Trouble abounds. Protesters marched recently in major cities around our nation, this time for Breonna Taylor. Hopeful her death would be vindicated through a Grand Jury ruling against police officers who broke into her apartment and murdered her while sleeping, instead - people rose up in defiance of the ruling that brought no charges against the officers. Trouble exploded thereafter in retaliation as 2 police officers in the crowd were shot trying to restrain protesters in the streets of Kentucky. The travesty is that the retaliatory shooting of officers who were just doing their job restraining the crowd had absolutely nothing to do with the officers who shot Breonna Taylor. But this is the nature of trouble that is rooted in revenge.
Have we again returned to eye-for-an-eye retaliation of the ancient world? Seems so. This is not what Jesus had in mind. Jesus came to earth not only to forgive us of our sin by dying on a rugged cross at Calvary, but he came to break the back of retaliation. Retaliation only ups the ante so that whatever your neighbor does to you, prompts you to go one slight, or inch, or punch - more than was given to you. Violence, ending in the spilling of blood, and, worse – death, is typically the ultimate outcome.
Eye-for-eye vengeance is wrong! Retaliation for failure of a Grand Jury to bring an indictment against police officers involved in Breonna’s murder is not God’s way.
Civil Rights Icon, the late Representative John Lewis, knew of humankind’s proclivity to react out of revenge. Yet, he believed that we as Americans – red, yellow, black, brown, and white, would one day come together in unity to bring about the Beloved Community on earth. The Beloved Community is what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount espousing virtues like “turning the other cheek”….”loving your enemy”… .
To John Lewis (also to MLK, etc.): “………the goal of America was not simply a more perfect Union but a wholly new order as manifested in the gospel proposition of the Kingdom of God…….the Beloved Community, which was one in which Jesus ….has made love the mark of sovereignty….a kingdom controlled by the law of love” (His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, John Meacham, p.63).
John acknowledged that the Beloved Community was ‘in process’ such that its realization may not come in our lifetime. But he exhorted us who remain behind to usher in the Beloved Community here on earth by “getting into … Good Trouble…Necessary Trouble”! A trouble that turns retaliation and revenge upside down on its head. Good Trouble…..Necessary Trouble in John’s view means getting in trouble by voting, speaking up when you see something that is not right, and, then doing something about it to change it.
What is God calling you to say and do to bring about the Beloved Community here on earth? Listen to our podcast on Tuesdays - ConnXions Cast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1332952/5313241 Contact us, and give us your ideas: www.connectionscommunity.church.
