Jesus and “The Justins”
I have lived 19 years as a Tennessean, residing in all three regions - east, middle and west. I have been educated here, ordained here, gotten married here, and birthed my three children here. And as of yesterday, I have never felt more estranged from the place I have chosen to build my life.
I spent somewhere around four hours yesterday watching debate over the resolutions to expel three democratic members of the Tennessee legislature. Why? Because they had the nerve to move to the front of the house floor, to an area known as “the well,” and join the large crowds of protestors gathered outside and in the hallways of the state house in their chanting for action on gun reform. On the heels of the horrific shooting at Covenant School, Rep. Justin Jones (Nashville), Rep. Gloria Johnson (Knoxville) and Rep. Justin Pearson (Memphis) refused to let the cries of their constituents and many others go unrecognized that day, as they walked forward and chanted, “No Action, No Peace.”
Yesterday, the GOP supermajority in the Tennessee House voted to expel Jones and Pearson, while Johnson’s expulsion vote failed by one vote. Jones and Pearson are two twenty-something, Black men, who are well-known around this state for their activism on issues of justice.
The parallels between the events of yesterday and the events at the end of Holy Week are rather remarkable, made even more clear by the fact that the Bible and the Christian faith were invoked many times yesterday by Jones and Pearson, and by those democratic members who spoke up on their behalf on the house floor. Pearson is the son of a Memphis pastor. Jones was a student briefly at Vanderbilt Divinity School while I worked as an administrator there. To say that these two men have an understanding of the Christian faith along with being incredibly gifted preacher/speakers is a grand understatement.
Throughout the afternoon yesterday, I found myself drawing comparisons between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. There are multiple times in the Gospels that Jesus is accused of breaking the Jewish Law by those in positions of religious power and authority - touching a person with leprosy, healing the sick and disabled or refusing to condemn those who are hungry and picking grains on the Sabbath.
I’ve noted in earlier writings how Jesus did not actually break Jewish Law. He disobeyed the false application of the Torah by those in positions of religious authority. Jesus was correcting the incorrect applications of the law, not rewriting it. Jesus publicly disregarded harmful human-made rules from those in positions of authority. He was a devout Jew, and time and again offered powerful examples of how Judaism commands love of neighbor and stranger. Those in positions of religious authority during his time created rules that ultimately undercut the call to love and care for others. Jesus broke human-made rules that strayed from the ultimate Law of God that we read in both the Torah and the New Testament - love of neighbor and stranger.
Yesterday, those who were advocating for expulsion for these elected representatives would focus on the house “rules of decorum” that were violated on the day in question. Questions like, “At 10:50 AM, did you join your colleagues in moving to the well and speaking when not recognized by the Speaker?” Or, “Is it true that you wore a pin with an AR-15 and a political message on your lapel, even after you were made aware that this was a violation?” And, “Did you raise your voice even after the Speaker noted you were out of order and cut off the microphone?” The questions were so technical, so focused on specific violations of rules intended to keep order.
While all three defendants were wise and eloquent, Jones and Pearson answered questions and used their time in a way that reminded me so much of the Jesus we see throughout the New Testament. When the focus would narrow in on a technical rule violation, they would continually bring it back to the larger issue - that the GOP supermajority in our state was unwilling to even entertain a conversation on gun reform, even after six individuals, three of them nine year-olds, had been murdered a few miles down the road, a tragedy that perhaps could have been prevented through legislation that exists in other states.
When the GOP speakers would hone in on a rule they had created and adopted to give them a sense of power and control, Jones and Pearson would time and again invoke God’s Law, that we love our neighbor as ourselves. The GOP offered these two young men a platform to try to save themselves, and they instead used it to try to save all of us from this culture of death created by the worship of something other than our God who commands we care more about one another than anything else.
It feels no coincidence that today is Good Friday, and later today I will co-lead a service commemorating how Jesus was put through a mockery of a trial and killed by those who did not like what he had to say. But we know what comes just a few days later, and the members of the GOP who sought to silence Jones, Pearson, Johnson and hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans who are seeking change know it too. We worship a God who will not be silenced, expelled or even killed. My faith reminds me that, in the words of MLK, “Right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
This is the remarkable truth of our Holy Week story, and I believe that it will also be the story of the two Justins, Jones and Pearson, who will likely rise to even greater prominence following these events. In the meantime, I pray for these two young leaders and I pray for those who voted to expel them. May the message of Easter - that of a God who breaks through and ascends above and beyond our earthly failings - break through to the hearts of those who were wrong yesterday. May they see that God’s messages to us are often found in the most unlikely of places - like in the mouths of the two youngest people in the room.
Amen.
