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“Four Hours,” A Sermon
I have a question about the story we heard from Matthew 28 this morning. Why did the Chief Priests and elders bribe the soldiers to tell a lie? I mean, this may sound like I’m stating the obvious … but lying is wrong.
It wasn’t even a very good lie. Even a casual reading of the story brings a lot of questions to mind: Like: if the soldiers were asleep, how did they know that it was the disciples who had stolen the body? How could the disciples, or anyone else, roll a heavy stone away from the opening to the tomb without waking everyone up? And why would they do this, given that stealing a body was considered a downright sacrilegious offense and punishable by death in those days? Not to mention the punishment that awaited soldiers who conked out while on duty?
Apparently, many commentators throughout the centuries have noticed how lame the Chief Priest’s attempt at a cover story really was. The fourth century’s John Chrysostom, for example, said this uncharacteristic incompetence showed how freaked out the established religious authorities were were by the mysterious and disquieting phenomena which surrounded Jesus’ life and death.
Be that as it may, Matthew nonetheless reports that this story — full of holes though it might be — has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day…
Ah, the staying-power of a false narrative.
In the aftermath of the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre just about one year ago today, the New York Times ran an editorial declaring that Republicans and conservative Christians had created a climate of hate that made them responsible for this horrible crime.
Never mind that Omar Mateen, the murderer in question, was neither Christian nor Republican. He was a Muslim and a Democrat who planned to vote for Hillary. Doesn’t matter: in a conversation the other day, a friend of mine used Orlando as prima facie evidence of Republican, Christian homophobia…
As the psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt explains, we tell stories not merely to entertain or inform, but to reinforce our tribal identities, to forge bonds that will allow our tribe to compete successfully against others. The story that the women told to the disciples about the empty tomb has bound Christians — ourselves included — right down to the present day. The story the chief priests and elders told — the one about the corpse-stealing disciples — was intended to bind and protect their tribe and, lame though it might have been, it worked…at least down to Matthew’s “Present Day.”
Only one of the stories, however, was true.
Until Michael Brown died at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, I was pretty darned happy with my progressive tribe. I was inclined to smugly agree that liberals (“Us”) were the smart tribe and conservatives (“Them”) the ignoramuses, an impression confirmed by the news and punditry I imbibed from my chosen media — NPR, the New Yorker, the New York Times. Though I counted myself an open minded and intellectually curious person, I certainly did not deign to listen to anyone who might tell a different story — Rush Limbaugh, say, or Fox News or the National Review.
The problem (or might it somehow prove a solution?) was that I belonged to more than one tribe. I belonged to the tribe of “progressive liberal” but I also belong to the tribe of “law enforcement.” Up until Ferguson, the two tribal identities hadn’t been in conflict.
Don’t get me wrong: there has always been a bit of cop-bashing on the American left. Like medicine and maybe leading the free world, policing is a profession people don’t actually know that much about, but they think they do and have strong opinions about how it should be done.
When it comes to law enforcement, this is by and large a healthy thing: we are a free people who understand ourselves as being endowed with rights that our government did not bestow and cannot take away. Americans should regard the police a little warily. A uniformed police officer represents the potential for a government to use its power not merely to protect citizens and provide for public order, but to forcibly deprive you of your liberty and even life.
History provides cautionary tales that can’t be ignored: it was German police officers who enforced the Nuremberg Laws that stripped German Jews of their civil rights. French and Dutch police helped their Nazi occupiers round up yet more victims. Those were American cops who massed at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attacked the Civil Rights marchers in 1965.
The value and virtue of law enforcement depends heavily on the quality and virtue of the society being protected, and on the quality of laws being enforced. But even in a generally good society with good laws, trust is essential and fragile. A corrupt, brutal, biased or incompetent police officer or department is, indeed, a terrifying thing.
Still, policing didn’t used to be quite such a partisan issue. Wasn’t it the Democratic president, Bill Clinton who boasted of toughening up sentencing laws and of putting 100,000 cops on the streets, with help from members of the Congressional Black Caucus? Wasn’t it his wife, Hillary, First Lady and future democratic candidate for president, who explained ““We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders?”
