Ophelia Hu Kinney

The message in our midst – thick and heavy – is the death of Sonya Massey – a Black woman, age 36. The mother of 17 and 15 year-olds Summer and Malachi. The daughter of Raymond and Donna. She had recently bought a home in Springfield, Illinois. And she worried that there might be an intruder in that home when she called 911.

The body camera footage showed a sudden, unprovoked attack by a police officer. When the two officers first arrived, they found a calm woman. Sonya was far from them, crouching, when she was shot three times and murdered.

Before she died, before she was shot, she said to her would-be murderer: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” She said it twice. Her father Raymond undertook the heart-wrenching task of watching the released video footage of his daughter being killed in her home, and he said that it was like she knew – it was like she had a premonition of the evil that was to befall her.

Last week, a grand jury indicted the police officer on five counts, including three counts of first-degree murder. 

The task befalls us, we who remain in Sonya’s wake, to echo – no – to amplify her prophetic rebuke. 

Let’s reflect on today’s scripture. 

Luke 9:37-45 NRSV

Jesus Heals a Boy with a Demon

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.” While he was being brought forward, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. And all were astounded at the greatness of God.

Jesus Again Foretells His Death

While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.” But they did not understand this saying; its meaning remained concealed from them, so that they could not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

A Faithless and Perverse Generation

There is no version of this story in which illness or disability can be likened to the evils that collaborated against the life of Sonya Massey. Sonya herself was disabled – a woman who lived with schizophrenia. Black and disabled people are disproportionately targeted by police brutality.

What immediately precedes Luke’s account of this healing is the disciples’ return from what we’d call today a “mountaintop experience.” For them, it was a literal mountaintop experience – the transfiguration of Jesus. His appearance was transformed, and the disciples were awestruck. They heard the voice of God saying, “This is my son, with whom I’m well pleased.” In other words, ‘This is the true nature of the one you call your teacher. He is human, and he is divine.’

The disciples come down from the mountain the next day, and this father begs them to heal his child. He tells Jesus, “I’ve tried asking your disciples to heal my child, but they couldn’t. So please, help us.”

In response, Jesus doesn’t just rebuke the demon; he also pauses to chastise his followers, calling them a “faithless and perverse generation.”

As a reader situated thousands of years later, I can’t help but call that faithlessness “complicity” – a belief that the status quo must be maintained. That another world is not possible.

What would Jesus call us today when we act as though another world is not possible – when he has shown us what it looks like to live a resurrected life and we claim his name but not his path?

There are many interpretations of what it means to call on the name of Jesus, as Sonya did in the moments before she was killed. She rebukes her killer: I rebuke you in the name of Jesus. 

To rebuke is to push back against, to admonish, to refuse. It comes from the Middle English: as if to force back together two pieces of wood that have been cleaved apart. 

One interpretation of what it means to call on the name of Jesus is co-authorship. A sign of collaboration with the divine. 

Like many, I believe that Sonya knew that her life was about to be handed over to the authorities. She rebuked the power of death, and her body was broken. 

When I say that, 2,000 years later, we continue in the practice of crucifixion, I’m not saying anything new. Likely, you already know this. We continue in the spiral journey, seeking a way through the death cult of imperialism, at times making progress, at times heavy-hearted with the knowledge that we are still where we’ve been before. 

When the End is Near

I’ve learned that if we’re lucky, life warns us when its time is near. One example of this comes from plant cells. Plants lack the defense mechanism that many animals have, which is that we have a specialized type of cell that fights infections. What plants have instead is the ability to isolate a wound.

Rather than go quietly, plant cells that are dying signal to their neighbors to save themselves. They do this by releasing a torrent of proteins – a grand finale and parting gift wrapped into one. The remaining cells know when they receive this flood that there’s been an injury somewhere on the organism they call home. I think of that now when I see my houseplants pour all their hurt into one leaf, one frond, and send it tumbling to the earth.

One invitation we can glean from the lives of plants is to believe people about their pain. Believe people when they say that they’re in danger. Believe creation when it says its time is near. Believe women. Believe Black women. Believe Black disabled women. Believe our kin at the margins of society. 

