“A voice was heard in Ramah,
  wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
  she refused to be consoled,
  because they are no more.”

      Matthew quotes that passage from Jeremiah 31 right after the tale of the magi going back home another way to avoid Herod’s troops, whom he then dispatches to kill the infants in Bethlehem.

      It was hard not to think of it Monday evening after the announcement that officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for the death of Matthew Brown in Ferguson MO.

      At the end of October, the Synod of the Northeast (Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) had a presentation by Dr. Margaret Aymer, Associate Professor for New Testament at the Interdenominational Theological Center and a Teaching Elder in the PCUSA on the systemic issues leading to the protests for justice in Ferguson.  Aymer outlined several structural factors: redlining which directs people of color into neighborhoods starved of resources; the “broken window” theory underlying aggressive policing in those neighborhoods; a modern-day “debtors’ prison” system in which fines levied disproportionately on the poor (often African-American) who cannot pay small original fines (largely for nonviolent or vehicle infractions) have additional fines and fees laid on them until they are jailed for non-payment; the militarization of police departments through the Department of Defense Excess Property Program; and the history of lynching never far from people of African-American background which is manifest in “the Talk” parents tell their children how to be submissive when approached by law enforcement so they are not injured, arrested, or killed.  All of those factors collided on that morning in Ferguson in the fatal shooting of an unarmed youth and the community reaction and the police reaction.  Those factors also appeared to me at play in Monday’s non-indictment and cascading reactions to it.

      I sat with an elder from Newark who told me of a recent time when that person was stopped at an intersection, looked across to see a police car, and carefully pulled out.  The police officer u-turned, turned on the lights and stopped the elder.  When the elder asked what was going on, the police officer said, “you were staring at me.”  The elder said, “I didn’t mean to.”  “Well, get out of town.”  Mind you, she is a retired school teacher and educational consultant, with greying hair, hardly noteworthy except that she is African-American.  When a deputy turns lights on behind me, I expect that it is yet another burned-out headlight.  Not that I might be confronted, berated, possibly pulled from the car, or arrested.  I cannot imagine how, if a grandmother feels such racism going about her daily activities, how a young black male must feel every minute being outside of his home in some communities.  Recent confrontations in Ithaca point out that even here people are not immune.

      There will be some serious conversations in the next weeks, and I pray they will get beyond conversation and into healing and justice and enhancing well-being for everyone in all communities.  But our history of actually dealing with racism and majority privilege is bad.

      Lots of people will be taking sides, of course, and many will suggest that their perspective is God’s, but the harsh reality of Matthew’s account of the “slaughter of the innocents” by the powers-that-be is that God was not actually coopted by the Herodian security apparatus but was with the mothers crying over the bodies of their babies.  Christ is not likely to be wearing armor or protecting the status quo, but in midst of the community suffering.  White, privileged, well-off people like me might want to think really deeply about that as we begin the Advent season preparing for the birth again of the Prince of Peace.

                                                                                                     In Christ,                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                      David


Texts For Sunday Worship: 
      From the Hebrew Bible       Isaiah 64:1-9
      From the Epistles               1 Corinthians 1:3-9
      From the Gospels               Mark 12:24-37