My first husband, a state trooper, listened to NPR and read the New York Times too, and, whether he agreed or not with every left-leaning person (his wife, for example) on the specifics of a given issue, he did not have cause to feel his “tribal” affiliations — law enforcement and liberal — were in conflict. Why would I?
One day in the early autumn of 2014, I was sweeping the floor of my husband’s studio and listening to “All Things Considered.”
“The body of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson, was left on the street for four hours.”
Up until that point, I hadn’t paid a whole lot of attention to the news stories about the death of Michael Brown. Not from indifference, but from experience. I’m familiar with how deadly force incidents are investigated and adjudicated. I knew it would be a considerable time before the Missouri Attorney General’s office announced its findings, and in the meantime, the AG was constrained by law from public comment. Everyone and anyone else would be free to weigh in, and most of what they had to say would later turn out to be nonsense. This is par for the course. Why get outraged before it’s clear what there is to be outraged about?
But perhaps because it was NPR, my “trusted source of news and information,” or perhaps it was simply the repetition of that one element in the story that had been repeated and commented upon so relentlessly that it was difficult for even me to ignore: four hours.
As the New York Times put it, “Just after noon on Saturday, Aug. 9, Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer on Canfield Drive. For about four hours, in the unrelenting summer sun, his body remained where he fell.”
“You’ll never make anyone black believe that a white kid would have laid in the street for four hours,” an African-American and chief aide to St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley was quoted as saying. “It defies any understanding of reality.”
Interviewed a month later by the St. Lewis Post-Dispatch, a chief medical examiner from Baltimore acknowledged “sometimes it’s a little disconcerting in an open scene for the family to see a body lying there.”
Other medical examiners interviewed for the same article concurred: “The best way to serve the public and the victim’s family is to do your job properly … and get as close to the truth as possible.… But for many in Ferguson, none of that will matter. Regardless of the evidence, the experts, the gunshots and the crowds, a young man’s body left on the street for four hours just doesn’t make sense.”
A year later, in a 2015 memoir he claimed to have written for his young son entitled Between The World And Me, Ta Nehisi-Coates would reluctantly admit that when all the evidence was in and all witnesses canvassed and deposed, Ferguson Officer Wilson’s version of events was substantiated and the shooting justified. Nonetheless, Coates would still consider the length of time Michael Brown’s body remained on the asphalt of Canfield Drive damning evidence of law enforcement’s exultant racism.
“The killers of Michael Brown would go free,” he wrote. “The men who had left his body in the street like some awesome declaration of their inviolable power would never be punished.” (Coates, p.11)
My first husband Drew was a white man and, as mentioned, a State Trooper. He died in the line of duty.
There were no angry crowds jostling and shouting beyond the crime-scene tape at the scene of his fatal car accident. No shots rang out, no bullets whizzed past the head of the forensic investigators, there was no need to wait for additional officers to rush to the South Warren Bridge to provide protection. It was a peaceful April day.
Eventually, as with the body of Michael Brown, the work of processing the scene was done, and Drew’s body was gathered up and taken to the state medical examiner’s office for exhaustive autopsy.
Eventually, I say, because the body of this, a white law enforcement officer, remained just where he fell for more than four hours.
Four hours is a long time.
It felt long to me — it was definitely “disconcerting” to find myself asking, again, where is he? and to have the Troopers tell me, again, his body is still at the scene.
I am quite sure it was terrible for Brown’s neighbors — let alone his mother and father — to see his body lying there as the minutes ticked inexplicably into hours Still, however it may be perceived by the traumatized uninitiated, four hours is not an unusual length of time for the primary piece of evidence in an actual or potential murder investigation to remain in situ while on-scene investigators photograph, measure, map and document.
This is especially true when a police officer is involved: Drew’s accident scene was processed with particular care because, as a State Trooper, he had been entrusted with the safety of the citizens of Maine. The police owed it to the public to determine, and be able to demonstrate with evidence, how and why the crash occurred. After all, Drew might have been drunk, drugged, reckless or suicidal.
He wasn’t. It was a simple accident … and still, the bound copy of the accident report I would later receive from the Attorney General’s office was over an inch thick.
