Holy Saturday: Today is the Day After

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

Today is the day after.

Yesterday was Good Friday.

Yesterday we saw the metal pierce through his body.

Yesterday we heard the mother’s cry and saw his friends scatter in fear.

Yesterday we heard his wailing cry as he breathed his last.

Yesterday our beloved was murdered by the state right in front of everyone even though they could find no crime against him.

Yesterday we heard him say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” we heard the centurion finally, too late to save him, say “truly, this was the Son of God.”

Yesterday we laid him in the tomb and as night fell, we walked away.

Yesterday was Good Friday.

Today is the day after.

We all know the day after. The day after is when, for everyone else, life has returned to normal.

For everyone else.

For everyone else, it’s back to work, back to school, back to the way things were before.

Only for us, there’s a hole. A gaping, yawning chasm where the one we loved used to be.

We are offended by the sunrise because how could the sun dare to shine in a world where we will never again hear his laugh.

We are enraged by people’s pleasantries.  How can they say “Have a nice day?” How can any day be nice again when we will never ever again see her smile?

Today is the day after.

Today is the day when everyone else tells us that’s what’s done is done, and we must just accept it.

Today is the day when everyone else tells us that we have cried enough, that we have grieved enough, that it is time for us to get on with our lives the way they were before.

Today is the day when everyone else tells us to sit down and be quiet and stop making such a fuss. That the healthy thing to do is let go … or at least distract ourselves until we can. After all, it’s over already.

Today is the day that people avoid us or stumble over words quickly and then excuse themselves from our presence because our pain makes them so uncomfortable, makes them feel so powerless.

Yesterday was Good Friday.

Today is the day after.

But we are not done.

We are not done because nobody can tell the grieving mother that she has shed enough tears. Exactly how many tears are enough when your child is full of holes lying cold on the ground?

We are not done because other people’s discomfort does not deprive us of the right to grieve. Because as Augustus Waters says in John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, “That’s the thing about pain – it demands to be felt.”

When we suffer deep loss, we are not destined to spend the rest of our life in grief and pain … but we do need to spend some time there. And it needs to be OK. It needs to be OK not to be able to get through a dinner without crying or to not be able to get up in the morning or to spend a weekend on the couch looking through old pictures.

When we suffer deep loss, we are not supposed to end our lives with it, but we are supposed to be changed by it. Deep loss is supposed to make us angry and hurt – and it demands to be felt and to be expressed … and nobody can tell us what the right and wrong ways are to grieve and to rage when our beloved has been taken from us so unjustly.

Yesterday was Good Friday. Everyone cries on Good Friday.

Today is the day after. And however we are today is how we are.

And it is OK.

And nobody can tell us differently.

Yesterday was Good Friday.

Today is the day after.

And today is also the day before.

Easter is coming. We know it is. We know that there will be an Easter and that sun will dawn and the tears will be wiped away.

But that is for another day.

The day after is always the day before, too. But we cannot rush through it. We cannot run around it. We cannot set this day of grief on anyone else’s timetable but our own.

Yesterday was Good Friday.

Today is the day after.

Today is the day to feel the pain that demands to be felt.

Passionately.

Deeply.

Unapologetically.

Good Friday: Singing an American Tune

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken

And many times confused

Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken

And certainly misused

Oh, but I’m all right, I’m all right

I’m just weary to my bones

Still, you don’t expect to be

Bright and bon vivant

So far away from home, so far away from home

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered

I don’t have a friend who feels at ease

I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered

Or driven to it’s knees

Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right

For we lived so well so long

Still, when I think of the road

We’re traveling on

I wonder what went wrong

I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong.

In the late 19th century, Rudyard Kipling composed a poem, Recessional, on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

The poem is a prayer of stark and raw honesty – calling out the jingoism and triumphal nature of British imperialism. Kipling named the deepest sins of his people, put them in the context of the original sin of placing ourselves in the place of God, and asked for God to have mercy on the nation.

He reaches a crescendo with this final verse:

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard –

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding calls not Thee to guard.

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Kipling could have been describing America today. We put our trust not in the saving power of the love of the cross but in the 21st century far more terrifying and lethal versions of reeking tube and iron shard. We have 24-hour cable news channels and most political campaigns devoted to frantic boast and foolish word. We are in deep need of humility. We are in deep need of Christ’s mercy on each of us, on the nation, on us all.

