Inspired by The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
Crosses hung ‘round our necks
A shiny talisman that saves us
An ornament of remembrance
One man’s suffering, one man’s death
Redemptive in its innocence
He arched upward on the cross
Stretched for space
A place to grasp the air
One more grasp for breath
One more gasp before death
“I can’t breathe”
That’s why they wanted to break his legs
But he was already dead
Finished is the work, he said
Or was it?
The people of God in a new world
Or so went the story they told
Claimed a destiny they held as manifest
And blessed as such by the ivory church
With piety presumed and privilege empowered
Seized a promised land, from sea to sea
A shining city on a hill
But whose light and whose hill?
Whose promise and whose land?
Masters in their holy right
Affirmed by a holy writ
Eden’s mandate to rule, to win it
To subdue the earth and all that is in it
Yet, an ocean apart, in the cradle of humanity
Poised for dire calamity
Its ebon beauty shackled and sold
Carried in a womb of iron and wood
Ponderous and dark
Heavy in the water lay that bark
Weighed down by lifetimes taken and dreams forsaken
Weighed down with ankles and hearts bound in chains
Weighed down by months and miles
Countless in number and vast in misery
Birthed in blood on foreign soil
Dispossessed
And yet possessed by men who ‘steemed themselves
Masters of another’s soul
And from the ivory church they heard “Amen”
But Egypt, not Canaan, for them
Tears, not milk
Lashes, not honey
Wives and husbands, parents and children
Beaten, abased
Murdered, raped
Bought and sold and separated
In their exile, desecrated
The thirteen fought for liberty
To throw off a yoke of tyranny
Profound it was in declaration
But not equal in its constitution
A nation formed, an imperfect union
Self-evident rights, endowed by God
Secured for some but not for all
And for the sake of unity
A compromise of complicity
Four score years with nothing changing
Cries for justice always failing
Amid the fractious deliberation
A nation facing separation
The nation halved, pulled asunder
Bayonets and cannons’ thunder!
But for them a hope in exile
Universal manumission
A hope held high, a hope put in motion
By that “last full measure of devotion”
Yet slept on still the ivory church
No Exodus, no Red Sea parting
Was dawn breaking
Or merely broken?
A nation waking
Not fully woken
And in the wake of that destruction
An unfinished work of reconstruction
That left behind the lives most shattered
Where need was great, where rescue mattered
Not the new birth of freedom some envisioned
Not the zenith that was intended
But a nadir so great, hope all but ended
And in the aftermath a lie:
That freedom reigned beneath that sky
Chains were not broken
But merely exchanged
Subjugation by legislation
Kept in their place
That same old place
Don’t look up, don’t lift your face
Say yes sir, no sir, don’t forget
No Canaan here, no Canaan yet
False arrests from Jim Crow laws
Lives lived long behind strong bars and
Still they toiled and worked the land
But slept at night behind locked doors
Prison was the new plantation
This, the white man’s ’mancipation
At lynching trees, throughout the land
A tree, a branch, a rope, a noose
Not always hidden in the dark
But often brazen in broad daylight
Crowds assembled and speeches made
Food and drink and games were played
The judges ruled and the pastors spoke to satisfy the godly folk
To hang a veil of righteousness
Then swung the rope
Then swung the rope
And looked on still the ivory church
Jim Crow’s reach still extended
Separate but equal still pretended
Hopes withheld and lives upended
But from that nightmare emerged a dream
The soul of this land to redeem
The promise of the land to reclaim
Marches, boycotts, demonstrations
Non-violent voices of hope and reason
Were met with deadly conflagration
Burning torches, burning crosses
Bombs in churches, fires on porches
Mobs and soldiers, widows, corpses
Tragic scenes in ‘hoods and boroughs
The lynching tree extends its boughs
Wide and deep its roots still grow
These sacrifices woke a nation
These struggles led to legislation
Hard-fought laws to unface injustice
But imperfect in their application
A work progressed, but still unfinished
The tide withdrew, gave way to time
“The fierce urgency of now” – delayed
Politicians waged a war on crime
Dog whistles cast as sublime golden idols of our time
Mongering the darkest fears
Insidious and subliminal
“The black man is the criminal”
One solution: incarceration
Prison still the new plantation
Backed by president and senator
But who is prey and who is predator?
Martin, Taylor, Floyd and Brown
The never-ending list goes on
Afraid to walk outside alone
Not even safe within their homes
Lives in tatters, lives in pieces
Lives that mattered lost among us
Hopes and dreams and lives truncated
On that same cross – asphyxiated
“I can’t breathe”
I am the ivory church
That imagined Eden could never be
If some are slaves then none are free
These times spark our indignation
But can it speak a re-creation?
Can we see their crucifixion?
See it in their suffocation?
See their faces on that cross?
And on that cross, their lives matter
The gospel tears the world apart
Up is down and down is right
Captives freed, the hurting healed
The hungry fed, the blind have sight
And foolish things will shame the wise
And weak things overcome the strong
And things that aren’t over things that are
If not this, then what can wake us, O ivory church?
Gaze within, look deep and see
Complicity, ignorance, apathy
We “pious” people blithely living
From the benefit of that grieving
Direct or indirect our profit
We profit from these unjust ways
We turn our gaze, refuse to see it
If I close my eyes then I won’t see it
Their long suffering can surely turn us
Onto a path of true repentance
If it wakes us to the crisis
If it makes us see our sin
Pluck out the ivory eyes that blind us
Strike off the ivory chains that bind us
Freed to be one people, one church, his church
Our shared calling was to be the voice
The loud, shrill voice in the wilderness
The soft, clear voice of tenderness
A voice for justice, mercy, peace – Shalom
We cherish still that hope, an earthly vision
Of heaven’s kingdom in our midst
A life as one without division
A life that starts with crucifixion
We die and rise again together
The ancient words reclaim their meaning
“Take up your noose and follow me”
Not till this truth is spoken and this sin confessed
Can pain be healed and wrongs redressed
A battle pressed to tear down the powers that oppress
Justice won with blood and sweat
Fight in the now for what’s not yet!
Fight for the day when that gospel holds its sway
‘Til I see placed ‘round my neck
‘Longside the cross of Calvary
A noose
The symbol of the lynching tree
Then, only then, we’ll breathe
Breathe in a land where all are free
Christopher Maitz works in high tech in the Bay Area. He holds an MA in Biblical Studies from New College Berkeley and spends much of his free time studying and teaching the Bible in his church and other venues. He resides in Sunnyvale, California with his wife and son.