The Day We Buried Kelton

It was a funeral unlike any I had ever attended, a service for a 21 year-old man named Kelton Trice, killed recently in an incident with an East Moline police officer.

Gathered in the church were more than 400 people, many in their teens and twenties, scores wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Kelton’s picture and varieties of accompanying artwork.

What I haven’t told you yet – what I wanted desperately to avoid telling you – is that Kelton was an African American, while the officer who killed him is Caucasian. For a moment I thought I could tell you about this funeral without reference to the mourners’ racial configuration, but I can’t, because it’s necessary to make my point. Nor can I avoid reporting the arrest warrant the police sought to serve on Trice the night he was killed, a warrant alleging his involvement in one or more armed robberies.

It’s such a complicated world.

In local papers, private conversations, and talk radio programs arose commentary about the shooting in which a bullet-proof vested police officer was injured. One comment that stuck with me came from a caller to an afternoon radio program. “He got what he deserved,” said the caller. “It’s too bad, but he got what he deserved.”

None among the throng of mourners would have agreed with the caller’s conclusion, of course. First, because no one would have cared to consider a circumstance in which their friend or family member deserved to die. But also because they were too busy crying, doubting, and wincing in emotional and spiritual pain, to analyze Kelton’s just desserts.

The pastor conducting the funeral invited other clergy to join him up front. From that vantage point I was moved by the room’s prevailing, pulsating agony-in-search-of-hope. The gathered – most younger than 30 – struggled openly with their loss. They knew what all of us know (but sometimes in our urge to protect social order and the rule of law won’t say): that whatever your reputation, however many or serious the warrants out for your arrest, you’re not supposed to die when you’re 21.

The mourners were, almost all, from a different race, and, in the main, from a different generation than I. We had little in common other than the meeting space we shared for the funeral’s duration.

• They knew and loved Kelton; I knew him only because he was dead.
• Together, they formed something of a community of the aggrieved, the force of their union not hostility or rebellion, but passion and love. I felt only for them.

We had little in common, but everything to gain from finding common ground. And that common ground is somehow rooted in our shared humanity.

• They had questions about their world and the punishing losses it sometimes enforces. I have asked those questions.
• For the couple of minutes I spoke at the funeral, I testified to the incident’s mystery and the power of hope resident in friends, family, and a God who won’t let us go. Many in the room – but sadly, not all – had experienced hope’s personal and spiritual renovation.
• And at the end of the pastor’s sermon, when he asked whether there were people in the room who wanted something better in their lives, whether for any reason they wanted to change the path they were on, and somewhere between forty and sixty people stood up, I understood their decision because many have been the times when I felt the need for course correction.
  

Shared humanity. Common cries for help and hope, for light to shine on paths that lead somewhere. These, we’re all in together.

I can’t identify or speak for the community that shaped – some would say corrupted – Kelton Trice. I don’t know what it’s like to be a police officer late at night facing gunfire in an unlit alley. But I do know what it’s like to cry when sad, to question when in doubt, and to hug when in need. So did every mourner. So does every police officer.

Shared humanity.

What I also know, what Jesus calls you and me to teach and tell, what some of those mourners and police people may not yet know, is how to connect to the one who tames angry seas and rides above storms, the one who lives in spite of the mystery, who raises us to new life, even when all we can do is cry, doubt, and hug.

Because there will more Keltons and their grieving friends, we who follow Jesus still have work to do.


Let’s pray:
Jesus came, taught, died, and now lives so that we could make it through funerals of friends and family, so that we could hold on to each other through life’s mysteries. Give us fresh evidence of the hope you offer, and boldness to find, encourage, and restore the aggrieved within our reach. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Of Third Cousins Thrice Removed

In this corner, Jeremiah Wright, retired pastor of the church home of Barack Obama, a principal contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Pastor Wright has said the U.S. government created then injected the AIDS virus into people of color, and that the attacks of 9/11 were as much a product of American imperialism as Islamic fundamentalism.

And in the other corner, John Hagee, pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, whose endorsement John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, sought and accepted earlier this year. Pastor Hagee has linked the Catholic Church to the “great whore” mentioned in the book of Revelation, and said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s retribution for a gay pride parade held in New Orleans.

These two pastors have been in the news recently, not so much because of what they said, but because of whom they know. Yes, there was a significant outcry when each one’s comments became public, but absent association with a major public figure, neither would have stirred widespread attention.

Pastor Wright’s confrontational theology would have wandered off with him into the ministerial sunset had not one of his former parishioners been running for president. Pastor Hagee, a more public figure because of his television ministry, would have pursued his fundamentalist agenda in the protection of our beloved separation of church and state had a presidential contender not sought his political assistance.

As a result, we’re not talking about the substance or nuance of Pastor Wright’s “God damn America!” nor are we exploring the biblical veracity of Pastor Hagee’s aggressive opposition to Catholicism. We’re instead talking about two presidential candidates and the alleged character flaws their associations with these pastors expose. The controversial pastors are little more than means to an end that these days is commonly labeled “gotcha politics.”