75 years later, another great poet, Paul Simon, looked out on his United States of America and saw deep brokenness that, like Kipling, moved his heart to cry out. And he wrote American Tune, a song that for me has always been the soundtrack of Good Friday.

Simon took an extraordinarily beautiful piece of music – Hans Leo Hassler’s “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded” (the same piece that Bach used for a chorale in his St. Matthew’s Passion) – and crafted a lament for our nation that moves me to tears every time I sing along.

Good Friday is the day to recite Recessional, and it is the day to sing American Tune. Good Friday is the day to fall on our faces and admit that we don’t have it all together. That as individuals and as a nation we have erred and strayed from Christ’s ways like lost sheep. That we need, deeply and desperately need, the love and mercy of Jesus.

Good Friday is the day for us to sing our lament.

To fall at the foot of the cross and admit that we are so very often mistaken and confused, forsaken and misused.

That we are weary to our bones and feel so far away from home. That all our souls have been battered, and none of us feel at ease. That there’s not a dream that’s not been shattered and driven to its knees.

That we look around us—at all the deep divisions, the poverty and the violence and the pain and the rage – that we look around this road we’re traveling on…

…and we can’t help but wonder what went wrong.

God, how I wonder what's gone wrong.

Jesus the Christ hangs on the cross today. Today is the death of dreams. The death of hope. Today is when we are all stripped naked and we can no longer hide behind frantic boast and foolish word. Today is when we are laid bare and the only song on our lips is lament and the blues.

Today is Good Friday. It is the day we look at ourselves – as individuals, as a church, as a city, as a nation, as a world – we look at ourselves and see the huge chasm between what we dreamed to be, what we hoped to be, and what we are.

Today is Good Friday. It is the day we hear the Statue of Liberty saying with dear welcome “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and we look around and see the oppression and rejection those among us who fit those categories are experiencing.

And I dreamed I was dying

And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly

And looking back down at me

Smiled reassuringly

And I dreamed I was flying

And high up above my eyes could clearly see

The Statue of Liberty

Sailing away to sea.

And I dreamed I was flying

As Rudyard Kipling was in his day, as Paul Simon was 20 years ago, as Jesus was 2,000 years ago, we too are in the age’s most uncertain hour. And today we take time to cry. To lament of dreams lost and of sins committed. To cry out “Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord.” To fall at the foot of the cross in weariness and collapse into Jesus outstretched arms.

And in those arms to get some rest.

Oh, we come on the ship they call the Mayflower

We come on the ship that sailed the moon

We come in the age’s most uncertain hour

And sing an American tune

Oh, and it’s all right

It’s all right, it’s all right

You can’t be forever blessed

Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day

And I’m trying to get some rest.

That’s all I’m trying to get some rest.

Maundy Thursday: The Uncomfortable Intimacy of Jesus

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

History tells us that tonight’s 6 pm Maundy Thursday service will be the lowest-attended major religious observance of the year at Christ Church Cathedral. The choir and vested ministers will probably outnumber those sitting in the congregation.

I always hope it will be different, but I’m never surprised when it isn’t. Because tonight’s liturgy invites us into deep intimacy not just with God in Christ but with each other in Christ.

Intimacy that makes us vulnerable.

Intimacy that can be really scary.

Intimacy that we at once crave and yet leaves us so fearful of rejection.

Tonight we hear the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and then telling us to do the same to each other.

Our feet are some of the most intimate and personal parts of our bodies. There’s a reason that “feet” are a euphemism for genitals in the Bible (Ruth didn’t really uncover Boaz’s “feet” on the threshing room floor). Because touching each other’s feet is an act of deep intimacy – whether it’s playing footsie under the table at a restaurant or giving someone a foot massage after a long day at work.

In one of my favorite movies, Bull Durham, the scene that was voted one of the 10 all-time most romantic bedroom scenes by Harlequin – right up there with the steam of Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in Body Heat, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest and even the sultry morning after of Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind was a shot of what can’t be more than 15 seconds when Kevin Costner is sitting on Susan Sarandon’s bed, gently holding her foot in his lap and with a loving, even slightly impish smile on his face, painting her toenails.

We don’t allow just anyone to touch our feet. And why would we? The science of reflexology tells us we experience pressure on different points on the foot in places all over our body. Our feet are literally a gateway to our entire body – inside and out.

And yet Jesus picks this act – washing each other’s feet – as our model for relationship.

