Building Lampstands
Psalm 137:1-6 (7-9), 144 • Psalm 104
Micah 5:1-4, 10-15 • Acts 25:13-27 • Luke 8:16-25
As I sat down to write this, the news has just come out that the only one of the officers involved in the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky will be charged. And the crime he is charged with is for shooting bullets into a shared wall of her apartment, endangering the family that lives next door.*
The news was not surprising, but heart wrenching nonetheless. This case carried so many burdens that weigh on us as a nation (how we treat the lives of black women, how we perceive crime and justice when it involves people of color, what is “appropriate” when it comes to protesting these injustices) so I was glued to the headlines desperately wanting to feel a sense of resolution or hope at the end of the day. I didn’t.
And then I read about another legal case in today’s passages: the story in Acts of Paul being brought before King Agrippa. Festus (a Roman procurator) is explaining to the King what has happened with Paul’s case and imprisonment so far and his (Festus’) words jumped out at me:
“When the accusers stood up, they did not charge him [Paul] with any of the crimes that I was expecting. Instead they had certain points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who had died, but whom Paul asserted to be alive…I have nothing definite to write to our sovereign [Emperor Nero] about him” (Acts 25: 18-19, 26)
Was Festus torn about bringing Paul before the King? What was going on inside of him during these moments? Why was Paul still having to appeal his case? Like Pontius Pilate, Festus seeks to the pass the buck of decision-making to avoid reckoning with the ugly and murky terrain of who deserves life and who deserves death.
The text never tells us Festus’s inner thoughts and I am left wondering once again, “Who decides what is right and just? What “crimes” are actually just something the powers-that-be are uncomfortable with or can’t understand?”
When Luke’s Gospel today speaks of putting a light on a lampstand, I hear us being called to see the light of Breonna Taylor. The light of Jesus. The light of so many wrongfully accused, imprisoned, and murdered. Luke tells us “…pay attention to how you listen…” and I hear a call to not just read headlines but to do the work of building more lampstands. To help that light shine out so that hidden things may be disclosed, and secrets become known.
* A breakdown and analysis of the case results and public reactions can be found here.
Written by Emma Mitchell
When not serving the youth and families at St. Paul’s as the Youth Director, Emma is spending lots of time at home, learning how to thrive in a pandemic, with her husband Dave and small menagerie of animals.