A Samaritan gives thanks #BlackLivesMatter
Today, I give thanks. Not for America, for material possessions, or for modern comforts. No, I give thanks for the One that has made me whole. Despite living in a land that stole land and committed genocide against Native Americans (and want us to give thanks amidst our ongoing forgetfulness of this reality) and living under a society dominated and controled by a white majority that has expressed its anti-black sentiments historically through slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow, 5000 lynched bodies, the organizing of the KKK and the White Citizens Council, legalized segregation, the convict-leasing system of neo-slavery, red-lining, white flight, defunding of Black Public Schools, increased funding for the prison industrial complex, police brutality, etc., and through it all I can still say that African American Christians have come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord! For this I am thankful. Jesus has remade people who have continually been called non-people (property, nigger, & thug) into wholeness and healing through God’s self. I want to reorient my life around the awareness of (the true non-white liberative Jew) Jesus the Messiah that continues to make me whole and anew. I both fall down in thanks before Jesus, and then stand up subversively while living into the Kingdom of God that has broken into our world through a revolt to the status quo (a social order that rejects and seeks to crush Jesus and his followers that take up his way). Since I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the consequences of such radical repentance away from the American way is not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us through turning towards Jesus and his liberative shalom & justice in his New Creation.
“He fell with his face to the ground at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. (Now he was a Samaritan.)” – (Luke 17:16, NET)
