Epiphany Week Four
LIBERATION LECTIONARY
The Gospel’s Bright Night
“Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.” Elizabeth Alexander
Justice for Tyre Nichols
Scripture Reading: Luke Chapter 8
In Memphis, Tennessee on January 7th, Tyre Nicols was pulled over by police under suspicion of reckless driving. During the confrontation, five Memphis police officers held him down and repeatedly struck him with their fists, boots and batons as he screamed for his mother.
By January 8th, a special investigation had been requested by the District Attorney General of Tennessee. On January 10th, Tyre died from all of the injuries the officers caused. Tyre is a Black man, an artist and skateboarder. He was a tall, underweight Crohn’s disease warrior. Tyre is the son of RowVaughn Wells, and he should be alive.
We repeat the phrase “they tried to bury us, they didn’t know that we were seeds.” But it is hard to believe that anything can grow from tender seeds in such treacherous ground. When we are reading about and/or viewing the footage of another Black person taken from us by heinous violence, it is a time to mourn. Tyre was killed by Black police officers. For us this proves further that policing is entirely corrupt. More than the mangled mess of contemporary police practices which already target and execute Black people with impunity, policing itself is a historical tool of oppression and white supremacy.
Congresswoman Cori Bush refers to policing as a “system rooted in enslavement and government control. And let’s be clear: merely diversifying police forces will never address the violent, racist architecture that underpins our entire criminal legal system. The mere presence of Black officers does not stop policing from being a tool of white supremacy.”
The ethnicity Tyre shared with his murderers should have been enough to bring some solidarity into the situation. But Blackness is reduced to a bargaining chip in spaces where our own people become tools of torture in the hands of a system of punishment. Tyre’s brilliance buried like a seed is no comfort. No justice, no peace. No sympathy, no ease. The men who assaulted Fannie Lou Hamer were Black. So were three of the six cops that killed Freddie Gray.
“Cops is a race all its own”
wrote Walter Mosley, author of famed crime novels like Devil in a Blue Dress. There are too many of us becoming seeds being buried. We need justice quickly revealed in order to save the souls of the ones burying more seeds by the day.
Jesus gave us a story of seeds in this week’s reading. These are the seeds of wisdom and good news for people stuck in cycles of confusion or wrongdoing, and lacking a sense of purpose. He tells a parable about the ongoing goodness of these seeds being dependent on the ground where they are scattered. Are the seeds of God’s justice falling on good ground? Did the soil enriched by the seeds of our ancestors’ stories not make it to the ground that sprouted these killer cops? How? When the good news is planted, it needs a deep darkness to thrive. But white supremacy would have Black people shame everything about our Blackness, and negatively interpret all darkness, even the night that helps to make us bright. We need more time in the ground of good soil, more time to lean into more truth revealed. We need more epiphany energy which finds the dim and illuminates, finds the under-nurtured and re-wombs them, finds the good soil and grows it, finds the suffering and saves.
Epiphany is the season we celebrate after the Christmas holiday, which is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Epiphany means “manifestation” and this season is about Jesus being revealed as the Light of the world. In Luke chapter 8, Jesus makes clear that this light will be revealed, and does not back away from the ground that needs more nurturing. Just as he is the light, his presence plants the seeds of the gospel in many types of soil throughout this chapter. He delivers a man possessed by self-harming spirits. He even decides to have mercy on the demons possessing him. Jesus challenges his momma and other family members’ concerning their presumption and self-importance. He heals a woman without touching her. He raises a young girl from the dead. Townspeople fear him, family members are astonished by him. Healing, deliverance, abundance, accountability. These are the seeds being planted by the light of the world, and there is no such thing as too dark for the ground where they grew.
At the beginning of this week’s chapter, we are introduced to three women who were supporting the ministry of Jesus. Each of them has a story of the good news growing from the seeds of the gospel.
And this gave them a directors share in the ministries of Jesus! The ground where seeds are planted might seem too deep, like so much darkness that no light can be revealed or shine through. But look at the ground where Jesus is not afraid to go. In fact, he is drawn there. We too can be sowers like our Savior. We are planting seeds when we protest, when we comfort families and those who grieve loss. Let us be the good ground where God’s seeds are spread. Let us believe that our light cannot be hidden by the foolishness of any system. Let us learn the difference between a dim knowledge of God’s revealing, and the good, growing, womblike darkness that we are given by the Creator of the Black and beautiful ground.
Meditation & Prayer: excerpt from A Litany of Atlanta by W. E. B. Du Bois
O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days— Hear us, good Lord! Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God, crying: We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
Is this Thy justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence, and the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty? Justice, O judge of men!
Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the fathers Dead?
Have not seers seen in Heaven’s halls Thine
hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling
smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of
endless dead?
Awake, Thou that sleepest!
In yonder East trembles a star.
Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord! Thy will, O Lord, be done! Kyrie Eleison!Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord! We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!
Our voices sink in silence and in night. Hear us, good Lord! In night, O God of a godless land!
Amen! In silence, O Silent God.
Selah!
Music: “Always Shine” by Robert Glasper, Lupe Fiasco, & Bilal