The task of the disciple of the gospel is to live faithfully. That means to abide by the call that Mark recounts at the end of its 8th chapter: “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’”
This is a useless call, a call without a manageable outcome, a call indeed to release outcomes. But, make no mistake, it is work, hard and painful work. And it is not photogenic. It is as ordinary as sitting quietly beside someone struggling to stay alive, struggling against the flesh that wishes to roll over and die, struggling to face another day of injustice, of unrighteousness. And it is as ordinary as marching noisily beside someone struggling against the flesh that would comply with the dictates of the powers of injustice.
There are joys and delights in such a life, certainly, moments of celebration and elation, but the gospel draws attention above all to the Jesus of Golgotha. Indeed, Easter Sunday is not the erasure of Good Friday, but its exaltation. On Easter Sunday crucifixion ceases to be no more than injustice, unrighteousness. That is, the wounds of crucifixion are hallowed in resurrection, not closed. God’s “No!” against crucifixion is not muffled by God’s “Yes!” on Easter Sunday.
The crucified people of this world—though deeply entangled in the resurrection of Jesus—awaits another, overt revolutionary coming of God in the Age to Come. That coming has not left us without signs of the times, however. There are visible to the hopeful imagination even now, on the hard earth of this present evil age, marks of resurrection. The gospels are full of such parables. Parables are ambiguous and at times shocking. And so, just as the parable of the “Unjust Steward” is unexpected, a disorienting and unsettling parable of the Reign of God, so also are the riots in the inner city of Minneapolis, not in spite of the broken glass and fires, but because of them.
Perhaps the words of others will help make all this clearer.
“Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Sympathy”:
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!