“The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.”
James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

The icon “Mama” was painted after the death of George Floyd. Many people asked whether the man in the icon was “George Floyd or Jesus?” The answer to that question is “yes”. The Christ figure in the icon doesn’t have nail holes in his hands because he was lynched. We bear witness to Christ present in all of the crucified people of history. Looking into the eyes of mothers who are continually losing sons and daughters who are unjustly murdered by the state and angry mobs. Our hope for this image is that it will continue to guide our thought, and prayer, but most importantly, our action.

“Mama” is currently installed at Holy Communion Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Mo.

From: When the Crucified Rise: A Black Lives Matter Easter Sermon, by Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D.

"Why am I talking about Black Lives Matter on Easter Sunday? Because Jesus died with those who were deemed criminals, who got what some folk say they had coming to them. Jesus died, not just with them, but as them, as a victim of state violence, miscarried justice and public execution. And Jesus died for them, for those who are not thought to be worthy of him. And, because Jesus’s life was a black life that was deemed not matter. And, because the intentional misrepresentation of the Afro-Asiatic Israelites and Palestinian Jews as white is anti-black violence in our sacred spaces. My former student Lura Groen warns: “If we don’t crucify the idol of the white male Jesus, he will continue to crucify the rest of us.”

The angel sent the women to proclaim the gospel in a world in which crucifixions continued and violence between persons and between nations has never abated. We are called to proclaim the gospel in that world, in this world where transwomen of color are murdered in the state of Texas at a rate that eclipses all other states. We are called to proclaim the gospel in this world where we have closed our doors to refugees while we bomb them at home. We are called to proclaim the gospel in this world where our nation was built on stolen land by stolen bodies and builds walls rather than come to terms with the legacy of that past even as it plays our before us. We are called to proclaim the gospel in this world where immigrants are welcome as long as they are white and Christian. We are called to proclaim a gospel so radical, so threatening to the entrenched powers – in fact we may be the threatened entrenched power – we are called to proclaim a gospel that like the gospel Jesus proclaimed with his life may ultimately lead us to the place where he lay. And in that place is death.

But in that place is also life. Jesus lives in the places where he lay dying and dead. He lives with us and in us as we live out his gospel with those whom the world wants to crucify. Come and see. Go and tell. And listen for the rumbling, not the grumbling. Listen for the rumbling of the hierarchies and inequities, empires and tyrants falling never to rise again. Jesus has been raised as he said. The world will never be the same. When those whom the world crucify rise, the world cannot help but change. Amen."

"...In his book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, Esau McCaulley looks to the writings of the New Testament to construct a Christian theology of policing. He argues that, while Paul’s words to individuals in Romans 13:1-2 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities...") have received the bulk of exegetical attention, it is Paul's words concerning the soldier and the state in 13:3-4 that point the way to a Christian theology of policing. McCaulley highlights how the Romans passage asserts the sovereignty of God over the state, and the state over the soldier.

“Paul recognizes that the soldier’s attitude toward the people who reside in the city will in large part be determined by those who give the orders,” McCaulley writes. “The problem, if there is one, does not reside solely in those who bear the sword, but those who direct it. In other words, Paul does not focus on individual actions, but on power structures.”

Chauvin’s trial is not about one incident. Nor is it ultimately about a series of incidents of police violence over the course of a few months in a year of racial reckoning. It is about the ways racism has infected our governing structure and will continue permeate in our institutions, exacerbating our divides, if we do not recognize the urgency of this moment and deal with it in a transformative way.

We don’t have an individual issue; we have a systemic issue.

When Paul says that "rulers are not a terror to good conduct" (Romans 13:3), he is saying the innocent should not live in a constant state of terror and trauma due to the activities of the state."

O God, we thank you for the fact that you have inspired men and women in all nations and in all cultures. We call you different names: some call you Allah; some call you Elohim; some call you Jehovah; some call you Brahma; some call you the Unmoved Mover. But we know that these are all names for one and the same God. Grant that we will follow you and become so committed to your way and your kingdom that we will be able to establish in our lives and in this world a brother and sisterhood, that we will be able to establish here a kingdom of understanding, where men and women will live together as brothers and sisters and respect the dignity and worth of every human being. In the name and spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Martin Luther King, Jr.