Take It To The King, Redux

I am distressed and sick about racist incidents this week and this month and this year. So are a lot of you. I want to do something, and so do a lot of you. But we feel so powerless, so impotent to make any significant change. We can post on social media, and that has some effect. We can elect officials we think can make changes, and that has some effect. We can work toward fairness and inclusion in our workplaces and social circles, and that has some effect. But I know we want to do more.

Here’s a comment from a post on Matt Elliott’s Facebook page about the video of George Floyd dying under the knee of the police officer. Anthony Jones, a friend of Matt’s who is African American, said, “I know this is shocking for many people seeing this. Please know this isn't shocking to me or my family. What you are seeing is a vast improvement. I've had cops pull guns on me several times. I feel safer now than I ever have before. Praise God for these videos.”

He and other people of color are grateful and relieved that videos like this are now being seen by the public. We are not ignorant anymore to what is going on. We are less likely to give the benefit of the doubt to those in authority. Praise God that what has been done in the darkness is now being brought into the light. As John 3:19 says, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” And Ephesians 5:11, 13: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. . . . everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is the light that makes everything visible.”

Exposing evil is part of our responsibility, and holding people accountable for evil is part of our responsibility. But there’s another big part of our responsibility we cannot overlook. The following is a repost of my first blog post on this site from 3 years ago. I’m rerunning it because we need it now.

The parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 tells the story of the man who is called before the king for outstanding debts and he begs off.  The king is merciful to him and cancels the debt.  The man walks out, sees someone who owes him, grabs and chokes him, demanding payment on HIS debt.  The second man begs for mercy, but the first man refuses and has the debtor thrown in prison.  Total injustice!

So the next verse jumped out at me like it was fluorescent:   “When the other servants saw this going on, they were outraged and brought a detailed report to the king.” v. 31.  As soon as I read that, I knew that was us.  We are the other servants.  We are the ones watching the injustice.  We are witnessing the hypocrisy and mistreatment and abuse of another human.  And it’s our job to tell the king. 

I don’t always understand how prayer works and how God works out justice and mercy, but I am convinced they are linked.  This passage shows that.  The ones witnessing the injustice were outraged and they ran and brought their concerns to the king.  We should be outraged at abuse and cruelty, but we often cannot do anything about it.  We despair of being able to do anything about all the evil we see in the world.  Sometimes we give up hope of being able to change anything because we are powerless.  But these servants did not try to fix the problem themselves.  They knew they had no power in this situation, but they knew who DID have the power.  They “brought a detailed report to the king.”  (I know a woman who prays this way, very specifically naming over wrongs done to innocent people.)  You know the rest of the story?  The king does something about it.  He “is furious,” the text says.  As Romans 12 tells us, “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.”

Let’s make sure we petition God with the abuses, injustices, and cruelty we see in this world.  It could be as local as our neighbor with his wife or child, a national crisis like the targeting of people of color, or as global as Boko Haram.  But we need to bring a detailed report to him in our outrage, and trust him to bring justice.