A Man Was Lynched Yesterday

From 1920 to 1938, a simple black flag with white font hung from the 7th story window of the Manhattan headquarters of the NAACP. It’s message, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday,” was a reminder to northern white communities that nothing so trivial as miles could remove from them the shared responsibility of the plight of African Americans. That flag indicted them for their indifference to the suffering of southern people of color who suffered extra-judicial killings at the hands of mobs. No laws were every passed due to a solid voting bloc of southern senators who killed all legislation, and the flag stopped flying when the NAACP was threatened with eviction from its headquarters.

To lay it out in the simplest of terms, lynching is a form of mob violence meant to punish people for alleged crimes and to intimidate groups of people. It happens as a public spectacle with victims on display meant as a message to others. During the last part of the 19th and early decades of the 20th century, postcards were made that bore the images of victims still hanging from trees, with crowds or active participants posed around them. I do not recommend googling the term. The images are too much.

But it hasn’t stopped.

It has only evolved.

Over the past week, and for the days coming, there have been many documentaries and retrospectives of life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. With the 50th anniversary of his death being yesterday, it makes sense. We still have some of the witnesses of that dark day and so we must put down their stories in the historical record before they are lost. Articles are going up from news organizations, and religious sources to commemorate MLK and reflect on his influence. I, personally, have been reading a lot his works and listening to his speeches and sermons recently as I try to find my own way to figure out what MLK means to me. But through it all, there is one thing we need to grapple with.

Dr. King was lynched.

While it was a hotel balcony and a rifle instead of a tree and rope, it was a lynching all the same. Like so many thousands before him, Martin Luther King was lynched by a white man because he was causing problems. Violence was chosen as a solution to the anxiety experienced by a group used to being on top, and feared that equality would mean subservience. In an instant, Dr. King joined a list composed mostly of the nameless. People of color killed for no other crime than amount of melanin in their skin. 

But we remember his name.

Have you ever been to the MLK monument at the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC? I love going there. The view is magnificent, with the enormous sculpture of King facing, arms crossed in defiance, directly at Thomas Jefferson’s memorial across the water. The walls which circle behind him are filled with his most inspiring quotes. All of them paint the image of a visionary who is seeking a better future, and gave his life to make it a reality. The instill in the reader an aspiration for peace and justice. 

It is the King we want to remember.

It is only part of the story.

If this was the man, then no wonder his murder seems so unimaginable.

There have been numerous pieces in places like Sojourners, as well as on the SCLC website, that remind us that our memorials to Martin Luther King only capture part of the image of the man who lived that life. These pieces all call us to look longer at the man we are trying to remember and attempt to find the full view.  We love to remember “The Dream,” but do you know the part of the speech that talks about a “Promissory Note?” We know that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” But do you carry the calls to address brutality from police? Shivers travel down our spines at the mention of the “The Mountaintop,” but what do we feel when we hear “the edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring?” Dr. King spoke as often about the sickness of America as he expressed hope for peace. In one of his most powerful speeches, he proclaimed that America had committed more war crimes than any other nation on Earth. 

He wasn’t just a visionary. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was dangerous.

That is what causes a lynching. 

I have watched many of the retrospectives and documentaries that have come out over the last few days, and I have encouraged friends and family to watch some of them as well. Many are fantastic, and I encourage you to find them as well. NBC News ran one a couple of weeks ago about the relationship between Dr. King and the media. In it, one of the journalists who covered him at the many marches and rallies said something incredibly poignant in remembrance of MLK. He lamented that Dr. King was only seen as a leader of African Americans, and not as a cultural leader for all of us. If it only it could have been.

I know that I will never hold Martin Luther King Jr. with the same reverence as a person of color. As a product of the dominant culture (i.e. middle-class, straight, cis-gendered, white, and male) I could never appreciate him in the same way. My feelings and affections will always be different, and that is OK. I can share my appreciation with communities of color, and we, together, can talk about him. I love to read his words and listen to his public words. I have tracked down sermons and speeches for myself, and rarely have I found one that did not move me. I find that just incredible knowing how difficult it can be to produce profound words on such a regular basis, but, nonetheless, I will never have the same appreciation as a person of color.

That is because Dr. King was speaking FOR them.

He was speaking TO me.

