Deliver us from evil
On injustice, dissonance, and presence
Not even two weeks ago the news of Hamas unabashedly terrorizing Israel broke into the light, followed quickly by news of war. Israeli civilians have been slaughtered and kidnapped. Innocent Palestinians in Gaza have been trapped between a terrorist organization that has no interest in their welfare, and the geographical and political complexities that keep them helpless in harms way. Meanwhile, I have sat comfortably in my reading chair, exhausted and sickened by the images and headlines, palpably conscious of the dissonant safety where I have found myself holding disbelief, horror, rage.
Listening to Distant Guns
by Denise Levertov (written during WWII)
The roses tremble; oh, the sunflower's eye
Is opened wide in sad expectancy.
Westward and back the circling swallows fly,
The rook's battalions dwindle near the hill.
That low pulsation in the east is war:
No bell now breaks the evening's silent dream.
The bloodless clarity of evening's sky
Betrays no whisper of the battle-scream.
It’s happening again— “That low pulsation in the east.” I can’t claim to understand all of the centuries-old complexities at play, but I know enough to know that injustice and evil are on the loose. There is a heaviness in the air that demands just and loving attention.1 “If there is one lesson from history, it’s that what starts with the Jews never ends with them.”2 I have no interest in remaining silent in the face of a momentous evil that is truly sinister. Its appetite is unsatiated, demanding death, death, and more death, pitting neighbor against neighbor, gleefully spreading the poison of hostility.3 It glares mockingly at the light, eager to steal and kill and destroy anything in its path.4
Last weekend I watched this important documentary about mass incarceration in America— an issue fraught with racial injustice and political corruption. It gave me another tiny glimpse into the hopelessness and helplessness of black and brown people who have systemically and systematically been exploited and punished throughout the history of the broken nation I call home.5 It sickens me, and yet for much of my life I have lived in naive ignorance of their continued oppression. In one particular scene, a guard pushed and provoked a seemingly compliant inmate for no apparent reason. It was an act of juvenile aggression from an adult with some measure of authority, and yet the stakes were so much higher than a middle school squabble. As the handcuffed inmate jerked himself away from the bullying, the officer escalated the situation. In a moment the two were clashing violently on the floor, with other officers running in to tranquilize the man who was already restrained in handcuffs.
While driving to church the next morning, replaying this scene in my mind, I found myself angrily monologuing with God: How could you let this happen? What are you going to do? What kind of a sick place is this that we treat people like animals and applaud their abusers? I marvel at the fact that the black church has been so resilient through the centuries of injustice, animosity, and persecution, often at the hands of people who have claimed to follow Jesus. And I know in part that their resilience springs from a theology of suffering borne of the lived experience of long-suffering— of crying out for deliverance like the enslaved people of Israel in the book of Exodus, of deeply rooted persistence in the waiting.
Exodus links lament, longing, justice, and rescue in ways I need to be reminded of now. It is the story of the Jewish people who needed deliverance from foreign terror, whose descendants need deliverance yet again. It tells the story of a people trapped between the army and the sea, like the civilians in Gaza. It tells the story of an enslaved people escaping under the leadership of Moses, a narrative the black community holds close, passing it down for generations in story and song.
“Then the LORD said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people… and have heard their cry…. I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them….”
—Exodus 3:7-8 ESV
As that scene in the prison flashed before me again, a new thought entered my mind: it was Christ who chose to be the person who was unjustly punished, criminalized, terrorized, and mocked. He too was the man bullied in the handcuffs. I may not be able to comprehend the vastness of evil, personally or globally, but I can follow a God who chooses to enter it. In all of these injustices— those across the ocean and those close to home— I find myself praying repeatedly: deliver us from evil; do it again.
“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”
—Psalm 77:19-20 ESV
Language used by the novelist Iris Murdoch
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” -John 10:10 ESV
Also reading “How Far to the Promised Land,” by Esau McCaulley— a beautiful and unflinching memoir about his experience and heritage of growing up in the South as a black man