{"id":6801,"date":"2014-08-19T21:55:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T21:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/?p=6801"},"modified":"2014-08-19T22:27:42","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T22:27:42","slug":"jesus-died-with-his-hands-up-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/2014\/08\/jesus-died-with-his-hands-up-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Died With His Hands Up, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Michael Brown should not have been shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. \u00a0His hands were up. \u00a0He was unarmed. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t make any difference whether or not he had stolen earlier something that day. \u00a0If he had committed such a crime, he should have been given appropriate justice, not a volley of bullets. \u00a0At the time he was shot, there was simply no excuse for what happened to him.<\/p>\n

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Somebody else had his life stolen from him, too: \u00a0a man named Jesus, killed for no good reason. \u00a0Jesus also died with his hands up. \u00a0He had been ethnically profiled by the Roman occupying army in Jerusalem, and was brutally murdered on a cross.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The accretions of belief that have developed since the days when Jesus preached and healed in Palestine tend to obscure the fact that his death was wrong. \u00a0Many Christians presume that Jesus had to die as a blood sacrifice to cover the sins of humanity. \u00a0They see the behavior of the people who participated in the events that led to Jesus\u2019 execution as players fulfilling their roles in the drama of salvation. \u00a0But really they were accomplices to a murder. \u00a0The cross is a lot more serious than much of Christian theology makes it out to be.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Blood sacrifice was an everyday concept in the first century, when virtually all meat sold in the markets came from animals sacrificed ritually to one god or another as a means of re-establishing harmony between the powers of heaven and the fates of humans on earth. \u00a0But now that we buy meat in shrink-wrapped packages at supermarkets, what sense does this doctrine really make? \u00a0It\u2019s way past time for Christians to move on and face the real and enduring meaning of the cross.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Jesus should not have died at all. \u00a0He committed no crime. \u00a0He broke no laws. \u00a0The revolution he promoted was non-violent. \u00a0God did not want him to die. \u00a0Humanity did not and still does not need him to die. \u00a0His crucifixion was a crime against humanity and a violation of God\u2019s law of love. \u00a0The cross is a sign of humans\u2019 inhumanity to each other, calling us to stop the killing and the abuse and the insensitivity and the fear. \u00a0It\u2019s a sobering reminder to us to follow the way of love and compassion and courage and forgiveness instead. \u00a0The cross is a turning-point in human history. \u00a0It\u2019s a moment when people confronted the failure of their old ways, and discovered another way to live. \u00a0 It\u2019s the crossroads of human history between \u201can eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth\u201d and the way of mercy and forgiveness. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
So in the aftermath of the terrible tragedy in Ferguson, Missouri, let us take a long clear look at the cross once again and see it for what it is. \u00a0It is a powerful reminder that peace in our neighborhoods isn\u2019t something that can be enforced with local police armed with high-powered surplus military equipment. \u00a0It\u2019s a grim visual statement of the consequences of a pre-emptive policy of shoot first, ask questions later. \u00a0It\u2019s a sobering symbol of what happens when a society puts less value on human life than it does on arbitrarily-defined standards of public safety.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
We\u2019re all implicated in the crime that happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. \u00a0Too few of us show up to vote. \u00a0That hands public offices over to purveyors of fear and hatred. \u00a0We didn\u2019t push hard enough for the repeal of draconian \u201cthree strikes\u201d laws that have filled our jails and prisons with staggering numbers of mostly non-violent criminals. \u00a0We didn\u2019t object when small-town police forces became armed with leftover gear from the Iraq war, tempting cops to treat petty criminals as if they were enemy combatants. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
So it\u2019s time to turn back to the cross and bow our heads and repent of our indifference. \u00a0It\u2019s time to turn at this crossroads, away from paranoia and toward reconciliation, away from crude tit-for-tat justice and toward a justice tempered with mercy. \u00a0Michael Brown didn\u2019t have to die for our sins, any more than Jesus did. \u00a0But perhaps their deaths will wake us up to the personal, social, and structural changes we need to make to prevent such deaths from happening ever again. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"jim_burklo\"<\/a>The Reverend Jim Burklo is the Associate Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. He\u00a0serves on the board of directors of Progressive Christians Uniting and is the author of four books \u2013 Open Christianity: Home by Another Road (2000), Birdlike and Barnless: Meditations, Prayers, Poems, and Songs for Progressive Christians (2008), Hitchhiking to Alaska: The Way of Soulful Service (2013), <\/em>and a novel, Souljourn (2013).<\/em>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Brown should not have been shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. \u00a0His hands were up. \u00a0He was unarmed. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t make any difference whether or not he had stolen earlier something that day. \u00a0If he had committed such a crime, he should have been given appropriate justice, not a volley of bullets. \u00a0At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[963,528],"class_list":["post-6801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-michael-brown","tag-progressive-christianity"],"yoast_head":"\nJesus Died With His Hands Up, Too<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Brown should not have been shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. \u00a0His hands were up. \u00a0He was unarmed. \u00a0It doesn't make any difference whether\" 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