“Do you know what I have done to you?” Jesus says to his disciples, his hands still dripping with water.

“Do you know what I have done to you?”

The relationship Jesus calls us into in the Church is not a relationship of quick smiles and firm handshakes or even friendly hugs. It is a relationship of footwashing. A relationship of intimate touch.

And that’s scary.

It’s scary because our experiences of intimate touch are not always good and safe … in fact they have often been quite bad.

It’s scary because we have deep body image issues – we have such trouble believing that these bodies, created in God’s image, are beautiful and good. In fact, we look at ourselves – at our feet – and we see just the opposite. And so the last thing we want to do is show them to somebody else. That’s just asking for rejection.

It’s scary because there is such deep power in the simple act of washing another’s feet and having our own feet get washed that it can be overwhelming … and we can be afraid of what would happen if we were touched that profoundly in a public setting like church.

And so we stay away. Our attendance figures tells us we would rather walk the way of the cross than touch each other’s feet.

I don’t say this in any way to shame us. For one, shame is profoundly unhelpful. But more than that, this is about naming, not shaming.

If tonight is once again a mostly empty nave, it will be a reminder that we – not just we as a Cathedral community but we as Americans and, frankly, we as white, Western society, have deep issues with intimacy. We glorify the rugged individualist. We see asking for help as weakness. We compulsively apologize for our tears.

Tonight is a reminder that the communion Christ calls us into is one of deep intimacy. It is a communion of one who loved the world so much he was willing to suffer deeply and die naked nailed to a cross rather than stop loving so profoundly.

Tonight is a reminder that what Christ really calls us into is the same kind of relationship with each other that he longs for with us. A relationship of knowing fully and being fully known. A relationship of safe, intimate touch – touch that we are willing to risk because we have spent the time building relationships of trust with each other.

Christ calls us to love one another as he loved us. And how he loved us is washing our feet. And the world will know we are Jesus’ disciples by our ability to do the same.

Wednesday in Holy Week: The Worst. Collect. Ever.

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.

Jesus wasn't whistling on the cross.

“Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time,” the collect for today tells us.

“Accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time.”

The collect for Wednesday in Holy Week is hideous and offensive.

While using Jesus’ passion as an example, it puts an expectation on us that even Jesus could not fulfill. Not that he even should have.

Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed.

What a crock.

There was nothing joyful about Jesus acceptance of his sufferings. He prayed for deliverance in the garden of Gethsemane. He cried from the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” And here at his last supper with his disciples, we hear again as we heard yesterday that Jesus was troubled in spirit.

Jesus didn’t joyfully accept sufferings. This isn’t Monty Python’s Brian whistling “always look on the bright side of life” while hanging on the cross. As confident as Jesus was of the glory that shall be revealed, there was no joy about his passion. And to put that image on him dishonors the depth of the agony of his passion. And to hold ourselves -- and to imagine that God holds us to that standard -- is unChristian at best and really just downright cruel.

What we do this week matters not because some man suffered, and certainly not because he suffered joyfully, but because God, the divine self, loved us so much God became human and felt the depth of human pain.

And the collect gets it wrong here, too. The deepest pain we hear today is not Jesus’ body being whipped and his face spat upon.

The deepest pain we hear today is the pain of betrayal.

I can’t imagine a deeper pain than betrayal. As agonizing as it was for those nails to pierce Jesus’ flesh on Friday, I believe the pain in today’s Gospel reading was even more devastating.

Jesus, gathered around people he had shared his life with for three years, people he had trusted with his deepest truths, whom he had loved and called friend. Jesus says to them “one of you – my beloved, my friends, the ones I have traveled with, hung out with, shared with, laughed with, cried with, got chased out of towns within an inch of our lives with – one of YOU will betray me.”

There is no pain like betrayal because betrayal calls into question our ability to trust anything or anybody. And without trust, we cannot receive love because without trust we cannot believe love.

I have stared death in the face and known I could walk that road because of who was walking with me. But when I have been betrayed, I stood alone, paralyzed, not only afraid to take a step but not even knowing how.

And it was not joyful.

Shana one of my spiritual guides from the Magdalene community in Nashville, was betrayed as a young child when her grandfather molested her. She was betrayed by her mother at age 12 when her mother let a drug dealer sell her for sex and give her drugs. She spent more than 20 years on the street, had 167 arrests and had her personal motto tattooed across her chest:

Trust No One.

