Dispatches from Youth Culture, No. 5
“A riot is the
language of the unheard.”
—Martin
Luther King
My cellphone chimed at the baggage
claim at Baltimore’s BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport a few weeks ago. Having heard that I was traveling through Maryland’s
largest city on the way to a conference in New Jersey, friends and loved ones
were texting me, urging me to be careful and stay safe in light of what they
were hearing on the news.
This
was April 27th, the night of the worst unrest in the aftermath of the death of Freddie
Gray while in police custody. As it
happened, my flight landed just as events in Baltimore neighborhoods were
unfolding on the T.V. screens of America.
But BWI
sits several miles south of town, and I was lodging closer to D.C. that night anyway,
so my itinerary didn’t call for me to go into Baltimore and I didn’t see
anything firsthand. I was able to stay
“safe” without even trying.
In
fact, my only occasions for being inside the city limits were on trains to and
from the conference. Since most of
Amtrak’s passage through downtown is underground, I couldn’t see any evidence
of unrest, other than some helicopters in the late-morning sky on Tuesday.
That
second night, though, I heard from someone who had been an
eyewitness. Attending our seminar was a
pastor who had grown up in Baltimore and had felt God tugging at his heart that
he needed to go into the city to be a pastoral presence amid the unrest Monday
night. By the time he addressed our gathering
of youth workers the day after, he had been awake for about 48 hours, having
spent all of Monday night in the city, hearing people out, coming alongside
them as a servant of the God who cares for his sheep (John 21:17). He must have been exhausted when he spoke to
us, but he led an incredible time of reflection on what had happened and the root
justice issues involved.
If
I’m honest with myself, my reaction to passing through Baltimore on the train
included a nervous watchfulness, wondering how long the station-stop would last. This was my “safety” impulse—possibly an
outgrowth of a desire to live life and do ministry without having to take risks,
not really encountering injustice firsthand or wrestling with real issues. It’s the same impulse I felt in the Egyptian
countryside several years ago, confronted with abject, majority-world poverty
for the first time in my adult life: get me out of here, back where it’s safe.
In
the church of suburban America, it’s easy to retreat inside the walls of a
building, never dealing with the realities that God’s people face on the street
and in the schools every day—racism, oppression, poverty, and other forms of injustice. To paraphrase Steve Fitzhugh, a youth speaker
and former NFL player I heard as a teen, we can live our Christian lives
and chill with our Christian friends and our Christian family
members, listen to our Christian radio, drive our Christian car,
roll up our Christian windows . . . and drive directly past the Kingdom
of God.
That’s the easy route. And some days as a Christ-follower, I’m
tempted to play it as safe as possible: put a smile on, say something about
God’s love, send everybody home with surface-level happiness—without really inquiring
about the things that really matter in kids’ lives, the burdens they carry, the hurt and frustration that often comes with being a teen in 21st-century
America. It’s an un-risky approach,
perhaps even vaguely “religious”—but almost completely irrelevant for real kids
with real struggles, and not at all reflective of a God who stepped into our
world as one of us to prove how well he understands our condition.
Teens,
as Kenda Creasy Dean might remind us, are looking for something transcendent,
some sign of hope in a world that often feels and looks hopeless. As Christ-followers, we’re invited to get off
the train—to understand the realities of our broken world, whether it’s on the
streets of Baltimore or in the hallways of Clark County’s schools—just like
Jesus got off the train for us, risk and all (Phil. 2:6–7).
In my life, I want
more of that Baltimore pastor’s boldness—to follow where the Holy Spirit leads,
even into places and spaces that aren’t smiley or churchy at all but where real
people live—where kids are crying out to know that they’re heard and that they
belong, that someone cares about what they have to say. That’s the other impulse I felt at Penn
Station, Baltimore, and what I feel on the days when God breaks through my need
for security: what would God do with me if I had the guts to get off the train and
just listen?
