Rachel Weeping for Her Children

Another young Black person shot down. How can this keep happening? I ask myself. Will we never understand how precious our children are? That every child we damage damages our own future?

I wonder if that is not part of the madness. I wonder if some people actually fear a future where everyone is equally accepted and equally valued. It seems incomprehensible that such a vision might unconsciously be motivating humanity’s violence against our children.  But I can’t help but wonder.

In the ancient biblical story, the Pharaoh of Egypt ordered that all the male children of the Israelite people should be murdered at the moment they were born; Pharaoh didn’t want anymore of “those kinds” of people in his kingdom. The Gospel of Matthew tells another story about King Herod sending soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male children of the Israelite villagers. Throughout the human story, this violence is repeated again and again. Within the American story, all too often it has been our children who have borne the brunt of our national sins. When reflecting on some of these horrors, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and the New Testament theologian Matthew both borrowed the image of their ancestor Rachel: “wailing with loud lamentation, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because they are no more.” How can this keep happening? I ask myself.

Losing our children is much more than even the heart breaking, gut wrenching loss of any one of these unique and precious individuals; it is also the loss of a future. For most of us, our children give us hope for the future. But for others – I wonder – is their vision of the future so clouded with fear that they may see the Michael Browns as some sort of threat to their entrenched systems of power? Of course none of us knows the whole story of what happened the day Michael Brown was killed, but we do know this: he was shot while he was unarmed; he was shot at least six times; he was shot by a police officer. In the collective consciousness of the establishment, do the Michael Browns conjure fear because they represent “too many of those kind of people” in this American “kingdom”?

As a Christian minister, I see both fear and hope everywhere I turn and I recognize this is nothing new. Herod sent the soldiers to Bethlehem because he feared the child Jesus was a threat to his power. And he was right: his power was at risk. The “kingdom” God is bringing into being does threaten the power of all the kings and pharoahs among us. When the reign of peace, justice and respect gains more ground in the attitudes and actions of more and more people, then the status quo of oppression, intimidation and inequity must lose ground. The status quo IS changing. And I say “Thank God.”

I firmly believe that God is birthing into our midst a new multivalent rainbow community that will finally end the power of white, male, straight privilege. I believe God’s upside down power of grace and love will finally bring about a future of hope where every life matters, where each one is valued for who they are, where all our children are able to grow up to become the people God created them to be. This kind of vision for the future gives many of us great hope.

But for others this vision fosters great fear. When fear and prejudice is given a gun, it’s not just our children who are in danger; it’s all of us. But when this kind of fear is given both a gun and a badge then – yes - it is high time for prophetic challenge and peaceful protest. Each of us individually and all of us together must raise our voice and stand with our hands in the air – open, vulnerable and powerful in the upside down way of God’s life-changing power.

And so in the meantime, while we watch and wait for the vision to become reality, things continue to be painful, messy and chaotic. Maybe one reason why is because the oil and water of fear and hope continue to keep us fragmented - both within our society and within each of us. Maybe because we are all at the same time good and bad, light and dark, hopeful and fearful.

We are Rachel, weeping for our children. And let us remember that all these children are all our children.

We are Rachel in labor, yearning in travail for a future with hope. Maybe as we seek Rachel’s comfort even in the midst of this chaos, we can find ways to let go of the fear, lean into the vision, and help our nation hold onto the hope.