The Trayvon Martin case touches home for me. It's not because I'm black. I'm not. It's not because I'm a teenager. I'm no longer a teenager for many years now. It's not because of the clothes I wear. I don't own a hoodie. It's not for where I live. I live in a very liberal area right now.
But his story, a story I've seen all too often, is us. Because we're HUMAN. Trayvon Martin is us in the deepest sense of what it means to be human. But I KNOW that I will NEVER know what it means to be so different than me. I know I'll NEVER be pulled over for "driving while black" in the "wrong" neighborhood.
Privilege and power are UNSEEN and therefore unacknowledged. And as long as my white Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) friends refuse to "see" this reality of privilege, we'll continue to see this internal church blindness.
But we are ALL created in the image of God. We ALL possess the imago dei. Ephesians 2 and Revelation 5 both attest to the universal reality of Christ's work.
If I may, let me be a bit poetic:
When I look beyond my ken
I see a people not my kin
they seem different they do
sometimes seeing what is new
and when I see You becoming us
it only leads me to discuss
what it really means to be
you and me, we and us.
