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The Theology of Hospitality ˜ 337
White folks, listen. There is only one way to undo the racism that binds us
to violence and death. We must fight the powers and principalities over us and
within us. The battle is for actual equality of power among all of us in American
society.
God calls us to have such a vision. The earth cries out against us, and Abel’s
blood is on our hands. But the cross of Christ empowers us to march together.
Follow the Black Jesus who will give sight to the blind, freedom to the captives,
justice to Rodney King, new life to us all. Our God is in anguish about our
white racism. The Holy Spirit promises each of God’s children forty acres and a
mule (Acts 2 and 4).
Wake up!
The Rent Man, by Ed Loring
A u g u s t 1 9 9 3
The blue man told Barry Burnside and me to leave. “Visiting hours are
over,” mumbled the laconic death-row guard. I hugged Richard Walker goodbye
and moved quickly down the long, cold tunnel to the outside world. The
free-world time was 3:30 p.m. I was in a bit of a hurry, for I was on my way to
Dayspring, the Open Door Community’s retreat farm, for a two-and-a-half-day
respite. I wanted to be on the other side of Atlanta to avoid the terrible rushhour
traffic that clogs the lanes of i-75 North like pig meat clogs the veins of a
two hundred–pound, forty-five-year-old, five-foot-ten-inch man.
When I came out of the prison, I saw two African American women standing
beside their car and peering under the opened hood. Clinging to the skirts
of one of the women were two little boys, ages five and three. As I approached
my car the younger woman turned and asked if I had any jumper cables. “Our
battery went dead while we were in there,” she lamented, and pointed toward
the tons of concertina wire surrounding the entrance to the tunnel.
I said I was not sure but I thought I did. I turned toward the back of the
Open Door car to see if our jumper cables were there. Indeed, they were! I
opened the back of the station wagon and pulled out the jumper cables. Just before
driving our car beside theirs, two fellows pulled up and offered to help the
women. So I gave them the jumper cables, and they attached them to their car.
I stood toward the back of their car and waited while the electrical juice
from one battery flowed through the cables to another. The little boys came
around and peered at me from time to time. Once the older child came close