for the poor.” It was no small controversy. In other words, “Poor lives matter.” The proclamation recognized that Jesus’ ministry had as its priority the disenfranchised, the excluded of his world. To be sure, we believe that God is drawing the whole of humanity to Godself; that God’s love is boundless and all inclusive; but God’s focus, God’s priority, if you will, is to restore to well-being and dignity those left out. God is about the whole of creation, its wholeness; and if anyone languishes outside of the gracious dignity of the human community, then things are not right, things are incomplete. None of us is healthy and whole until all of us are healthy and whole.

Racism is our “original sin” in this country. It is, tragically, an American institution. We have to own it. For four hundred years, Black Americans have been shamed and abused and violently oppressed only because of the color of their skin.  At one time they had been deemed institutionally as “less than human.” Shame, and the memory of shame, is perhaps as wounding as physical violence. Martin Luther King Jr. got it right when he said that liberation for Blacks will also mean liberation for whites. None of us will be whole and well until our Black brothers and sisters are whole and well. I have no inkling of a doubt that if Jesus showed up among us today, he would embrace wholeheartedly the Black Lives Matter movement. I have no doubt he would be in the streets. He would get criticism. Some would call him names with scorn… But he’s been there before. He’s endured and triumphed over worse.