Daily Lesson for August 19, 2014

Today's daily lesson comes from Judges chapter 18 verses 1 and 2:

"In those days there was no king in Israel. And in those days the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking for itself an inheritance to dwell in, for until then no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them."

As I have watched the events unfolding in the streets of Ferguson, MO, one word continues to come to mind as what is necessary for we as a country, fractured and deeply scarred, to begin to come together to find the wholeness and healing we need. That word is lamentation; it is the crying out in deep grief and sorrow over what is lost.

-- We must lament the death of Michael Brown the individual, as the young and tragic death of one always diminishes us as a whole

-- We must lament the death of Michael Brown as it is representative of an epidemic of young black male deaths caused by violence 

-- We must lament the broader social context in which the Michael Brown's death occurred - a context in which the actions of over zealous police, patrolmen, and citizens have resulted in unjustifiable loss of young, black male life

-- We must lament a culture of suspicion and mistrust which separates us into Us/Them categories and keeps us from hearing the facts before making judgment about any one particular incident

-- We must lament a culture of militarization which fuels, rather than restrains, anger and protest

-- We must lament a segment of the populace that thinks looting and violence are a justifiable response to injustice

-- We must lament many people's apparent impulse to believe that a person's past actions caught on video in photographs sum up the totality of that individual's character

-- We must lament a culture wherein one group demonizes and another group beatifies the same person, dependent upon their own racial, political, and socio-economic predilections

-- Above all, we must lament the pervasive racial tribalism of our society and the church's own stubborn segregation which prevents it from bearing witness to the new creation wrought in the unjustifiably killed Body of Christ

We must lament these things.

*I will bring more reflections on the race and theology and my thoughts on the way forward tomorrow