The evidence at the scene of Michael Brown’s death deserved the same scrupulous investigation, especially since at that point, deliberate homicide could not be ruled out. If Officer Wilson had, for whatever reason, murdered Brown, his successful prosecution — and justice for Michael Brown — would have depended upon a thorough and conscientious forensic examination of the scene of his crime.
Ironically, a corrupt police department bent on shielding a violently racist colleague from legal consequence would certainly not have left Michael Brown’s body where it had fallen. They would instead have swiftly scooped it up and taken it away. They could have used the proximity of a threatening crowd and occasional gunfire as an excuse for doing so. Instead, the police in Ferguson conscientiously followed the proper protocol. The four hours Michael Brown’s body lay beneath the “unrelenting summer sun” was evidence of good police work, not bad.
Okay. I know this, because I work in law enforcement. But surely, I thought, any news reporter with even minimal experience of crime scene investigation would know this too? Perhaps this seems like a small detail, but there were more details reported that, in time, and after two highly-motivated investigations by the State of Missouri and President Obama’s own justice department, turned out to be false.
Michael Brown had not merely shoplifted from the neighborhood convenience store, but committed a strong-armed robbery. Michael Brown had attacked Officer Wilson and attempted to remove Wilson’s duty weapon from its holster. Michael Brown was not surrendering with his hands up when he was shot, but was lunging toward the police officer.
Neither the press nor politicians could know all of this right away. Still, they should have been capable of providing at least some context for those famous four hours. They ought to have been highly motivated to do so, given they might thereby have relieved at least a little of the anguish felt by the people of Ferguson. Why didn’t they?
I don’t know.
Why did the Chief priests and the elders bribe the soldiers to say that Jesus’ disciples had come during the night and removed his body from the tomb while they were asleep? Because the true story would not serve them? Because the true story would keep people from believing a narrative that would better bind their tribe, the one in which they were the heroes and saviors?
Their story, the one that declares Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, Jesus’ brothers and disciples to be con-artists, cheats and liars — That story, as Matthew says, has been widely circulated to this very day. But in the long run, friends, it is difficult to keep the truth hidden. Reality has a way of enduring and emerging from beneath the self-serving tales that panicked people and politicians tell. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus says, to the women who, because they knew him knew the truth. “Do not be afraid. Go and tell the true story, the love story. Tell my brothers to go to Gallilee; there they will see me.”
So they went to Galilee and they did see him. Some doubted, though. Was that because they’d heard the soldiers’ version of what had happened? Maybe. It is easy to make worried people believe what isn’t true.
But reality is what it is. God is still God, His name and nature love, and God will be with us always.
And as Paul writes to the Corinthians, those in whom Christ dwells “will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed.”
Blessing (in Greek) May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
It was just “Four Hour Sermon,” MarciaJ!
Even the most seemingly straightforward Bible verses are always so rich that the most difficult part about writing a sermon is that of constraining myself to a one element or dimension or thought…if only so as to avoid preaching for four hours!
We were living less than four blocks from “People’s Park.” It was a relief when the National Guard came in.
One additional bit about the scene in Ferguson: police shootings are rare. Not on tv, of course, where the Hero-Cop shoots someone two or three times an episode, but in real life. I talked to a Ferguson officer and he said that as far as he knew, this had never happened before in his city. What this means, among other things, is that the officers in question are not only upset and disoriented (“What just happened? Who was this guy? What was his problem?”expletives deleted) they are also frantically rummaging through mental files labeled “In The Event of A Use Of Deadly Force” that probably haven’t been opened since the academy.
There were witnesses who objected to the length of time it took for Brown’s body to be covered. It was probably less time than it seemed to those witnesses (or, for that matter, to the police officers) because time…slows…down….but in addition, what would he be covered with? Police cruisers do not come equipped with shrouds (or even body bags). Here in Maine, we often find ourselves hitting up local homeowners for blankets with which to warm the living and decently cover the dead. After one homeowner compassionately provided a particularly nice blanket with which to cover the body of a drowning victim, to soften the look of the body bag (which can look like a trash bag to family members) I took it home, washed it, embroidered a heart in a discreet corner and brought it back.
