believing the witnesses of injustice

For churches who follow the Revised Common Lectionary, on Easter Sunday, seven weeks after Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and while his murderers still walked free, sermons were preached on Matthew 28:1-10. This is one of the passages where we learn that the first witnesses to and preachers of the Resurrection are the women who went to Jesus’ tomb.

The next Sunday, eight weeks after Mr. Arbery’s murder and while his murderers still walked free, sermons were preached on John 20:19-31. Folks were reassured about their doubts as pastors pointed to how compassionately Jesus met Thomas who is known for his need to see in order to believe.

Just a few weeks into this Easter season, these familiar stories feel inescapable.

And they are helping me process something very troubling.

On February 23rd, Ahmaud Arbery was lynched in Brunswick, GA. The 25 year-old was jogging when two white men decided he didn’t belong - on their street, in their world. They armed themselves with shotguns and ran him down in their pick-up truck.

The criminal justice system in Georgia failed time after time in handling this case. Two months later when video of the murder was released, we all finally sat up and paid attention and demanded action.

I am glad that once we witnessed the injustice, we became preachers of it.

I am glad that seeing allowed us to believe and we spoke up.

It hurts to consider that Mr. Arbery’s murderers, who walked free for seventy days after his death, could have remained free another second more. I am very afraid that we’ll stop paying attention, and the same criminal justice system who looked at their actions and “argued that they had acted legally under Georgia’s citizen arrest and self-defense laws” will not manage to convict them of a murder we have all seen with our own eyes.

Seventy days of freedom after murder in cold blood. To understand the length of the delay of justice, let’s remember that Mr. Arbery’s death occurred a week before the first coronavirus death was reported in the U.S., two weeks before a national emergency was declared in the U.S., and almost six weeks before Georgia’s Governor Kemp issued a state-wide stay-at-home order. We’ve all made jokes about it being day 78,239 of quarantine, right? Consider that these men committed their murder before any of us were sheltering-in-place, and were only arrested a few days ago, on May 7th.

To say the wheels of justice turn slowly feels like a gross understatement, and also premature, seeing as how justice is still not guaranteed.

I have been struggling with the prevalence of the video on social media. At this time, I understand that the video was made by someone who participated with and supported the murderers, and possibly as a “trophy” of the crime. I don’t like, then, that their trophy received so much attention.

And I have to think about the two very different experiences of that video. That so many white people needed to see it to be moved to action feels problematic, since the existence of the video was further traumatizing to people of color.

White people: that we had to participate in traumatizing people of color just so we could see in order to believe is something we need to grapple with.

Jesus’ words to Thomas come to mind: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Thomas had a lot of witnesses he could’ve listened to, starting with the women who were first to the tomb. But their eyewitness testimony was insufficient for him.

And so he demanded to not just see the wounds of the executed one, but to touch them. There are many mysteries surrounding the reality of resurrection, and we have no way of knowing if the wounds of the crucifixion still ached. But why wouldn’t they? What kind of request is this? Re-open your wounds to satisfy my doubt.

Thomas has a lot of witnesses he could’ve listened to, and white people, so do we. People of color have been shouting from too many tombs where too many bodies have been laid, preaching the reality of injustice and racism in our culture.

And we, like Thomas, have stood back, shaking our heads at their stories, doubting their telling, unconvinced of their truth. We have demanded our right to see and touch, no matter how painful that demand is for someone else. We have held our tongues, except for the occasional spoken doubt.

This Easter season, I want to remove some of the saintly aura around the doubt of Thomas. We who consider ourselves thoughtful folks who wait to speak until all the facts are in need to search our souls and open our ears to the pain our waiting has caused.

We need to not demand videos next time. We need to not demand the wounds re-open and trauma re-lived simply because we, in our whiteness, have made “waiting til all the facts are in” a mark of wisdom, completely ignoring the facts of eyewitness account after eyewitness account. We have determined it is foolish to merely trust witnesses to injustice because their stories can’t be actual facts, their story is just their version of events.

For those of us who call ourselves Christian, I can’t fathom a more absurd claim. How could we stake our faith on the mere stories of witnesses, but tune out modern day truth-tellers and convince ourselves that our doubt is sanctified?

Y’all, next time a person of color tells us they’ve seen injustice, our only job is to listen.

Let’s stop demanding the wounds be re-opened.

Let’s stop privileging silent waiting over passioned witnessing.

How much more evidence do we demand?

And why have the claims of our neighbors of color been deemed insufficient?

Next time the hashtag starts trending, what would happen if we simply choose to believe?

May the stories of the witnesses who go to the tomb of their beloved one be all we need to hear their preaching and invite others to hear as well. And may their sermons of systemic, institutionalized, prevalent racism move us to confession and change.