20040711ItCouldNotBeInJesusName

the “Ballad of Harry T. Moore,” a poem by Langston Hughes about the Christmas 1951 murder

of Harry Moore of the NAACP in Florida. Here are a few lines:

It could not be in Jesus’ name

Beneath the killer floor

On Christmas night the killers hid

Their bomb for Harry Moore.

It could not be in Jesus’ name

The killers took his life

And blew his home to pieces

And killed his faithful wife.

Some things are very clear – you can’t murder a man who is working for freedom and

claim God told you to do it. Others aren’t so clear – and then the question is how do we judge?

What is the appropriate plumb line? Is there a plumb line at all?

Well, there is (why else would I ask the question?), although my audience didn’t have it.

Scripture wasn’t available to them. More than that, Jesus hadn’t come. We knew about death but

not resurrection. We didn’t know Jesus – and his life and death and resurrection - is the real

plumb line.

And it seems clear that a plumb line is what we need in America in 2004 because there

are a lot of people in powerful positions – religious and secular – who claim to be speaking in

God’s name, and that means we have to look, not at the person making the claim, but at the

consequences.

Sometimes it feels like our secular leaders (from both sides of the aisle) have co-opted

the language of faith. The world is divided into good and evil. If you are not with “us” you are on

the side of the “evildoers.” Lines from Scripture and hymns and “God bless America” are woven

into political speeches. “God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of

justice,” says our President, speaking at a prayer breakfast and we send of our military to “serve

the cause of justice” – as America defines it.

And when leaders from the American Christian Religious Right describe Islam as an

“evil religion,” we can’t help but wonder whether such a statement helps to set the conditions

for the abuse and torture of Muslim detainees.