Brainwashed

I went to D.C. for a few days at the beginning of this week and found myself navigating entirely new oceans of people with my bright red “I” screaming out at them all. I had a lot of interesting faces and few engaging conversations on the Mall, but the reaction that struck me the most was from one of the friends I was visiting. When I’d gotten about a third of the way through my explanation, he gives me this withering look and interrupts with, “You are so brainwashed.”

Now granted, this guy isn’t known for his sensitivity or tact. And I wasn’t really hurt—or all that surprised—by the comment. But it was enough to make me realize that this is probably about what most everybody is really thinking whenever I try to explain what’s going on with my chest. Just because they’re polite enough not to come straight out and say it doesn’t mean it’s not exactly what they’re thinking. And I wish, really, that they would just lay it out there. If we could all be a bit more honest with this whole thing, maybe we could actually get down to the business of really facing our weakness, failing, pride, stubbornness—yes, even brainwashing. And maybe we could get down to the business of really letting Jesus wash all of that in His blood.

-Jesse

Why do we break the law?

Why do we persistently cross the line and break the law whenever our society chooses to kill yet again? Can we not legally protest through the “usual channels?” One reason is that we refuse to allow the Gospel to be domesticated by “democracy,” that high set of political ideals that would allows us our faith as long as it is subordinated to the orderly maintenance of society. But if the Gospel of the crucified and resurrected Jesus has begun a new society within the shell of the old, liberating for God a people to live under Christ, who is enthroned “far above every principality, ruling force, power and sovereignty,” (Eph. 1:21) we are freed from the bondage of death and sin in the old creation. Because Christ has been raised, the death penalty has ended among us. We fail to proclaim this Gospel as long as we allow it to be domesticated under the “usual channels” of protest. Therefore, we break the law because the state has blasphemed by seizing the power to take life. We must proclaim the true Lordship of Christ, and woe to us if we do not preach the Gospel!

-Eric

Letter to an unknown officer

Dear Officer,

The more I think about it, I wish we could have met under different circumstances. As it was, I only knew you as the one whose job it was to guard a prison where an execution was taking place. And you only knew me as a protestor, come to make your job more difficult. My sermon could hardly have sounded like good news to you.

But I could tell you'd heard the gospel preached before and that, under different circumstances, you might even be the sort of person who says "Amen!"--and means it. The tears in your eyes were enough to persuade me.

So I wanted to write and say that I really did mean all that about Jesus dying for you and for me and for Patrick Moody, despite all our sins. And I really did mean it when I called you my sister. And I hope you'll forgive me for all the ways I was less than a brother to you. And I pray to our Father in heaven for different circumstances.

Peace to you,

Jonathan

Complicit

As we struggle to find community in an individual-driven world, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it looks like to hold things in common. What if we held responsibility in common? Those who oppose the war: every time a bomb falls or a soldier dies…complicit. Those who are vegetarian: as long as there is a bloody and corrupt pork industry…complicit. Those who are pro-choice: when a child is born into a world with no arms awaiting it…complicit. Those who embrace diverse sexual orientations: while placards and signs still hurl insults…complicit. Those who ride their bikes and veggie-oil cars to work: for each hillside ravished and lake spoiled…complicit. Those who wear scarlet “I’s” and actively protest: whether a child is killed on the streets or a man is quietly injected with death…complicit. Those who call the name Jesus while the masses shout louder “Barabbas!”…complicit. Let us not wash our hands like Pilate and be done with it. We are, after all, family.

-Matt

Thomas Merton

An Adaptation of the Words of Thomas Merton in a letter to Pablo Antonia Cuadro, Concerning Giants 1963

I have learned that an age in which politicians talk about peace, justice, and security is an age in which everybody expects bloodshed, injustice, and war. The politicians of the earth would not talk of peace and security so much if they did not secretly believe it possible, with one more execution, one more war to annihilate their enemies forever. Always, “after just one more war,” it will dawn, the new era of love: but first, everybody who is hated must be eliminated. For hate, you see, is the mother of their kind of love.

Unfortunately, the love that is to be born out of hate will never be born. Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come out of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of humanity in fighting the fiction which it calls “the enemy.” For people are concrete and alive, but the “enemy” is a subjective abstraction. A society that kills real people in order to deliver itself from a phantasm of a paranoid delusion is already possessed by the demon of destructiveness because it has made itself incapable of love. It refuses, a priori, to love. It is dedicated not to concrete relations of human with human, but only to abstractions about politics, economics, psychology, and even, sometimes, religion.

