For Those Who Have No Voice

Part of my grad school experience has been sub teaching with the Metro Public School System. This of course is about paying Lipscomb, not some kind of “ministry training experience.” Recently I taught at risk at a large, well-known high school here in downtown Nashville. Vanderbilt sends a child-therapist over every Thursday to help these at risk kid’s deal with anger, depression, and hatred. Some of them talked about their fears of all the gangs-the BP’s, KP’s, Crips, Bloods, and KKK. After a few minutes of this, the therapist got the young men and women to talk about their personal lives. One young boy, a talented artist, spoke of not ever knowing his father. His mother works three jobs to pay the bills for him and his brother. He wants to drop out of school so his mother “don’t have to work to the bone every day and night.” A young girl sat next to him. She is 17 and has a two-year old daughter. She spoke of her hatred for her father. She said she wished he would disappear from her life. Said it would be better to deal with an absent father than an abusive father. Her mother doesn’t work and makes her take care of the house, her three younger siblings, plus her own two-year old daughter. The boyfriend/father is kept in the picture because “he got money and that’s the only thing I got going for me right now.”

Next to her sits a young African American male. He is shy but intelligent. He is not confident enough to look the therapist in the eye. After a few moments of prodding, he talks about the rage he keeps inside towards his mother. Seems she no longer wanted to be around. He’s never seen a picture of his father, let alone met him. One day, a few years ago, she dropped him off at his Aunt’s house and no one has heard from her since. He asks through his tears, “Why you think my momma don’t want to be around me?” The last girl at the table speaks up after a few moments of silence. She is a talent on the basketball floor, I’m later told. Last year, her mother (her idol) was killed by a drunk driver. No father to comfort her. Just like that-her life is flipped upside down. She lives with different family members, bouncing from house to house, grinding it out day by day.

I enjoy the various theories of the Atonement. Propitiation, reconciliation, justification, liberation—all the words that we wrestle with. But I’m challenged by the notion that all theories of the cross-its meaning for the church must be relational and communal. We cannot stay in the courtroom mentality, walking around declaring, “Aren’t we fortunate to have been forgiven.” Only to return back to life as usual. The Gospel knows nothing of life as usual. The Gospel is a revolution that is supposed to turn everything upside down-all aspects of life in the here and now. Most importantly the cross must change the way we think about those we live with and amongst. If Christ speaks on our behalf, is he not relying upon us to speak for those with no voice? The ones who’ve been dealt an UNO hand at the poker table. Does the cross not demand that we get over ourselves, our way of being Christian to follow Jesus as light into every dark corner of society? If God’s mercy does not cause us to be merciful, is it really the gospel that we’ve been claiming all along?