A man was lynched yesterday, 50 years ago. He was a dangerous man. He was so dangerous that some just could not take it anymore. One thought the only way to overcome his crippling anxiety about a world that might look different in the future was to kill the man who personified his anxiety. He took a rifle, and committed a public act of violence. He killed Dr. King on the balcony of a hotel for everyone to see. The visionary we love today was not another victim of the inevitable death that comes for all of us.

Dr. King was murdered

He was lynched.

 

Easter is a Call to Action

It is Easter, the longest season of celebration in the Christian calendar. If you grew up evangelical, like I did, you probably did not live in a world where we remember the Resurrection for more than a single Sunday. Yesterday, you probably dressed up in pastels, or at least saw others who did. However, next Sunday will be just another day at church. Most likely you will not go as attendance tends to drop significantly. As a minister, we joke about how the Sunday after Easter is “Associate Minister Sunday;” the senior minister gives up their pulpit to recuperate after a busy week and someone else will shoulder the burden or preaching. This is part of the informal flow of life in church that we are all used to. 

It takes a lot of energy to prepare all the services.

Our reserves are taxed after writing the “BIG” sermon.

While we may not lie to admit that church does not seem as attractive the week after a big holiday, we must admit that this is the truth. When all the flowers are gone, the choir is missing many of its best singers, and the experienced, charismatic preacher is not in the pulpit, people recognize that Sunday morning is not going to be the show it was last week. There will not be as much pageantry, nor will sanctuary look as colorful.

But it is still Easter.

Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed.

Over the past few weeks, I have written a lot about guns in American society. If you have been reading, I am sure that you noticed. What you may not have thought during all of that was there was very little difference between what I was writing and what you could read in the news. That is the struggle for many of my friends as we try to minister. Our thoughts are not all that different from those around us, and in fact we are not doing much more than participating in social punditry. 

What is the point, then?

I would like to tell you a story of a friend of mine. I will do my best to keep the details foggy to protect the anonymity of those involved while getting to my point. 

My friend was in seminary, and his tradition held a conference every year that gathered students together with experienced clergy to pass on some tips for preaching. As part of the planning, the students were gathered into groups with students from other seminaries and one experienced clergyperson. My friend found themselves lucky enough to be in a group led by one of the most well-known and revered preachers of their particular tradition. During the first group session, one of the students delivered their prepared sermon as part of the group learning plan. My friend told me this student’s sermon was amazing, filled with incredible scholarly historical and theological research about the roles of women in the life of the Church. My friend was quite jealous of this students sermon and their delivery as the group took in the presentation.

When the student was done, there was time for the group to ask questions and offer constructive critique. After the students had put together a smattering of questions and critique, the minister/leader spoke up. “I have a question. What’s the point?”

The entire room fell silent, with a silent gasp coming from the rest of the students. “I mean, you obviously did a lot of research and preparation for this sermon, but there wasn’t anything in there I couldn’t have read in US News and World Report or the New York Times. Where’s the Gospel?”

My friend described how the students in the room began to rise to the defense of their peer. They pointed out passages in Scripture that spoke to the sermon’s goal, and quoted from documents in their tradition that supported the positions of the preacher. This famed preacher who many in the room had seen as a hero waited on them to finish before saying, “Exactly. All of that should have been in the sermon. Remember that when we are supposed to speak, we are supposed to speak from heart of God.”

“Where’s the Gospel?”

It is still Easter. Easter is so much more than just a time of remembrance. Jesus asks more of us that to dress up and arrive at church on time to be seen as having shown up for the resurrection. In this moment, we are called to a greater allegiance than just showing up; a deeper realignment of our future than just appreciation. Jesus was not so easy to follow, nor so easy to ignore. Instead, the events of Easter, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, call us into new life. They call us to new action.

In a world that worships violence, Easter calls us to peace. On Good Friday, we see that in the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he looks at Peter. The disciple who has a big role to play in this weekend had just cut off the guard’s ear when his teacher tells him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

We are told in 1 John that we are to bring this peace through love. The Apostle says:

   “ We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”

                                                - 1 John 3: 14-17

Easter is usually full of pageantry. The music is the best we can offer, the sermons the deepest of the year, and the vestments have all been newly washed. But none of this is meant to be merely a spectacle to observe. Our Gospel is one that calls us forward to New Life, and to tell the world that it doesn’t have to be like this.

If only we believed.