-Dan

The Little Easters

This is the prayer of confession we prayed at my church this past Sunday. It helped me confess the sin that we are bearing, the sin we are too small to bear…

O God, it makes no sense to hide. You know the thoughts of our hearts. We confess how strange this current time is for us. We do not like having the dark corners of our lives exposed by your light. We do not like facing and naming the forces within us and around us that are hostile to your mercy. Some of these forces we fear, and others we defend because of the delight they promise to give us. Lead us to repent and acknowledge that change is needed. Our trust is in you. Amen.

Thank God for the Sabbath, the little Easters, the rest from bearing our sin…maybe repentance can come sometimes because you are just too tired to be hostile to God’s mercy any longer.

-Sarah

A Dead Body

Working as a nurse, I’ve occasionally had to prepare a dead body for transport to the morgue. One of the first times I did that, I closed the door to the dead person’s room, and went about my work slowly, quietly, and thoughtfully. My clearest sense was, “This person is no longer here. This cold meat on the bed is lacking something it used to have. There is something more to us humans than the body. There really is a soul.”

As I imagine a nurse putting an IV into someone’ arm to kill him or her in the service of the death penalty, I think, “This business of separating souls from bodies. We are dealing with a sacred union that is beyond us. Let’s leave that to God.”

-Tim

An Expectation

I’ve developed this sort of expectation of losing someone close to me to violence. It’s not exactly a fear, but it’s close to one. I feel myself bracing for it, as if it is inevitable. Sometimes I wonder who it might be—George? Alvin? Amber? Joseph? They are all young, these people that pop up in my mind as possible victims. And as I fear something that hasn’t even happened yet (and may never happen) I am jarred awake as I listen to mothers testify about losing their sons to murder, and as I learn that the State of NC has schedule once again to kill two men—Willie Brown on April 21, Jerry Connor on May 12. I don’t know these men, and I didn’t know the mothers’ sons. But I am awakened by their stories. Their pain, their grief—it’s real. It’s not a fear. It’s not an expectation. It is happening right now. Kids I know and love are being hurt by their mothers. Kids I know and love are being thrown around by the system. Kids I know and love aren’t able to read at age 12. Even the police officers who arrest us at Central Prison on the night of the executions—I see in them their pain, their struggle. And even though it is something I cannot see, my hope lies in this: we are all part of God’s story. We are all God’s people and he knows all our stories, all our grief, and even all the grief to come. My story, my life, is bound up in their lives because we are bound together in the life of Christ. And we, along with all of creation, groan together as we await his return. Come, Lord Jesus.

-Leah

Patricks' Day

I am still haunted by the way we killed a Patrick on the day dedicated to his saint. Numerous bad word games come to mind…that it’s overkill to double up on death and add another dead man to the date already dearly bearing his name. More powerfully, it strikes me as double duty and double jeopardy--and not just for Patricks. If we truly believe that Christ was tried, convicted, and executed for all our sins, what sin can we possibly commit before the Lord--or the courts--that needs to be tried again? What idolatry to decree that our own weak judicial systems are above the ultimate, perfect, holy justice of God Almighty! That despite His final merciful judgment on our every criminal act, we should try, convict, and execute all over again. Since Christ has taken the punishment of death, let us rejoice that we will not be doubly executed for our sins. And let us repent of those we kill again.

-Jesse

St. Patrick's Day "I"

This past Saturday morning brought the unwelcome news of the death of Christian Peacemaker Team's volunteer Rom Fox. For his work for peace in Iraq he was beaten, killed, and left for the vultures. Lord have mercy.

The next morning came news of over sixty bodies found all over Iraq, Sunni and Shiite, bound and executed, left in the open, public spaces, neighborhoods. Lord have mercy.

Early this morning while most of us were sleeping, the state of North Carolina killed Patrick Moody. Lord have mercy.

-Dan

We Confess

We were arrested on the night of Patrick Moody’s execution as we once again interposed our bodies between our society and its latest sacrificial scapegoat. Sitting in handcuffs at the jail, we joined the men and women whose lot we shared, on the same side of the law, on the same side of the iron and glass. “These are the people you ought to be praying for,” one police officer told us, gesturing to the angry and dejected man he’d just brought in. “They need preventive maintenance.” His words were meant as an accusation, perhaps implying that our witness of civil disobedience was wasted on the wrong people. But they also rang with a note of truth: they point to the perennial problem of empty protest that is endemic to American politics—we shout on the streets and go home to a warm bed in an isolated suburb. But of what worth is protest against the death penalty without daily hospitality to those most at risk of ending their lives on death row? The idolatry of human sacrifice begins long before we put a poisoned needle in a man’s arm—it begins when we abandon those to whom we are bound in community, when we fail to love God with our whole hearts, or to love our neighbors as ourselves. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against Thee…