There is nothing joyful about that suffering. There is no child who should gracefully accept those sufferings of the present time, and to even hint that she should is an outrage and a sin against the God in whose name we pray.

The truth of the passion is not that we should accept our sufferings joyfully. We should rail against them and we should rail against the sufferings of others.

The truth of the passion is that the power of those sufferings, the power of betrayal to destroy trust and with it our ability to receive love – as great as it is – pales in comparison to the power of love to heal.

The truth of the passion is not that we should silver lining sufferings – ours or anyone else’s, but that we can know that those sufferings, terrible as they are, do not need to define us. That there is love out there for us. That there are people and indeed a God who is worthy of our trust. And that we indeed are worthy of that love for no other reason that God created us in the divine image, called us good and adores us beyond understanding.

There is a glory that shall be revealed. It is the glory of Easter. Of love more powerful than death. Of the victorious transition from victim to survivor.

There is a glory that shall be revealed. It is the glory that allows Shana to tell a new chapter to her story. One that has her clean and sober, done with parole, having a job and a house and spending her life helping get other women off the streets.

There is a glory that shall be revealed and it is there beyond our sufferings for all of us. It is that new chapter that awaits for all of us.

Not because we joyfully accept those sufferings but because we refuse to believe they can end us.

Because we know that as we walk this road with Jesus, the empty tomb, not the cross, is our final destination.

Tuesday in Holy Week: Jesus lives in the hard, scary places

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

Yesterday evening in St. Louis, a little more than a mile from Christ Church Cathedral, a man and a woman in their 20s were killed by a hail of gunfire while driving down Park Avenue. The woman’s nine-year old daughter survived with a gunshot wound to her hand.

About three miles away, a young man sat in his home courageously fighting his craving for drugs; his family and friends praying he’d make it to the check-in time at the drug rehab center this afternoon.

About 50 miles away, a woman who has been incarcerated for 12 years lay her head down on her bed for the last time in prison. As you read this, she is free and in May will be one of the first residents of Magdalene St. Louis.

In the Gospel reading for today, Tuesday in Holy Week, Jesus says:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

One of my favorite quotes is from an unknown monk who said:

The difference between false faith and true faith is that false faith says, “do not worry; that which you fear will not happen to you” and true faith says, “do not fear, that which you fear may well happen to you; but it is nothing to be afraid of.”

When we follow Jesus, it doesn’t lead us to soft places. Jesus doesn’t live in the soft places. Jesus lives in hard, scary places. Jesus lives in the cars riddled with bullets and in the lonely apartments of people struggling with addiction. Jesus lives in the prison cells and under bridges.

Jesus lives with us when we are honest about the pain, the grief, the loss, the fear in our lives.

Following Jesus is nothing but risk. Following Jesus is an invitation to fall to the earth and die.

To love so much that we care more about others than we do ourselves – not in a self-destructive way but in a way that recognizes the greatest thing we can do with our lives is to follow Jesus in giving our lives away.

To dive into really scary stuff and know that what we fear may well happen to us but that it is truly nothing to fear because even then we can never lose the only thing that truly matters – the love of God in Jesus Christ, love that is stronger even than death.

And it is scary. It’s not a sin to be scared. Hell, Jesus was scared! And we know this because the next line of John’s Gospel is Jesus saying:

Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say-- `Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.

That’s Jesus saying, “Yeah, I’m scared … but what are you going to do?” and God replying, “Don’t worry … I’ve got your back. Don’t worry – that which you fear may well happen to you; but it is nothing to be afraid of.”

I regularly get asked why I keep writing and talking and preaching about things like Michael Brown and the chasms of race and class among us; about human trafficking and Magdalene; about children being killed by guns and about the powerful hold addiction in its many forms has on us. Why can’t we talk about something else? The world is so hard and stressful, why can’t church be a place to escape?

I feel that pain and frustration, I really do. But this week, as we walk together with Jesus, we know that our engagement with these things as people many of whom like me have the privilege of choice over whether or not we pay attention to them … that engagement is not optional.

To walk with Jesus is to set a course for the cross.

To walk with Jesus is to brave the bullets and the addictions the undersides of bridges and the insides of prison walls.

To walk with Jesus is to fall into the earth and die.

To walk with Jesus, to be the Body of Christ, is to let Jesus be the light in our darkness and to ourselves be the light in the darkness of the world.

And we can’t do that unless we go there ourselves.

