Burning Branches - Part 1

Listening to Revd. Jim Hamilton and the responses of the congregation of Church on the Square in Baltimore, what stuck with me is that rage is not logical. In the midst of so much chaos and high tensions, Jim reminded us to hold our judgment for a second on the events that have unfolded. That is to remember that rage is neither calculated nor present without a catalyst.

Rage, like love, is an emotion. It does not carefully deliberate plans and consequences. Like a fire, it needs to be kindled, to be set alight with fuel, space and time before it burns. Once rage explodes it tends to engulf everything in its wake. Rage burns down ugly derelict houses in a neighbourhood as well as newly renovated houses that a community has spent itself to build. Rage can burn out an old car, but it can just as equally set alight Broadway East community’s church housing project for the elderly, a local small business without adequate insurance and a pharmacy that a community depends on for access to medicines.

Rage does not calculate wrongs, it is a violent, intense response to external cues. In the case of Baltimore the cues built up, until they were out of control. Such cues include the black Medic-Aid patient who routinely waits longer for a hospital bed than the white Medic-Aid patient, the mother whose innocent son is routinely pulled over and arrested, a little league of Black and Hispanic children on their way to play baseball that residents assume they are a street gang. These ‘everyday’ stories I heard in Baltimore are experiences that can build up, like the account of Freddie Gray, and if not given voice, can explode in rage.

If these stories are all contributory, then how far do we all bear responsibility for the rage that some of the people of Baltimore felt and the way in which they showed this? How far are we who watch the accounts on the television accountable for the actions we condemn on it?

Sunday's reading of John 15 reminds us that we respond to evil and to good by abiding in Jesus – because without Him we can do nothing (John 15:4-5). Jesus says ‘Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.’ We are invited to allow Christ to routinely burn and destroy the evil around us and inside of us: prejudice, hatred, oppression, murder. In doing this Christ burns away the parts of us that bear no good fruit.

If we hold on to our bad branches, and live within the bad branches of others, our chaos and hatred remains, fermenting over time like fuel, prime for explosion. Where the injustice simply festers in us and in our communities we risk everything:  by holding on to the prejudice and evil inside of us, we risk even the good branches that remain being burnt or destroyed in the explosion which can ensue.