None of the mouthy political operatives who have spouted off in the last month or so really cared about Wright’s or Hagee’s beliefs. They only cared that using those beliefs provided another day’s campaign leverage, or another gem to bank away for use in a precision-targeted media blitz.

And also as a result, in this election year we’re not talking about the economy, or the war in Iraq, or the high cost of gasoline, or the breakdown of the American family, or the...whatever you can think of that actually matters. We’re rather running opposition background checks, seeing who in his or her past did something, said something, thought something, or once met with someone who did, said, or thought something we don’t like but can use to our side’s political advantage.

This is McCarthy-era guilt by association updated for the 21st century. We’re in a season in which we don’t care about candidates’ stands on issues or ideas for the future; we care about whom they knew, when they knew them, and what cheap, tawdry political advantage we can make from the mistakes and misstatements of those confidants. It’s 21st century McCarthyism because modern technology allows us to store, discover, and disseminate these political hand grenades in the flash of a mouse click.

Because his former pastor said something controversial, said things many find troubling, Barack Obama’s candidacy is questioned? Because John Hagee holds unpopular and unconventional beliefs, John McCain is to be doubted? Since when are Obama and McCain their pastors’ keepers?

What a sad surprise awaits any of the kids who have been part of the church I’ve served for 23 years, should they ever run for president. Some devious political hack will explore the record, discover a connection to me, wend his or her way to a few BillExpress pieces archived in some dank Website cavern, find out that I hugged a lot and encouraged others to do so, then will publish a three-part expose on the mysterious and cult-like community in which the candidate was raised, effectively sinking an otherwise worthy candidacy.

Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when society would judge children by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. In today’s slimy political climate, I have to hope King would dream of an election in which we judged candidates by the content of their competencies, not the purity of their associations.

There’s also a biblical problem with guilt by association – and on this you may be way ahead of me. With whom did Jesus spend most of his time? Prostitutes, tax collectors, and the socially outcast – none a great addition to his personal resume. And did people in Jesus’ day think less of him because of his associations?... I guess we haven’t changed much, have we?


Let’s pray:
God, politics is a rough and tumble business, but we want to believe it doesn’t have to be the way we have made it. May something change in us and in our society, to make us aware of the dangers of this current path, to call us to unearth the political implications of your command to love our neighbors. First step: Remind us who our neighbors are. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Out of the Night That Covered Me...

Though few have missed it, the Express is back, resuscitated by a personal spiritual resurrection, and a mesh of social, political, and faith events to which I feel an urge to respond.

Why the many months of silence? Principally because of a crisis of rhetorical confidence I experienced beginning last fall. For reasons I hope I understand, last year I entered a lonely and sizeable desert in which I no longer believed I had anything meaningful to say, that any entries made to this blog would have been contrived reflections I didn’t need to write, and no one needed to read. Yes, in the desert I continued to create sermons and newsletter articles, but they often felt forced – like products of Sunday worship necessity or monthly publishing deadlines – not fresh. For a period longer and more enslaving than I can remember experiencing, I couldn’t imagine anyone caring about anything I had to say.

Of even more concern, while in that desert I lost my desire, and perhaps even my ability, to reflect on life and the world through the filter of faith. I think I stopped caring about the spiritual implications of what happened in the world, nation, or community in which I live. Significant events, which before the desert would have roused me to commentary, passed, creating a stir whose reach extended only until the next issue, event, or distraction.

Combined, the aforementioned senses of irrelevance and disregard doomed the Express to months of silence.

But things have changed. In the last couple of weeks I have felt an occasional urge to write, to add my voice to some of the recently-erupted debates. And here on a Sunday night, much to my and probably your surprise, I am actually tapping keys and connecting thoughts. The Express is back...at least for now.

What’s changed is my attitude. I doubt last year’s desert wanderings arose from incompetence or lack of eloquence. They came as a consequence of a pessimism about the church and my ministry that had consumed my spirit. This destructive spirit started long before the Express derailed, meaning that most of the previous entries you read here were produced from remnants of energy already in the pipeline – think of water that’s in the garden hose when you turn off the faucet.

The water’s now flowing again because I have largely defeated the pessimism. Where for months – that collected into years – I felt increasingly hopeless about the future of the church I serve, and consequently about the prospects and consequence of my ministry, I now feel encouraged and excited. I look forward to preaching. I expect good things to come from worship. I know God is not finished with me or our congregation.

With this entry, waters from the new-flowing stream have at last reached the business end of the Express’s long-arid hose. Praise God.

So, look for more from me, more often. There is more to tell about my spiritual awakening. We have to talk about Jeremiah Wright (Barack Obama’s former pastor) and John Hagee (the pastor who has endorsed John McCain). We have talk about the spiritual implications of war (in Iraq, for example). We have to talk about guns and violence. We have to talk... or at least, I need to write. I hope you will want to read.

Get ready to ride the new Express, and consider responding via the Comments link below each entry, a feature I encourage you to use right now, if you wish to respond to what you have just read.


Let’s pray...
God of all wanderings and wanderers, it’s lonely and unlit out in the deserts of our lives. Find us, direct us, protect us, then welcome us back home. In the name of Jesus, Amen.