I’ve grown up in an Appalachian culture. I spent nearly 10 years outside that context after my college graduation, but then moved home to North Central West Virginia to plant a church nearly 8 years ago. This culture has been portrayed in a multitude of ways - most of them negative and most of them shallow. Rednecks, hillbillies, mountain people, poverty, white trash, the list could go on and on.
This is also the land where kin matters. You know, the extended family. The people who live in your homes but also their people. The people who come to Thanksgiving, show up for Christmas, and celebrate birthdays. The people who, in the middle of need, will have your back, share your load, and in true Hatfield & McCoy culture, will go after anyone who poses a threat to the kinfolk around you.
We get this right? Even outside of Appalachia, we get tastes of the power of kin. We know the people we would call if life fell apart. Whether it’s family or friend, we all have a sense of kin.
The interesting piece of this, to me, is that growing up in this culture it was sort of unspoken. I knew who my people were, and I knew who my people were not. I knew where theorists call the in-group/out-group boundaries existed. My family had a sense of Appalachian loyalty and connection that was impenetrable. Even now at forty years of age, and with our kin more spread out than ever before, we still have that.
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There’s this thing about the Biblical narrative in the New Testament. It is seen first in the acts and words of Jesus, and later in the theology of Paul. For the Jewish people, kin was perhaps best understood in the Greek word “oikos,” or household. It implied not only your immediate family but those who shared life with you - your people but also your slaves and neighbors, the entire community of those who shared your sphere. And for Jesus, he begins to reconstitute the meaning of family and the understanding of oikos around himself. At one point after being told his mother and brothers are trying to gain access to him he bluntly asks, “Who are my mother and brothers?… whoever does the will of my Father in heaven…” (Matthew 12:46-50). At another point Jesus directly says if one doesn’t “hate father or mother he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). For Jesus, it seems, family no longer carries the boundary of blood or proximity; it is rather formed around the connection to Christ himself and the blood shed for those who seek to do his will.
Paul continues this understanding, fleshing it out for the life of the Church. He calls the people brothers and sisters. He references Yahweh as Father. He spells out over forty ways the people of the body of Christ can care for and love “one another”. He identifies Jesus as our brother. He reorients the identity of Jesus followers as being a part of the household of God (1 Timothy 3:15). For Paul, like Jesus, the kinfolk - the brothers and sisters of Jesus - are any and all who find themselves entering the waters of baptism and centered around the table of communion.
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So what’s the point?
Over the past week we have seen a growing movement of protests and reactions to systemic racism and oppression throughout our country. We have seen the Black Lives Matter conversations brought once again to the forefront of our news cycles. We have seen pain and fear, anger and violence, action and demand.
And we have seen counter-thinking. We have seen those who love to spout off immediately when they hear the chants of “Black Lives Matter!” that instead, “All Lives Matter!”
So the point is this. Our theology must affect our sociology.
Or put more simply, what we believe about God must affect how we love people.
The response that all lives matter seems to be a rallying cry for tempering too much attention on black lives. It seems to be that my white brothers and sisters who want this to be the way protests should happen are crying out for the black voices and those who support the black voices to calm down, realize they’re just a little extreme in their thinking, and not lose sight of the fact that God loves everyone equally.
The problem is this thinking seems to move us away from the kinship of God’s Kingdom.
Let me speak from an Appalachian context. If my cousin’s daughter is hurting - if she is wounded or sick, perhaps hospitalized with some unknown condition - her kin will be there. We will reorient our lives. We will change our schedules, shift our priorities, and be there in proximity with them for as long as it takes. And all along that journey, we will not once say, “Well cousin, we’re here for you, but just remember all of us get sick at times. So make sure as you care for your wounded daughter that you temper that with concern for the rest of us.”
This is ridiculous, isn’t it?
And yet, in the midst of our cultural moment where the Black Lives Matter movement has risen to prominence, this seems to be the common response. I expect this response from conservative pundits. I reject this response from brothers and sisters who follow Christ.
In fact, Jesus seems to carry this theology into the very practice of prayer he teaches his disciples. In Luke, immediately after he demonstrates the Lord’s prayer for them, he says this:
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Luke 11:5-10
Even a friend who wants to ignore the needs of kin cannot because of “shameless audacity”. How much more, Jesus seems to ask, will our Father in heaven invite us to bring our needs to him? And how much more should we, as the kin in the kingdom of God, care for those around us who are wounded?
In passage after passage, Jesus places the idea before us that the singular individual in front of us - the bleeding, wretched, poor, pitiful, weak, wounded, hurting, oppressed - each of them in our direct proximity is our neighbor and is the one we should offer compassion to. And never, not once, does Jesus seem to state that we are called to analyze the needs and conditions of the bleeding, wretched, poor, pitiful, weak, wounded, hurting, oppressed. No, he simply calls us to loving solidarity.
So yes, black lives matter (as if I should even state that). And for those of us - my brothers and sisters who follow Jesus - we are the kin of the kingdom called to stand and embrace the wounded around us. Our theology is meaningless if it doesn’t affect our sociology.