“You are appointed watchman,” says the Lord in Ezekiel. “When you hear me say anything, you shall warn the wicked for me.” If “you do not… the wicked shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death.” Jesus doesn’t appoint watchmen for the wicked liable for their deaths. Instead, Jesus urges, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.” “If he does not listen… take others along… If he refuses to listen to them, tell the community. If he still refuses to listen” set him aside. With Jesus, no one is threatened and instead an appeal to conscience is made.
We are diverted from Jesus’ appeal to conscience to the degree we accept the Lord appointing us as “watchman” against the “wicked.” The U.S. Empire exemplifies the watchman role, as in white evangelicals like Jerry Falwell Sr. (1933-2007) and his Moral Majority descendants. Falwell Sr. was a ‘watchman’ against ‘wicked’ people of color. His personal and social racism was in league with that of the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, and other racist officials. They opposed Civil Rights and its activists like Dr. King and John Lewis. When these activists conscientiously challenged their watchmen brothers about their sins, the ‘watchmen’ empire silenced them. It is white supremacists therefore who crafted the original and still persistent ‘Cancel Culture.’ Most of today’s white evangelicals grew up honoring that supremacist ‘watchman’ role. They believe they are appointed by the Lord to cancel the culture of people of color. This canceling includes the crowdfunding site that calls itself Christian yet is raising money for another ‘watchman,’ 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse. He is charged with canceling the lives of two Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters in Kenosha WI. For hundreds of years, and certainly recent Moral Majority ruled decades of cancel culture, conscientious people of color have followed the witness of another person of color, Jesus. They have ‘gone to their white supremacist brothers and told them their fault’ – of horrifically racist legal practices: severely discriminatory financial practices, terrorist police, vigilantes, and social practices. Their white brothers ‘have not listened.’ Conscientious people have ‘taken others along,’ to attest to their pain, and still, white supremacists ‘will not listen.’ The conscientious ones have ‘told the community’ of their suffering and still white supremacists ‘will not listen.’ So it is that white people who have crafted or benefited from their embedded cancel culture that will not listen, are now being set aside by the conscientious. What are they being set aside from? Honor. That is all; from building and statue dedications, from faux meritocracy and challenge free narratives on Twitter or Facebook or their speaker’s dais. Not being accorded honor for one’s supremacy is not the same as being cancelled. Cancel culture is simply supremacists’ pejorative projection. Supremacists are upset that those whom they systemically cancel are exposing them to their conscientious voice. But white supremacists were always exposed to Jesus’ conscientious voice. They just chose to cancel it. Like Jesus, people of conscience don’t mimic supremacists’ cancel culture modeled in Falwell and Rittenhouse types. Nor do they stop communicating with supremacists. We communicate as the disciple John Lewis did (1940-2020). John Lewis was targeted with cancel culture most of his life; by ‘watchmen’ for white supremacy like the Falwells, Fox News, and other corporate media. Yet he persisted in being loving and conscientious. In his spirit, we can communicate to this generation’s white supremacists, such as Kyle Rittenhouse and his crowdfunding defender, that it is possible not to cancel Jesus but to follow Jesus; a brown-skinned man not white, a peacemaker not a warmaker, a universalist not a nationalist, a lover not a hater, a healer not a killer, and so much more.
“What I try to tell young people is that if you come together with a mission, and it is grounded with love and a sense of community, you can make the impossible possible.” (John Lewis R.I.P.)
Prayer: Spirit, turn me from sins of racism and toward listening to people of color.
Question: How have I relinquished the watchman role and become a voice of conscience?
September 06, 2020 Gospel Matthew 18:15-20 Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time