Removing the Targets from One Another’s Backs
In a week in which many prayed for accountability in the Chauvin trial, there was too little space and not even a pause to be present to the guilty verdicts and their real and future potential implications. Police continued to fatally shoot Black and African American children and adults in what has felt like ceaseless retribution.
In the three weeks of the trial, 103 people were shot and killed by law enforcement, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and Black and Latine people account for more than half of those killed. According to Newsweek, “Numbers gathered between 2013 and 2020 indicate that Black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, despite being 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed than white people… Over time, police killings have decreased in cities. However, these deaths have been on the rise in suburban and rural areas. And while some cities have seen substantial reductions in police killings, like Chicago, other cities, like Denver, have not.”
The expressions “I feel like we have a target on our backs” or “It’s open season on us” viscerally proclaim real suffering, fear, and trauma that Black and African American people are experiencing at the hands of the police, legal system, and white supremacy culture within our communities.
Justice and healing come when we remove the hunters by revoking the hunting licenses and badges of those who abuse and kill, end qualified immunity and provide accountability for officers who break the law, and end the system and culture of policing that has evolved out of the slave patrol, KKK, executioner gangs, and organized white supremacy enforcers who are weaponized, trained, and protected for waging war against civilians rather than resourced, trained, and commended for deescalation, peacekeeping, community care, and relational restoration.
In the past four years, we’ve grown too accustomed to the act of “targeting.” So many people’s lives and rights have been actively and violently targeted: Black and African Americans, undocumented and documented immigrants and refugees, transgender and LGBTQ+ individuals and families, indigenous peoples, Asian American Pacific Islanders, Muslims, women, children, those experiencing homeless, low-income, essential workers, our elders, those with serious health concerns and disabilities. The list seems endless, and I am sure I’ve forgotten to name someone here. From white supremacy, to COVID, to gun violence, to class warfare, to misogyny, transphobia and homophobia, to xenophobia…
We have labels and names for all of our peoples and our accompanying fears and hatred turned into targeting and violent action.
What are the labels, names, and actions we have for removing targets off of each other’s backs, ending “open season,” assuaging fears, and deepening loving care and action? What does this look like for you personally, for your family, our churches, our communities, and our larger institutional systems and culture? What does it look like to speak and act simultaneously out of our grief, pain, fear, hope, and love for one another?
This week, many of us sit in grief and fear, preparing to take loving action. We are in the company of Job, a man who lost his beloveds and who names this suffering, fear, and targeting in ways that are ancient, ancestral, and yet still present to us today.
I encourage you to read this Bible passage, Job chapter 7, as written to God and also to one another, in which we are our siblings keepers, able to build communities of loving care and justice if we so choose. Remembering that our lives are breath and Holy Spirit together, we are known to one another and our God, we are the power of the sea together and our voices and bodies will not be restrained in the anguish of our spirits.
Our visions set into action are capable of transforming our ways of being together. We have the power and calling to remove the targets from one another’s backs in the most sacred ritual acts of love and embrace as we seek the image of God in one another.
Job Chapter 7: My Suffering Is without End
“Do not human beings have a hard service on earth,
and are not their days like the days of a laborer?
Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
and like laborers who look for their wages,
so I am allotted months of emptiness,
and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I rise?’
But the night is long,
and I am full of tossing until dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;
my skin hardens, then breaks out again.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and come to their end without hope.[a]
“Remember that my life is a breath;
my eye will never again see good.
The eye that beholds me will see me no more;
while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone.
As the cloud fades and vanishes,
so those who go down to Sheol do not come up;
they return no more to their houses,
nor do their places know them any more.
“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth;
I will speak in the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,
that you set a guard over me?
When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me,
my couch will ease my complaint,’
then you scare me with dreams
and terrify me with visions,
so that I would choose strangling
and death rather than this body.
I loathe my life; I would not live forever.
Let me alone, for my days are a breath.
What are human beings, that you make so much of them,
that you set your mind on them,
visit them every morning,
test them every moment?
Will you not look away from me for a while,
let me alone until I swallow my spittle?
If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
Why have you made me your target?
Why have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?
For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be.”
In April, we started gathering together every two weeks (twice a month) for two different purposes:
Gathering for Communion & Prayer
Please bring communion elements with you, whether wine/juice and bread, or other common food and drink you have available.
2nd Monday of the month
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. Mountain Time
NEXT WEDNESDAY: Gathering for Scripture & Reflection
For the next three months, April - June, we will explore scripture and reflection together on why we gather and what we expect when we gather together as a progressive Christian faith community.
April: Building relationships with one another and with God
May: Strengthening our faith
June: Co-creating an active faith community that prophetically reimagines Church for ourselves and with others.
4th Wednesday of the month, starting April 28th
6:30 – 7:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Join us next Wednesday, April 28th as we reflect together on where we thrive and struggle to love our selves, our neighbors, and God.
Every month we share new sacred music written and performed by Spencer LaJoye!
When you click on the "Zoom link & registration page” you can register for one or more Gatherings and automatically add them to your electronic calendar. You can register for to join the Gathering at any time, including right before we start.
We invite you to make an offering today. An offering is a way we share with one another in support of the whole, and as a loving act of co-creating a new way of being together and with God as we prophetically reimagine the Church.
For all of the ways you give your spirit, heart, gifts, talents, and resources, we thank you.