And as we do, we find Jesus is there waiting.

Monday in Holy Week: Love and Give Abundantly With a Focus on Others

Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.

I remember a meeting Magdalene St. Louis Executive Director Tricia Roland-Hamilton and I had a year or so ago with a potential funder. She was skeptical of our model and pushed back strongly:

“Why does it need to be two years, could you do six months or a year?”

“Why can’t you do a more streamlined program for 30 or 40 women instead of this ‘Cadillac program for six or seven?”

Our answer was … because this is our model. This is what we believe. This is what it takes.

Because the women who will come into our circle will have had untold depths of pain and abuse … and we need to offer as much of an abundance of love.

Because this is about creating a sisterhood for life, and people who have learned to trust no one don’t get over that in six months.

Because one of Magdalene St. Louis’ core values is “Love and give abundantly with a focus on others.”

Today is Monday in Holy Week – our first step on our journey together to the cross and beyond. The Gospel reading for today is a story of this abundant love:

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus. (John 12:1-11)

Everything about this story sings “love and give abundantly with a focus on others”

*The oil that would have cost an entire year’s salary.

*The intimacy of Mary massaging the oil into Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair.

*The fragrance of the perfume filling the entire house

The reason Christ Church Cathedral decided to take on the role of catalyst in starting Magdalene St. Louis is we believe the church’s job is Eucharistic – to gather all the people around the presence of Christ and invite all to lay their lives on the table with it, trusting that if we do, God will bless it and create new life which we will take out into the world.

In my life, I’ve never known anything to look more like Jesus than Magdalene/Thistle Farms. It’s the Benedictine model of welcoming the stranger as Christ married with the conviction that love in community is the most powerful force for healing and social change in the universe. That’s Jesus.

We are starting Magdalene here not because we want to “do something good” but because Magdalene is who we are called to be. Magdalene is the salvation of the church. The circle of Magdalene shows us who Jesus dreams and longs for us to be.

Magdalene is the church as Mary … pouring out love in abundance despite the scorn of those around.

Magdalene is the church as Jesus – saying the deepest pain and abuse of the world is to be borne by us all, because Love Heals.

What if the measure of success we used as Christ Church Cathedral was not whether our budget is balanced or what our average Sunday attendance is or how many meals we serve on Saturday morning. Don’t get me wrong … all those are good and laudable things.

But what if our measure of success … what if the questions we asked at every Chapter meeting and every Sunday and every time we gather were:

“Are we loving and giving abundantly with a focus on others?”

“Does the stranger feel welcomed as Jesus?”

“Is the world appropriately scandalized by our way of life?”

“Is St. Louis being filled by the fragrance of our love?"

What is Truth? "Hands up! Don't Shoot!"

“So God created humankind in God’s image,

in the image of God he created them;
male and female God created them…
God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

– Genesis 1:26,31

“Hands up. Don’t shoot.”

-Ferguson protesters

This week, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart wrote a thoughtful, well-researched op-ed saying that forensic evidence shows Michael Brown did not have his hands up when he was shot by Darren Wilson, and thus the core mantra of the Ferguson protesters is a lie (“’Hands up, don’t shoot’ was built on a lie” )

His thesis is nothing new. In fact I’ve heard it over and over again in my conversations with my fellow white people about Michael Brown’s killing.

“Hands up! Don’t shoot!” is a lie.

It never happened.

You all are perpetuating a lie.

When it comes to cases like Michael Brown’s killing, we white people love to talk about “the facts of the case.” I think that’s because our experience as white people is largely that the justice system is fair. That the facts will win out, and that everyone should agree that a reasoned, unemotional discussion of the facts of the case will yield a just result.

I think it’s also because the raw anger and pain of the protest movement is scary – I know it is for me -- and a “reasoned discussion of the facts” is a way of moving the conflict back into our own comfort zone. And we feel on pretty firm ground doing it.

After all, our justice system is not founded on mob rule but on reasoned argument and careful consideration of evidence.

After all, justice is supposed not only to be blind but dispassionate.

The trouble is, many people of color in this country have a different experience. For many people of color, the “justice system” in this country is not fair and “facts” are often manipulated by those with money, power and privilege for their benefit and against them.

For many people of color in this country, justice is not blind – it is meted out against them with more frequency and severity than their white counterparts. And the statistical facts of that case bear that truth out. And they are tired of being dispassionate about it.