Now, see, I could’ve brought this into the sermon too. In the preceding chapter, we were told that Jesus’ body was wrapped in a “clean linen cloth” donated by Joseph of Arimathea, and when it was no longer needed, it was left, neatly folded, in the tomb.
While on the subject of warming the living (and sometimes covering the dead) there’s a church in Rangeley, Maine that provides me with “Prayer Shawls,” knitted very deliberately by parishioners, to give to those in need of comfort.
Catholics have the right idea. We schedule our masses 90 minutes apart, so the Priest couldn’t ramble on if he wanted to. :)
I have to confess that even though I sided with Officer Wilson, the four hours thing always puzzled me. Now that I know (and in hindsight, I should have known) that that’s how long the forensic investigation took it makes perfect sense.
It would have taken less time—the resources (trained forensic analysts, “meat wagon” etc.) were closer to hand in Ferguson than they are here in in Maine—had it not been for the large, threatening crowd that, among other things, was blocking ingress and egress routes. So it could have been a mere…three hours. But it would have taken more time than most of us would want to spend watching our loved one lie dead on the street.
Elsewhere, I’ve written about how a chaplain trained to do his/her job the way I do mine would have helped, namely by crossing back and forth across the DO NOT CROSS line and explaining to the family what was going on. I do this all the time as part of my regular work, for the simple reason that most people don’t know (and have no reason to know) how police work is actually done.
@katebraestrup
Thank you so much for this comment; this is so important! It is unfortunate that the people who need to read it the most will be the least likely to read it.
I was an assistant prosecutor for 20 years and, although my work was almost entirely in the appellate arena, I spent my days reviewing trial testimony and developing an appreciation for police procedure. If people would only stop for a minute and consider the realities: a shooting occurs – first, the police have to be notified; depending on where the shooting occurs, it takes time for the first responders to arrive and secure the scene; the first responders are rarely, if ever, the forensic team; depending again on the location, the forensic team may not come from the immediate locality (a rural location may require bringing in the county sheriff’s forensic team, or a team from a near-by large city); the team members may be made up from several different departments; up to an hour or more could easily go by before everyone is assembled at the scene, the lead detective arrives and assesses the situation, assignments are given to the team members, and forensic work commences; it is highly unlikely that, in all but the largest jurisdictions, the forensic team is already assembled and just waiting to be dispatched to a crime scene – it is more likely that the individual members are on other assignments or are at home and have to be called in – which may involve first going to the police station to obtain necessary equipment (again, this will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction); when an “officer involved” shooting has occurred, it is likely that the time line will stretch out even more because the police know that everything they do is likely to be second-guessed; it is only when the lead detective and the forensic team leader are satisfied that everything has been done properly that the body of the victim will be released – once that occurs, the scene cannot be “re-staged” so they must be satisfied that everything that needs to be done has been done (and done correctly). Even covering the body with a blanket or sheet can introduce foreign trace evidence into the scene. Trust me, if the procedure is done incompetently or sloppily, that will all come out at the trial; the police know that their failure to do their jobs properly will be highlighted by a clever defense attorney and none of them want to be on the witness stand explaining to a jury why they screwed up.
As you note, the press and politicians should know all this and should be willing to explain it to the public – that is, they should be unless they are operating according to their own agendas. Thanks again for your very important comment. I would urge the Ricochetti to spread this far and wide!
@pugshot thank you for that—you lay it all out so well.
And—just to emphasize— the investigative team often comes from another jurisdiction specifically because it is understood that a department will be perceived to be biased (and may even be biased, with the best of intentions notwithstanding) when investigating their own officer’s actions. This stretches out the timeline even more.
From a chaplain perspective, let me add that in addition to the bias an investigator might bring to the scene of a colleague’s fatal force encounter, there is also stress and trauma associated with having someone you care about and identify with coming as close as Wilson came to being injured or killed. I heard an awful story during COPS week about an officer who was required to “process the scene” of his friend and colleague’s ambush/murder.
