Today we deal with the crucifixion of Jesus from two vantage points. The first is the historical event itself, as represented in the gospels. Who killed Jesus, and why? The second is the reconstruction of this cultural memory in African American communities. How do African Americans identify with and interpret the cross of Christ? Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., explores this question by comparing Jesus' death to that of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager killed on his way home from buying Skittles and ice tea by a neighbor who read Trayvon as a threat. George Zimmerman was exonerated for getting out of his car, confronting Trayvon and killing him, on the basis of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which permits self-defense. In today's reading, Douglas flips the law's name into a cry for justice for African Americans in her book, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.
The killing of unarmed black people, their disproportionate profiling and arrest, has a long and troubling history in our country, as you well know. It led a Jewish American teacher Abel Meeropol to pen a poem in the late 1930s after seeing a photograph of a lynching:
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves, blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
The offensiveness, even the obscenity, of that scene is kin to the obscenity of the historical crucifixion of Jesus: victims, beaten to draw blood and hasten death, pinned and tied naked to crossbeams at the entrance to the city, so that all passersby would see them, left to die slowly of hypovolemic shock while birds pecked at them, and finally denied proper burial by being dumped in open graves so that wild dogs and other animals could feed on them. If this is not the picture you had of crucifixion before now, it may be because mainstream white American Christianity has sanitized its core cultural memory to render it less offensive, and to make being Christian less difficult—more about the resurrection than about the cross. Douglas asks us to imagine how the cross looks to a community that has been repeatedly crucified by those in power—who, from the lynching tree to Ferguson to incarceration to racial profiling are disproportionately targeted for punishment.
For today's reading, begin with the gospel account. Read the NRSV version of Mark 13:1–16:8 closely, and be able to answer these two questions:
Who kills Jesus, and why, in Mark?
Next, listen to song "Strange Fruit," sung by Nina Simone (on Camino; Billie Holliday was the first to make this her signature song, and a video of her performance is in Video Links, below). Finally, read Kelly Brown Douglas' article, looking for the following issues:
How does Jesus identify with the "crucified class" of his day, and what does Brown mean by calling this a "new Exodus"? What is it an exodus from, and to? Be able to discuss one example of Jesus doing this.
For some African Americans, what is the problem with the "suffering servant" model of the messiah—the messiah whose suffering and death save others?
What is "Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism"? What does it mean to call it "America's original sin"? And how do Jesus' death and resurrection save people from this sin?
Assigned Readings
Primary: Read the NRSV version of Mark 13:1–16:8 closely
Secondary: Kelly Brown Douglas, “Jesus and Trayvon,” in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2015) 171-203 (Camino); online class prep
Music Clip: Nina Simon, Strange Fruit
Optional: James H. Cone, "Strange Fruit: The Cross and the Lynching Tree," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 148 (2014) 7-17 (Camino)
The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas is the Susan D. Morgan Distinguished Professor of Religion at Goucher College in Baltimore and is the Canon Theologian at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. She is considered a leader in the field of womanist theology, racial reconciliation and sexuality and the black church.
Nina Simone (1933–2003, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) was a singer, songwriter and civil rights activist whose extensive repertoire included everything from classical to jazz. She recorded more than 40 albums in her career. She was known for her rich contralto voice and her ability to hold an audience.
Billie Holiday (1915–1959, born Eleanora Fagan) was an American jazz musician and singer-songwriter. Given Meeropol's song by the owner of an integrated Greenwich Village nightclub, she performed it in 1939 and it became a signature piece for years after.
Abel Meeropol (1903–1986) was a Jewish teacher, writer, songwriter and social activist from the Bronx. Musician Marcus Miller, who recorded an instrumental version of the 1930's poem and song that Meeropol wrote, notes the prophetic character of the poem: "The '60s hadn't happened yet. Things like that weren't talked about. They certainly weren't sung about."1 In 1999 Time magazine named Strange Fruit the "song of the century."
James H. Cone
(1938–2018) was Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Regarded as the founder of black liberation theology, he received thirteen honorary degrees and multiple awards for his work. An ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he published many books including his first, Black Theology, Black Power (1969), and his most recent, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, 2013).
Margolick, David. Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2000. Chapter 1 online, https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/margolick-fruit.html, accessed 13 October 2015.
--------. Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001.
Links
Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department - This report by the U. S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, published 4 March 2015 after the prior summer's rioting in Ferguson, Missouri, catalogues the chronic abuses of power by the Ferguson police and courts that ultimately led the community to erupt after the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer on August 9, 2014.
Why James H. Cone's Liberation Theology Matters More Than Ever - This Religion Dispatches blogpost by Daniel José Camacho (2 June 2015) explores the backlash to Cone's liberation theology in the context of explaining how white America has made God white.
Video Links:
Why the Romans Crucified Jesus - Yale University scholar (and Prof. Murphy's dissertation advisor) Harold W. Attridge explains the threat that Jesus posed, or was thought to pose, to Rome.
This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys - this six-hour series examines African-American religious experience through storytelling, looking at the connections between faith and the development of African-American cultural values.
Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit - This is a recording of Billie Holiday singing the song penned and scored by Abel Meeropol. The person who posted this to YouTube doesn't indicate the date of the recording, but it may date to the mid-1950s when Holiday released her album, Lady Sings the Blues.
Today we deal with the crucifixion of Jesus from two vantage points. The first is the historical event itself, as represented in the gospels. Who killed Jesus, and why? The second is the reconstruction of this cultural memory in African American communities. How do African Americans identify with and interpret the cross of Christ? Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., explores this question by comparing Jesus' death to that of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager killed on his way home from buying Skittles and ice tea by a neighbor who read Trayvon as a threat. George Zimmerman was exonerated for getting out of his car, confronting Trayvon and killing him, on the basis of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which permits self-defense. In today's reading, Douglas flips the law's name into a cry for justice for African Americans in her book, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God.
