Blood at the Root

Psalm 40, 54 • Psalm 51
Joshua 9:22-10:15 • Rom. 15:14-24 • Matt. 27:1-10

The Field of Blood, a burial plot purchased by the money Judas was paid to betray Jesus, evokes a sense of desolation, filled with the echoes of death left behind by violence. In Matthew, Judas returns the money then hangs himself, with the field being bought later by the chief priests. In Acts, the field is bought by Judas himself, and is the site of his suicide. The concept of blood money and the Field of Blood provoked my thinking about other fields purchased with blood and betrayal.

I’ve written about the history of race and agriculture in this space before, where I reflected on the failure of reparations after the Civil War, and the overwhelming whiteness of American farm ownership that resulted. While listening to a new documentary podcast about the lynching of Isadore Banks, a wealthy black farmer in Arkansas, I saw a bigger picture: black farmers own little farmland today not only because it wasn’t sold to them or given as promised. They fought for ownership, and by 1910 14% of farmers in the U.S. were black, and had obtained over 15 million acres of land. Little by little, however, those acres were stripped away from farmers like Isadore Banks through lies, legalese, and lynching, until black people were dispossessed of 12 million acres within a century.

Judas’ field was purchased to bury strangers. Isadore’s fields were stolen to bury seeds to make white men rich. The American economy practically drips with blood money. Judas betrayed the Son of God, but our own exploitation and lack of charity betrays the Image of God in the marginalized among us.

Written by Kathryn Haydon

Kathryn studies rice quality and disease as a PhD candidate in Plant Science at the University of Arkansas and dearly misses the St. Paul’s choir.