-Eric

Creators' Cross

"Let us make humankind in our image" (Gen.1:26)

Whoever would come after me
Must take up hers and follow still
To a land that I will show you
Only after you set out, leave all
Not knowing much at all but trust
In One who has walked this way to
Death, descended into bondage
Three days, four hundred years--the same
As the man who walks to the sound of
His guard calling, "Dead man walking."
It is a way into darkness,
Foolishness to the enlightened,
Confusion often enough for those
Who have heard rumor of a dead man
Walking in His shroud, no longer
Bound by backward logic of a world
Turned upside down because despite
Common wisdom of low creatures,
One called Wisdom walking with the grain
Of this good world we created.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Matthew 7

We were standing outside the prison during the prayer vigil before the execution of Patrick Moody, when a voice came over the speakers: “Can I have everyone's attention please. I have some bad news. I have just been told that the governor has denied Patrick clemency.”

We use 'legalese' language to talk about the process and what takes place, but I think it numbs us to the language. Patrick's plea for clemency was denied? He begged for mercy, and received a “no?” I tried to think of times in my life I have been told “no.” Then I tried to think of times in my life I have been told “no” when it was mercy I was seeking.

Does God deny clemency? If one were to stand before God and beg for mercy, would God deny it? I think of Jesus' words: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will open.” Jesus goes on to elaborate on how much better God is than us, and how much more likely God is to give us good things. What mother would ignore her child's apology? What father would turn away from his child's “sorry”? Does God deny clemency?

-Matt

Prophesying to Walls

When a few of us from Durham went on a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation to the border of Arizona and Mexico last summer we went to a stretch of the" border where the U.S. has built a twelve foot wall out of old metal landing strips from the Vietnam War. We planned a liturgy to perform there at that unclean wall. We wanted to tear it down (as is prescribed in Leviticus 14), but weren’t prepared for the consequences. So we prophesied to that wall instead. We told it that God would return it to the earth one day.

And now, this week, the State of North Carolina—my state—has scheduled to murder Patrick Moody in the middle of the night tonight (at 2am on Friday). I think of the walls that make up the small viewing room where murder victim family member and death row inmate family member will sit side-by-side, arms and legs touching, nothing but a wall of hostility to separate them. And there they’ll sit, one watching their beloved being killed, the other, their enemy. And I think of the death chamber where Patrick Moody will spend his last hour on Friday morning, his back against the wall. And I want to tear these walls down—these unclean walls. But I cannot tear them down. Only God can destroy these walls. So, for now, every time I catch a glimpse of the on my shirt, and again tonight, we prophesy to these walls: “The Lord God will tear you down one day, and we will see it together.”

-Leah

Maybe the death penalty is wrong, but is it idolatry?

Some folks say that they are for the death penalty because it is just. But I don’t understand how Christians can make that argument. My pastor always told us to wish for God’s mercy rather than God’s justice (for if we receive justice, we all deserve death). If then, we as Christians are not supporting the death penalty for the sake of justice, why?

The way I read the Old Testament, the most common sin committed by God’s people was idolatry. It seems like we should be quick to wonder if we are idolaters.

Idolatry means trusting something other than God for our lives. It means looking to something other than God to make our lives secure and prosperous.

Maybe it is to feel safer and even righteous that tomorrow I and other residents of North Carolina will have Patrick put to death. On Thursday night there will be a last supper. On Friday he will be executed. That sacred liturgy is repeated each time.

I think the “I” I wear, names me and it, rightly.

-Tim

Tired of the "I"

Lately I’ve found myself getting very tired of the “I” by the end of the day. It takes more and more of an effort to put it on, and I’m eager to take it off earlier and earlier each night. There’s something about how red and glaring it is. The way it doesn’t match anything and just seems like an aberration from everything else on and around me. I guess it’s a little funny that I could develop such a loathing of something like a red, felt “I”…

Especially when I have cultivated no such loathing for state-sponsored murder…no burning drive to wipe the blood from our midst…no daily desire to pluck that sin from our presence…no thought to how such murders are an aberration from everything else in Christian living…

It’s funny the things we let ourselves dislike…

-Sarah

George

We threw George a birthday party this weekend. He has just turned 19 years old. And when I think back over the last year of his life, and think forward to the one ahead, I am woefully reminded of the numerous trips to court, of running down the street to find him being handcuffed and hauled off, of the impending months or years he will most likely have to serve in prison. And he has warned us that any time will inevitably lead to more time to lifetime.

