Lynching

Here's how deep, persistent, and radical the love of Jesus is...

Recently, while driving not far from here, I saw something that turned my stomach. An effigy-type image of a person was suspended from a large tree outside a home, with a sheet-covered image propped up by the tree next to it. I suppose the residents could claim to passers-by that this simply was a leftover macabre display from Halloween. However, the "hanged" person is clearly African-American, and the sheet-covered image has a pointed head above its blank eyes. No one in the area in which I live could mistake it for anything other than a mock-lynching.

Google "lynching" and you'll stumble into a horrific, extra-legal chapter in American history. The grisly history of lynching is particular painful for African-Americans. I was horrified by what I saw, and then angered. I imagined finding the address and writing the resident(s). I thought about putting something in our local paper. I even considered sneaking onto the property under the cover of darkness to cut down the effigy. Quickly returning to sanity, I gave up the last idea. We do have freedom of expression, I guess. Then there's all that legal private property stuff. Finally, there is a large, mean-looking dog chained near that tree, and I'm really not a hero, in spite of my imaginings.

And here's what really cuts to the chase - whoever put that hateful, Un-American display out there is something much more than someone who happens to have upset me. He or she is a person completely and fully worth the life, death, resurrection, and promised return of God's own Son...no less than me. That's the Gospel; like it or not. There is no pecking order of who deserves the cleansing power of the blood that trickled down the cross. Period. My venom toward this unknown person is no different than his/her venom toward of particular group of God's children. It means that the only hope we both have is the cross.

In some ways it was easier before I became a Jesus-follower. Then you could just judge people, categorize them, dismiss them, and scorn them. Now you have to see Jesus in them; even the ones who make you mad.

Darn. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.