It has been my experience that the left may appear cynical, but, in fact, they are true believers. As difficult as it is for us on the right to accept that leftist aren’t self-serving, cynical liars bent on their own enrichment, I don’t believe it is totally true. They are believers, just as the priests of the temple in Jerusalem were. Their belief is so strong that they are willing to lie and create false evidence to support it. They reinforce the lies they tell by believing them themselves, convincing themselves of their “truth.” This is, perhaps, why the politics of the left are better seen as religion than as political theory.
Religion is, before all else, an act of faith, belief. It need not be grounded in any objective reality to be believed. It just needs to be believed. So it is with leftist thinking. All global warming (climate change) is caused by man. Abortion is a form of woman’s healthcare. Wealth should not be in the hands of a few, but, rather, it should be evenly distributed, except for those who need it to support their positions in leadership, and, therefore, deserve it. And on and on. No logic or reason can be used to gainsay these and all of the other tenets of the religion. They are self-evident and based totally on faith. And since they have this sacred context anything done to preserve them is justified. Thus, the priest of the temple could bribe the soldiers, the various federal agencies which profit from leftist claims about Global Warming can “bribe” scientists with grants for supporting their position. These scientists justify in their own minds their choices because, for them, the issue has become a religious crusade which is taken totally on faith.
It is the same with every issue of the left. Everything becomes an auto da fe with those of us who deny their beliefs classified as heretics. There is always lots of contradictory evidence, but so is there to any religious belief. In the godless age we have entered, the new religion is leftism and its many and varied sects, BLM, Climate Change, Women’s Rights, LGBT, Unisex Bathrooms. You name it, and you will find its adherents willing to lie or do anything, say anything to support it.
Well, this is definitely the challenge I appear to be destined to go up against! The hopeful part, for me, is that when I give a sermon like the one posted above, the feedback I get is so consistently pro-reason, e.g. “I didn’t think of it that way,” or “I didn’t know that…huh…that changes things…”
Kate, I’m sorry for your loss, and am happy you have moved through that tragedy with such wisdom and grace.
What is unfortunate is that the 4 hours being standard and reasonable was not shared, immediately with those who expressed concern, to calm their fears. As Kate did so clearly in her sermon.
To those, like me, not closely linked to that kind of situation and timeframe, 4 hours is a long time.
Of course, it does not help when those responsible for communicating use the agony of waiting, and the fears of community to inflame their preferred narrative.
Whatever that boy did, whatever the circumstances of his death, his family was devastated by it. We can’t forget that. That any were willing to use his death for the evil they did is horrible, and nearly unforgivable.
When you are called to a homicide as a street officer some of you will be detailed to search for evidence, some will be detailed to interview spectators to try and find anyone that witnessed the homicide. Then you have to keep any witnesses separated so they cannot compare their stories with one another. Nothing gets moved and officers may not leave until detectives release them. It can take hours to process a homicide scene. I’ve been on several that took at least four hours to process, and one when my shift was going to end in 30 minutes when the call came in. Needless to say I didn’t tell the detectives we need to wrap this up in about 30 minutes because I’d like to go home.
I just posted another sermon I wrote awhile ago—also Ferguson related*—which speaks exactly (and with fervent agreement) to this (in bold, above).
After enjoying and being inspired by this thread, I just e-mailed my agent to say that I’d like to think about publishing a collection of sermons specifically relating to Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson. What do y’all think?
Yes on the book.
There is healing and insight to be had and given to both sides of the topic.
It’s a lot to manage.
I had a friend ask indignantly why Dylan Roof, the nutcase who murdered seven churchgoers in Charleston, was given a fast-food meal by the arresting officers en route to jail. “Would a black man have been given a Happy Meal?” she concluded rhetorically.
Um, yes, I said. For a very simple reason: this kid was presumably going to get lawyered-up pretty ricky-tick, and one of the things defense attorneys do is look for every possible way to cast doubt on the procedures their client has been subjected to, as a way of undermining the validity not just of the officers’ integrity but of the suspect’s own statements. “My client was subjected to starvation!” for instance.
When a case is as important as this—seven people were, might we recall, dead—then yes, the arresting officers are going to handle that guy like glass not because they approve of him but the opposite; they really, really want to nail him.
Or just feed him because you have a human in custody, and humans need to eat, whether they are innocent or guilty.