And in our practical, earthly, reasonable system of justice, this all makes perfect sense. But in the broader, global, irrational systems of injustice, it makes no sense at all. Honestly, I cannot see in this tall, skinny man-child, face smeared with ice cream cake, legs and arms contorted in an intense game of Twister, any solution to the brokenness and evil of our world, either dead or alive. I cannot imagine that Patrick will offer a much better answer early Friday morning.

But I know that God Almighty become Emmanuel—tall, skinny man-child, legs and arms contorted in the ultimate sacrifice, the final execution—to secure the perfect solution, alive and dead…and alive again. And Jesus’ blood is my only hope for George’s 19^th year, and my only hope for myself and for the world—for justice…and for mercy.

-Jesse

Hester Prynne

A symbol of shame and disgrace,
A brand on my chest proclaiming to the world that I am
A deviant,
A transgressor,
A threat,
Unworthy of human sympathy.
My lot only contempt, spitting, laughter, or worse:
To be ignored.
A shadow, I scarcely exist,
Dead to the world, expendable,
My life forfeit.

Why then, does my mark of shame
Shame you?
Why does the brand in my flesh
Burn in your soul?
My shaming binds us my brother, my sister.
You are in me and I in you.
In my death, part of you dies.
I am your sin in the flesh,
I am the atonement for transgression,
The chastisement for our iniquity falls on me,
And in my fiery mirror you see yourself.

At what cost, then, is mercy?

-Eric

Seven Times

When Cain killed Abel, Genesis says, Abel’s blood cried out to God from the ground. And by faith, Hebrews says, Abel’s blood still cries out for justice. I think I heard it in the cries of Rev. Jean Darter’s family when they begged for the execution of Perrie Simpson while we were resisting the death penalty in sack cloth and ashes.

The God who is our justice said, “If anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then God put a mark on Cain. Genesis doesn’t say what that mark was, but I imagine on Cain’s forehead the cross of ashes that we are marked with in this Lenten season.

And the Scarlet “I” reminds me of the blood that Jesus shed for the forgiveness of our sin. “Let me guess,” someone says to me,”the ‘I’ is for Jesus in Latin.” I hope he’s right. And I pray the blood of Jesus will cover our idolatry and give life to a community that need not suffer vengeance seven times over.

-Jonathan

Do not fear?

"I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never meant any such thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a captive of myself and put me into a dungeon; and now I cannot find the key to let myself out? and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid to come out... For the last ten years I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." This man went on to write a story about a whole town of people who 'only dreamed about living.' Their dungeon was fear; that fear was projected onto the breast of one woman as a bright scarlet letter. At the end of the story the people of the town seek out Hester Prynne: "Why are we so wretched!" And she comforts them. Our fear is projected onto a scarlet mark on Jesus' side. "Do not fear? it is for freedom that I have set you free." Little ones, let us seek him and be comforted!

-Matt

Invisibility breaks us to pieces - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When I’m in the garden weeding there’s no one around to ask about this “I.” When I’m at work and the goats come up all curious, some will nibble at the “I” but none asks why it stays pinned to my shirt. Even though there’s nobody around when it catches a breeze or when I pin it on in the morning, it still reminds me of what I so regularly choose to ignore, that North Carolina has chosen to kill again. Our lawmakers would rather this remain invisible. They will carry out their actions, representing us, in the middle of the night. The “I” reminds me that I am part of this filthy, rotten, idolatrous system. I voted. I paid taxes. I am complicit in the murders of hundreds of men and women, and I fear more will die. Please God, forgive us. Have mercy on us all.

-Dan

Unconscious of Myself

I know that the “I” stands for idolatry, but as I walk around with it pinned to my shirt I worry that others see it as a sort of shameless self-proclamation. “I!” “Here I am!” “I! Look at ME!” If it were an “A” or a “B” it would be better, but the labeling of myself as “I” makes me very conscious of myself, of my own presence, my own agency.

I’m not normally very conscious of myself. And as I’ve processed what it means that I’m not normally very conscious of myself, I’ve begun to realize that being unconscious of myself is huge part of idolatry. The idolatry of self is not the flagrant, open worship of me. Instead, a much more subtle and rampant idolatry of self is the belief that “I” am the unstated norm. Instead of being one of many of God’s creations, “I” am the unseen vantage point from which all else is viewed. “I” am the one who never has to be labeled but who labels and assesses all those around the unseen me.

