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

0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home