I Have Heard Their Cry

         A week ago, social distancing surrendered to a far more familiar crisis. Everyone laid aside COVID-19 safety measures as we relapsed to a disease that we have never fully overcome. We often hoped we were in remission, but even that prognosis was too optimistic. America has never healed from racism. Never.

     People from various races stood shoulder-to-shoulder in city streets this week, keeping vigil after a black American man, George Floyd, lost his life. His plea for air to a Caucasian officer, Derek Chauvin, “Please, I can’t breathe,” became another appeal to America. Often, our white ears do not hear the cries of our brothers and sisters of color. Perhaps, for Chauvin, “I can’t breathe,” sounded more like a complaint, “I’m uncomfortable.” But Floyd was pleading for his life; “I’m dying,” is what he was saying. Maybe that’s not what Chauvin heard. But if he did, and no one knows but him, that makes him a cold-blooded killer.

     For two years, my Karen has complained that I cannot hear well. I told her that was ridiculous; I hear fine. Then, last month at my annual exam, my doctor shined his pointy light into my ears and asked, “How’s your hearing?” When I told him how Karen complained that I was hard of hearing, he laughed and said, “She’s right. Your eardrums are aging.”

     White Americans are also hard of hearing, and the older America gets, the less we hear. We respond as I did to Karen and think it’s ridiculous to say we don’t hear well; we hear just fine. Compare this to God’s conversation with Moses about the cries of the children of Israel. “I have seen the affliction of my people…[I have] heard their cry because of their taskmasters.” (Exo. 3:7). God hears.

     Perhaps you have not heard the cries of your black brothers and sisters. You hear complaints, and some are just that. But then, many, maybe most, are cries for life, a life dying from prejudice, begging for value, and suffocating from inequity. Even good people do not always hear well. 

      Several years ago, a dear friend explained his experience to me this way.

      You and I could walk into Walmart dressed similarly. I could have a hundred dollars in my wallet, and you only have five in yours. We could both stroll through the store aisles, looking at merchandise. And yet, a white Security Officer would be more apt to keep his eye on me because I’m black than he would you. I have more purchasing power in my pocket than you have in yours, but my color makes me a target. It’s just our culture to suspect me of being a shoplifter. I know this to be true because it happened to me.

       I heard him, and I have never forgotten it.

     Even yesterday, a precious Christian lady in her seventies, told me about her own experience of being followed by a Security Office. I looked at this grandmother and could imagine nothing about her that would incite such a response. Except…she’s black. 

      My hearing is no better than other Caucasians. I grew up in a small Southern town, and as a child, remember eerie white-robed KKK strutting through our neighborhood. For the last ten years, God has given me the privilege of doing life with black brothers and sisters. Our friendship, the kind where you sit over coffee at their kitchen table, tells me that my experience as an average white American differs vastly from the average black American. It just is.

     And if we think we have avoided racism because our church is “inter-racial,” think again. We can never know another person’s experience by attending church with them for two hours a week. Church on Sunday morning can be one of the most unreal places on the planet. We (white folk) need to sit at their table, listen to them, feel their plight, and with helpless honesty admit that our experience is nothing like our brothers and sisters of color.

     My friend, Lisa Koons, leads 24-7 Prayer in Charlotte. A well-spoken African American woman, Lisa has prophetic insight into the recent event. In her blog from June 1, she writes,

      The killing of George Floyd was the tipping point that sent our nation into labor. Since his death, we’ve been experiencing the birth pangs of an America groaning from the pressure of something needing to be born. The contractions are coming closer together now.

     The American Church is being called to midwife a pregnant season of upheaval and birth a reformation in the arena of justice. But remember—giving birth has always been messy business.

     What if this is the beginning of the next Great Awakening? What if the revival we’ve cried out for looks less like God’s manifest Presence in a church meeting, and more like ‘justice rolling down like rivers’ because of our own presence in the streets and neighborhoods and boardrooms and prayer rooms and schoolrooms and halls of justice. 

         It’s 4:30 AM, Monday. Watching the video of George Floyd lose his life, I weep at his cry for mercy. I heard him.

        A crucifix on my prayer room wall looks downward. Not merely an empty cross, it is the full figure of the crucified One Himself. I remember reading that people executed on a Roman cross die, not from the nails in their hands and feet, but from suffocation. Victims of the cross could not breathe, either.

        But it’s always true, isn’t it? Someone must die, and usually, someone innocent, before others go free.