Jesus tells his disciples that he will be killed by agents of the Roman Empire. And they are afraid to ask for clarification. It isn’t hard to imagine the heavy silence or the furtive glances across the fire. What would you say?

We know that Jesus had said it before. He once predicted that he would die a violent death, and his disciple Peter says, “No way. There’s no way that’ll happen.” And Jesus reacts strongly, rebuking his disbelief, or perhaps his poor attempt at comforting Jesus. Jesus says to his beloved friend, “Get behind me, Satan!”

I imagine that in part, Jesus was angry at Peter for not grasping the gravity of the situation. For not validating the cost of Jesus’ ministry and his rebellion against the cult of imperialism. 

And I get it. To sit in that enormity of pain, to be that witness… it is enough to break or harden a heart. Or to scatter a movement.

Calling on the Name of Jesus

In Sonya Massey’s final moments, she called on the name of Jesus. I can’t presume to know exactly what she meant. But one interpretation of her invocation is co-authorship. It isn’t the casting of a spell. It’s an alignment of intention. In the time of the apostle Paul, some of his letters, which we attribute to Paul’s own authorship, were written by other individuals who utilized Paul’s name as a signal of their shared alliance with the early Christian movement.

This still happens today – film score composers, for example, may write under a common name, like Hans Zimmer’s, unified in style and capability. What’s often credited as the work of Hans Zimmer, who wrote the soundtracks to blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Inception, is really the work of many composers.

In this way, we can hear Sonya Massey’s words as an acknowledgment of the evil that was about to take place. In the way of Jesus, with the heart of Jesus who met an end like hers, in the manner that Jesus would: Sonya rebuked her executioner.

There Will Be No Justice

There is no turn in this story that results in justice for Sonya Massey. Not the indictment of the police officer who killed her. Not his suffering. Not even the reformation of that imperial force borne out of the long era of Black enslavement. For Sonya Massey’s memory and for her loved ones, the closest they’ll come to justice may be our echo of her rebuke. Our willingness to be the wheels on which some future-coming justice may roll. 

In the name of Jesus – meaning, with co-authorship from the holy: we get to play (no, we must play) a part in the pursuit of a world like the one Jesus made a reality. We get to participate in the diminishment of imperialism, in sidestepping – in subverting – the expectation that the mighty will crush the weakened. That this must be the way of things.

The Spirit calls us into co-authorship of the kin-dom of God. It is the privilege and responsibility of belonging in creation, in the family of all things. There is no shortage of heartbreak at the fingertips of the empire’s reach. But we are neither powerless nor alone – connected as we are to community and to the divine.

The People’s Microphone

In the fall of 2011, I participated briefly in the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park about half an hour south of HA:N. The crowd was unable to obtain permits for sound amplifying systems, so they utilized what was called the people’s microphone – sometimes also called the human microphone. 

With this system, anyone could amplify their message within the crowded park. They’d call “mic check,” and those around them would respond by echoing what they heard next from the speaker. Then, the ring of people around that first circle would echo what they heard until everyone heard the message. And they heard the message by participating and by echoing. After that first phrase or sentence rippled out, the speaker in the center would say their next phrase. And that would be echoed outward in the same way. 

Sometimes the message was a manifesto. Sometimes it was a request to be reunited with someone the speaker couldn’t find. And in those latter instances, people would speak as they searched – as they scanned those in their surroundings and made a way between themselves.

This was how we were heard. In a way, it’s a practice in direct opposition against the cult of imperialism. There was no literal or figurative power that bestowed voice except our togetherness. We each had the power and the responsibility to be heard by participating.

We are asked now to be the people’s microphone of Sonya Massey’s rebuke. Of every life truncated by police brutality, of every precious, God-breathed life zipped too young into a body bag, into a grave, by the forces of unchecked power. 

We rebuke you, empire. We rebuke you, militarized police. We rebuke you, politicians who parade as kings. We rebuke you, military superpowers, unblinking life-takers, shameless fear-stokers – we rebuke you in the name of Jesus.

For his is a reality where those who mourn today will instead know gladness. Where those who show mercy today will not be trampled but be shown mercy, too. Where those who make peace today will be recognized not as fools but as the children of God. Where those who are now poor in spirit will tumble into the kin-dom of heaven like leaves down onto the soft earth.