And the tearing down of that sort of self-idolatry means being conscious of myself as one of many. It means realizing that “I” am really just one of a “we.” And that “I” am incomplete without all the others of God’s creatures that make up that “we”…including Patrick, who “I” plan to execute next week.

The Idolatrous “I” is the “I” who renders herself Incomplete by murdering others that make up the “we” that gives the Individual her meaning.

-Sarah

Keepin' It Real

Garrison Keilor says, “I was taught about total depravity at my fundamentalist mother’s knee, and nothing has happened since then to make me think otherwise.” As a kid I too learned that we are all sinners, and that if God were to exact a perfect justice, that all of us would deserve the death penalty. So when I hear Christians say that the state is to wield the sword to accomplish God’s justice, I wonder if Christians--those of us who acknowledge our guilt in the face of God’s righteous justice—shouldn’t be the first to get in line.

But then I think about the symbol I wear around my neck--a cross, an ancient instrument of the death penalty. One of the reasons I wear it is to remind myself that the founder of Christianity underwent the death penalty so I wouldn’t have to. It is a symbol that God wills mercy over justice.

I think that is good news that I have to tell the world. It is tempting to spiritualize all this and think about it in terms of “spiritual life” and “spiritual death.” But I’m reminded that Jesus didn’t “die” in the spiritual realm somewhere. He died by the ancient equivalent of an electric chair. He seemed to want to make it as real as possible. I think about opposing the death penalty as a type of lived parable about God’s will for mercy over justice. I understand it as one way of keeping the gospel real.

-Tim

The First Saturday of Lent

“What’s the ‘I’ for?” asks my most curious kid at the After School Program where I spend my afternoons. “The ‘I’ stands for idolatry,” I begin. “You’re a dollar tree!” one of the other kids in the room shouts, as 15 kids rush against me. “I want a dollar—give me a dollar!” And as they push me to the wall, demanding their money, I see my most curious kid, eyes big, mouth pursed shut, waiting for me to get these distractions under control so he can find out why in the world I’m wearing a red felt “I” on my shirt. When I get a chance to tell him about idolatry and the death penalty and Jesus being executed, he responds, “But Jesus was resurrected. He’s alive.” and from the eager mouth of an 8 year old, my hope is renewed. As we wait today, on Saturday—the day after Friday, the day before Sunday—for an end to the death penalty, for an end to the worshipping of the false gods of security, for an end to idolizing the dollar, we are able to wait with hope and expectation for the resurrection of all God’s people, when all eyes will be on him, when all knees will bow to the one true God.
-Leah

Be Stained with Red

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31)

The first day I left school with my 'I' pinned to my chest, I was powerfully tempted to reach up and pluck it off right along with my ID badge. It didn't seem nearly as appropriate when I was leaving "teacher" mode and becoming "shopper," "neighbor," "girl-passed-on-street." And I wonder...

How I have made an idol of convenience and schedule and boxes and roles? Justice and peace and worship have their place. Yet isn't that place to fill every corner and crevice of my life? How easily I could unpin my reminder. But may I, instead, today, this season, be stained with red and reminded of death so that I may also remember the life-giving glory of God. May
whatever I do be tinted the scarlet of innocent blood, sunsets, and sunrises.

"To God be the glory, great things he has done. So loved He the world..."

Does the State bear the sword in vain?

"It is expedient that one man should die for the people, rather than that the whole nation should perish." (John 11:50)

The state bears the sword in vain when it becomes a mask for our fear, a stop-gap against the chaos monsters that rule our besieged imaginations. But are the "monsters" real? Do our acts of human sacrifice placate them? Do our nighttime rituals of execution make us secure, or are we collectively giving ourselves over to the powers of death?

The state bore the sword against Christ, our executed God. And yet we still live by the logic of death--we kill lest "the whole nation perish." Do we believe in resurrection? Might we sacrifice our own bodies, that the true God might be made visible?

-Eric Getty

Ash Wednesday

Remember, you are dust. From the dirt God made us, creatures.
God breathed life into dirt--pure gift. And we were made.

The Giver took on flesh, received. But his own received him not. We took it upon ourselves to take life, crucified him. Executed God. And buried him in dust.

But dust nor death penalty could hold the pierced hands, broken body of the One whose breath is life. Resurrection means an end to execution. Because we are dust, and to the dust return--unless holy breath speaks once again: new creation.

-Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove