Some Thoughts on the Cross and the Lynching Tree

When I read about this terrible suffering and injustice, this complete indifference to the rights of black Americans during the lynching era, the utter brutality and mind boggling hypocrisy, all I can say is that indeed they are the Christ among white Americans. Christ is them, and they are Christ, and their suffering is the deepest possible sharing in the redemptive work of Christ himself. They are suffering for their persecutors, for white Christians who don’t know Christ, who are crucifying the Christ they allegedly worship. These laugh now (at the time), but will weep later, as we read in Luke. Those who are suffering in the Person of Christ achieve the greatest honor and they have the greatest joy in the kingdom, thanks to this identification between their lives and the crucified. Their persecutors, these cruel murderers and all those who cooperate with them, are forever connected to their victims, and this is their torment. They are immersed in the specter of their utter cruelty, the ugliness of their sin, and it is an intolerable sight. But in the midst of their crucified victims, these murderers see the crucified that they think they’ve worshiped. He is there among the lynched, tortured, and burned. He is their only hope. But if he is their only hope, it means that they, their victims, are their only hope, because the identity between Christ and their victims is perfect. They forgive their persecutors, because they are victorious in the crucified one who is among them, and they have received the forgiveness of their own sins in him, so how can they deny forgiveness to those who have murdered them. In fact, their greatest desire is to share in Christ’s victory over sin and death, which they do by their sufferings and the heart of mercy, which each one possesses. They can say with Christ: “…forgive them, for they know not what they do”, and indeed, they know not what they have done. But they will, because they are forever connected to their victims, and so they will forever behold what they have done until they cannot stand the sight of their own ugliness any longer. Their victims along with Christ, who is in their midst, are waiting to be invited by these murderers to defeat their evil with the victory of Christ’s charity and forgiveness. That will be their greatest joy, because it will be their greatest victory, their unique sharing in the victory of Christ. And they wait, and wait, but they won’t wait forever, because St. Paul tells us that “every knee shall bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”. Finally, it is interesting to compare two perspectives. Today, so many have called for reparations; for they see black Americans as terribly disadvantaged by the allegedly superior whites. But in the light of a theology of the cross, in particular the theology of the cross that came out of this era, in their poetry, their music, their literature, it seems rather obvious that they have a nobility and power that is their glory. They entered into the struggle against sin and death, and they conquered, and many graces were bestowed upon America as a result of that struggle. What we are today is, in large part, the result of that victorious struggle. Black Americans stand higher, not lower. We look up to them, not them to us.