ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
April 22, 2023
Like you, I am heartbroken and angry and dumbfounded, along with a handful of other emotions that have no words. I’m talking about the shooting of Ralph Yarl (and others recently), the 16-year-old from Kansas City. It is one more window through which we must pause and glimpse the fear-driven hatred still prevalent in our society. I know the area of the shooting well, as it was not far from the congregation I served in Kansas City, and my first apartment was just 7 or 8 minutes away. I say that because Clay County, Missouri (where Kansas City is located), though filled with some amazing human beings, was and is an area dealing with the ugly and demonic reality of racism. How does one person feel so threatened by another human that he perceives the need to open the locked door and shoot?
Since the shooting of this young man, I have had two salespeople come to my door, and they were both black. And what struck me was how far they backed up from the door. Later, after the first one left, I did a sort of estimation of how far it was, and it was around 22 feet. I tend to step back from a door after ringing the doorbell, but I estimate that I step back about 6 feet or so. I’m certain those two young men were taught or instinctively knew that some people were going to judge them based upon the color of their skin, a potential interaction that could be dangerous. How is it that we have become so fearful, so fragile, so insecure that a 16-year-old is left injured?
I was just listening to the musical Wicked, and a line from the well-known song “For Good” really struck me. They sing:
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good
It appears that Jesus wanted us to understand the power of getting to know “the other,” the one whose story we do not know or have misunderstood. Instead, we too often allow our fear-based assumptions to drive our decision-making. We also allow the anxiety of what we do not know to keep us from being changed for both the better and the good.
Forgive us, O God, for the way baseless fear still manifests itself in hate and violence. History should teach us, yet we too often dismiss it as something of no consequence. We, as humans, have been making the same mistakes ever since the first humans made their first mistakes. Help us to evolve, even just a little. Amen.