Well, and the insights I would like to offer transcend “both sides.” I can’t speak to Racism Writ Large, and to me, one of the huge mistakes of Ferguson was making Michael Brown’s death about Racism Writ Large instead of about Michael Brown as a human being.
My husband will often say that you can’t convey the the universal without offering the particular, and you have to offer a true, real particular. In order to be the Christ, Jesus couldn’t be a superhero or a God wearing a man-mask who could stand around talking about DNA, or foretelling future disasters (“The Titanic is going to sink!” “World War I is a Bad Idea!”) he had to be a particular human being in a particular time and place in order to embody God.
I believe Michael Brown has a lot of valuable things to tell us about what we as a country are doing, and what we ought to be doing, when it comes to lives —like his—that matter. But everyone lost sight of his particularity almost instantly. On one side, he became A Marytred Example Of What’s Wrong With White America. On the other, he became A Thuggish Example Of What’s Wrong With Black America.
This is profoundly dehumanizing not just to him but to everyone else as well. He deserves to be re-humanized, so that his life and death don’t just matter but actually mean something.
A very, very fine TED talk. Thank you too for this, Kate.
But Catholic weddings! Boy howdy. Ours are over in 20 minutes.
Of course. But my friend was implying the cops bought Roof a meal out of sympathy with, even approval of, his racism and his crime. Whereas the cops (being human) undoubtedly felt—on a purely emotional level—“let the little bastard starve.” This is understandable, if not actually admirable. All other things being equal, we don’t approve of starving even very bad people, but how many of us would weep tender tears if Dylan Roof missed lunch that day?
Yes, on your book and yes more police departments need chaplains that can console family members as well as officers.
My partner and were the first to arrive at the scene of a fatal DUII accident. A couple in their VW van were hit by a drunk driver. The husband was pinned by the van and between my partner and I and firefighters we were able to lift the van enough to free him from the wreckage. He passed away a few moments after that. His wife was unconscious but she made it to the ER in time.
We took the intoxicated driver to the same ER to get a blood draw. Their adult children had been called to the ER and we had a police chaplain waiting for them to talk to them after they had a chance to see their mom. Their mom had not been informed that her husband passed away. Our drunk driver started yelling ; What’s going to happen to me? In my best bedside manner I told him to look at me. I told him not say another word, the family does not need to find out what happened tonight from you. So keep your mouth shut.
My partner and I were starting to process our own feelings because we had completed what we needed to do on the investigative side and we were just waiting for the doctor to release him so we could take him to booking. If we had the time we probably could have benefitted from a few moments with the chaplain.
I vote yes!
The thing is that we never, never, ever hear this point of view on the news. For the last few days we’ve had network news on TV during dinner (I know, gag!) and the reporting on Comey’s testimony has been unbelievably one sided.
See, I hear things like this, and I am amazed at how infrequently police officers hit people, because I can feel an itch in my hand as if I could reach back in time and slap that guy.
I don’t slap people in real life, by the way. The closest I’ve ever come is removing (okay, a little briskly) a cell-phone from the hand of a guy who, after one of his students drowned, needed to stop making weepy, “it’s my fault” phone calls to his friends, man up and take care of the remaining youngsters who were a) grief-stricken and b.) still his responsibility.
I’m usually really sympathetic, but not when children are suffering.
And what’s irritating about this is that there is no reason why we couldn’t. How difficult is it to ask someone —surely the reporters must have cop friends on speed-dial?—-to explain why buying Roof a meal might actually be an act in the service of justice?
I try not to get irritated, but as I, um, strongly-hinted in the OP/Sermon, there does seem to be an agenda…
Agree, I Absolutely agree.
He was a young man. A son. A brother. A cousin. A friend and neighbor. He had been a child and a teenager with opportunities and choices that made him who he was, with strengths and foibles.
Instead he was used as a pawn.
I taught in an inner city. I remember my sadness when one of my young students, who I remembered with smiling happy face died as part of some crime. I’m sure he was not the only one, but the heartbreak of potential destroyed struck me hard. And still does.
Thank goodness there are kids who follow a path that keeps their family distanced from that kind of heartache.
For the penny it’s worth, I think it’s a wonderful idea!