And this is where I disagree with Mr. Capehart.

“Hands up, don’t shoot” is not a lie.

I don’t disagree with the findings of the Department of Justice Report on Michael Brown’s killing. If I am to accept the other DOJ report on the Ferguson police, courts and city, then I cannot choose to accept one report and disregard another.

I will grant that forensic evidence and witness testimony shows that Michael Brown did not have his hands up when he was shot six times by Darren Wilson. But that doesn’t mean “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a lie.

It’s not.

When we read in Genesis that God created humanity in God’s image, that God looked at everything and said it was very good. When we read the second creation story in Genesis and hear of Adam and Eve and the serpent and the fruit, we don’t believe these stories are factually true.

Our intellect has given us the capacity to look into the beginnings of time, and we see a Big Bang instead of a tree-filled garden. We know the earth is more than several thousand years old, and we don’t believe God was pathologically insecure enough to hide dinosaur bones to test our faith.

But that doesn’t mean Genesis is a lie. The creation stories of Genesis were written by a people who were expressing the deepest lived experiences of their life and relationship with God - that we were created in the divine image, are sacred, beloved and good.

The creation stories of Genesis are not historical fact, but they are true. They are true – they bear and express deep truth -- because they are true to our human experience.

In the same way, “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” is true. Not in terms of historical fact but in terms of the lived experience of a community … specifically the community of people of color growing up in oppression and poverty in North St. Louis City and County.

As I have tried to listen deeply since August 9 (and realizing I wasn’t listening nearly deeply enough before then), I have heard stories from that community of powerlessness and abuse, of huge gaps in educational, economic and social opportunity. I have heard stories of clear messages being sent that their black lives don’t matter … or at least matter much less than my white life.

I have heard story after story that feel like people with their hands on their head, threatening no one, and yet being gunned down anyway.

We have to ask ourselves why “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” caught on so quickly? Why was it so easy to believe? Why were hundreds of people on the street chanting it as soon as the admittedly factually incorrect narrative was floated?

Because for the people of color who lived in this community, the idea that one of their own was shot to death with his hands on his head surrendering was completely believable because it resonated deeply with their lived experience.

Should Darren Wilson have been prosecuted based on the “lived experience of the community?” Absolutely not. And although I still have serious questions about his use of force, the training he received and the clear racial bias in describing Michael Brown as looking like “a demon,” Darren Wilson should be accorded what many people of color have not been – being judged solely by his actions and not by any external prejudice against him.

But do not say that “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” is a lie. Because it is not.

Don’t say it’s a lie when “black people are more likely than others to be arrested in almost every city for almost every type of crime.” (USA Today, Nov. 18, 2014)

Don’t say it’s a lie when the unemployment rate for Black and Hispanic Americans in major U.S. Metropolitan areas is 3-4 times higher than for whites.

Don’t say it’s a lie when Department of Justice report on Ferguson gives example after example of black people just living their lives being treated as ATMs at best and criminals at worst.

In his op-ed, Capehart, who is black, writes:

“We must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative on behalf of someone who would otherwise offend our sense of right and wrong. And when we discover that we have, we must acknowledge it, admit our error and keep on marching. That’s what I’ve done here.”

I agree, we must never allow ourselves to march under the banner of a false narrative – and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” is not a false narrative. It may not factually be about Darren Wilson and Michael Brown, but it is about the lived experience of young black men and women who feel a target is on their back every time they step out of the house.

And it is true.

Two weeks from tonight, we will gather in the Cathedral Nave for Blues at the Crossroads of Good Friday and we will hear the conversation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, a conversation that ends with Pilate asking Jesus the critical question:

What is truth?

Jesus didn’t answer Pilate’s question because he already had. After dinner with his disciples and washing their feet, he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Truth is not confined to provable facts. We know this. Shakespeare tells us that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Jesus shows us that truth is a person, a relationship, a way of being.

Jesus shows us that truth is God who does not desire to be separate from us but as the living Word, becomes flesh and dwells among us.

Jesus shows us that truth is a God who takes the form of a servant, washes our feet and then says “if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

Jesus shows us that truth is a God in dark-skinned human form who is convicted and sentenced to death by a rigged “justice system” despite there being no “facts of the case” against him.

Jesus shows us that truth is God dying on a cross as his mother wails in agony below and says “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” Dying with a sign hanging over his head reading “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”

A sign that was not factually correct. A sign that was nonetheless true.