Jesus Christ’s Black Lives Matter Moment

I am up nursing my newborn. He is perfect. He doesn’t know he has hands, much less the country he has been born into, imbued with a racism that is sometimes overt and sometimes so systemically sneaky it’s difficult to pinpoint. 

This racism won’t be a problem for him, at least implicitly. His hair is so blonde it is nearly white. But this is his new home. A country that is projected to incarcerate one of every four black men born in 2020, men who share his birth year.

Right now, these perfect babies are maybe also awake nursing, while their sleep-starved mothers seethe and cry in righteous indignation. They, like me, are reading the news. They are reading and reading and reading. And their hearts are breaking. 

All our mother hearts are breaking. 

Because Black Lives Matter. 

These black babies matter. They deserve so much more than the world they’ve been born into. They deserve all the opportunities and respect and liberties that this country has promised to them, and so often failed to deliver to their forebears. 

When I hear “Black Lives Matter” countered with “All Lives Matter,” it doesn’t sit right with me. It never has. 

James Baldwin said “Read, read, read, never stop reading. And when you can’t read, anymore, write.” 

It’s 3:30am, and I want to go to sleep because I’ll have to wake up with the baby again in an hour maybe, but I hear the call of James Baldwin. And I wonder, where is God in all of this? 

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Jesus is out with the people, and along come the Pharisees. One asks why Jesus is hanging out with the outliers, society’s undesirables, the “sinners.”

Jesus tells them the parable of the sheep. A Shepherd has 100 sheep, and one gets lost. So of course this Shepherd leaves the 99 and goes to rescue the vulnerable one. 

(By the way, Jesus says, it isn’t just the one sheep who needs saving, all 100 of you are sinners who need my forgiveness and grace.) 

But right now, at this specific time, in this specific instance, I am going to rescue the one who needs help, the one who is marginalized.

The endangered, the spat-upon. The kneeled-upon.

If you ask me, this is Jesus’ Black Lives Matter moment. One of them anyway. 

The atonement of Jesus Christ is all-encompassing for human family, but also so specific to the individual. He succors us according to our need. Black lives are in need right now. 

In our baptismal covenant we are asked to mourn with who? those who mourn. 

We are asked to comfort whom?  those who stand in need of comfort.

All lives matter, but Jesus focuses this, intentionally. 

We’re to help those who are most in need of it. 

Now it’s 4:15 and I’m going to bed angry. I’m also going to bed with the faith that Jesus can ultimately heal us, heal our hearts, our fears, our woundedness.

But we have work to do, too. We’re commanded to do it. We need to get to work.

Black Lives Matter.