Isaiah 61:1–4, 8–10; Psalm 133; 2 Corinthians 2:14–16; Mark 14:3–9

A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church

In the name of the One who waded in the waters of Miryam’s womb, walked the way of suffering as one of the woman-born, and woke from the grasp of death in the deep darkness of the morning. Amen.

To be black in this country is to be marked for death. We are more likely to be killed by police, in encounters with police, by civilians acting as police, than any other people in this country. We are more likely to be shot while unarmed, shot in our homes, shot in our beds, shot in the face, shot in the back, shot while running away, shot as children playing with toys. We are marked for death.

Our text from Isaiah says: God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed… What is the good news to a people who are marked for death? Can there be any good news for any of us if some of us are marked for death, for marked sacrifice upon the altars of white supremacy? There are traditions here and on the mainland, of cultures in which human sacrifice was performed to satiate bloodthirsty gods. Traditions in which the narrative of blood soaked peace and prosperity was created on a foundation of blood and bone. We say, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots;” expecting that some will have to die and others kill in order to secure the American dream for the rest, or at least for some.

In some cases the human sacrifices are voluntary; persons conditioned to believe the myth step up and lay down their lives. Others are conscripted, seemingly always from the lower classes, from those with fewer options as we saw during the Vietnam war when black troops were used disproportionately as cannon fodder; they were marked for death. Yet there are some very few who offer their lives as a sacrifice for others, who choose death when they would rather choose life, to save the life of someone else. And yet still other human sacrifices are the toll empire takes on its subjects; there are always some human sacrifices made to and by Empire who are marked for death from their birth, individuals and whole peoples. Babies in Gaza are born being marked for death if they even manage to survive their mother’s womb. What is the good news to a people who are marked for death?

Centuries before Mary’s scandalous Child walked the Earth as the son of God, an unknown prophet writing in the name of Isaiah proclaimed:

The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me,
because the Holy God has anointed me.
God has sent me to declare good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberation to the captives,
and freedom to the prisoners;
to proclaim a year of the Most High God’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God…

Jesus and the prophet writing in Isaiah’s name each felt the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Ghost, pouring over them, seeping into them, filling up every empty and shallow place in their being for one purpose: to preach the good news of the death of empire and the oppression it brings and to do more than preach, to begin the work of dismantling empire from the bottom up, starting with their words.

The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me

Like the oil poured onto Aaron’s head running down his beard and down his neck onto the collar of his robes in the psalm.

The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me

Like the oil the unnamed woman in today’s gospel poured over Jesus’s head, oil worth tens of thousands of dollars or a smallish mainland house or a working person’s whole year’s salary.

The Spirit of the Sovereign God is upon me

Like a wave pouring over the rocks in the lagoons up and down the makai side of the Ke Ala Hele Makalae Path.

because the Holy God has anointed me

An anointing more precious than any any woman or man could ever buy or make because God anointed them herself with herself to speak her word in words of liberation, freedom and rebuke.

They were not called to hurl themselves into the gaping bloody jaws of the empire – though their words could land them there, nor were they called to start an armed rebellion; though many wars would be fought “for the sake of the gospel” as an excuse to enslave, colonize and steal land and resources – but they were called to speak a word, a word of power and liberation, and a word of rebuke as Sonya Massey did before her murder.

Our nation heard a word of rebuke this week when some of us looked back to the murder of Emmett Till on the anniversary of his birth, a black boy lynched by white men on the lie of a white woman, while listening to the final words of Sonya Massey, a black woman who called the police because she thought she heard a prowler, and was shot in the face by a white police officer with a history of killing black women, drunk driving, an unstable history with previous police positions and the military. He never should’ve been in that position but the empire looked at him and saw a useful servant to do its work. And when Sonya Massey rebuked him in the name of Jesus with some few of her precious last words before joining the prophets and martyrs, she also rebuked the mechanisms of oppression that leave black folk terrified to call the police, that allow officers to lie with impunity and face no penalty, to claim “fear” for their lives in any circumstance, even while shooting someone in the back or grinding their face into the dirt with a knee upon their neck.

Like the good news the anonymous prophet would preach and later the gospel Jesus would proclaim, Sonya Massey’s rebuke is just words, but words ring through the ages and stir the heart and grant courage and raise their heads of the bowed down and straightens the backs of the oppressed and move the feet of the enslaved and sometimes, just sometimes, bow the heads of their oppressors in shame.

And yet and still, Sonya Massey is dead. No matter how much power I or others find in her final proclamation, words are not enough. And yet this anonymous prophet and Jesus were anointed and appointed, called to speak words, to prophesy and rebuke – in the face of the marauding militarized policing forces of the Babylonians and of the Romans. And at the same time, every day some mother’s child lay dead and stayed dead while they preached, proclaimed, prophesied their words. And folk could rightly say words are not enough in the face of this carnage just as “thoughts and prayers” are not enough in the face of our self-inflicted national carnage where we sacrifice our children at the bloody altar of the Second Amendment words of slaveholders – words that are not scripture yet are treated as though God set them down in stone – while ignoring the actual words of scripture. Words are not enough!

And yet, four hundred and twenty years of African bodies stacked up like cordwood and sinking as monuments to the ocean floor, centuries of lynching, ongoing still, and folk kept speaking, keep speaking, words of freedom, words of liberation and words of rebuke. Sometimes a word is enough.

My ancestors in Texas never heard of the Emancipation Proclamation. That was by design. They were held in bondage along with thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of others not knowing that their cousins up north were already free – a freedom that would soon prove to be treacherous. But when they heard the word they, walked themselves to their own liberation. There were a few Union troops in Galveston accompanying the announcement but it was not they who liberated the people; it was the people themselves once they heard the good news, the word of liberation that we just celebrated on Juneteenth. Their blood too, and the blood of all those sacrificed in the American slavocracy also waters the tree of liberty whose shade was never intended for all of us. They were marked for death.

Jesus was marked for death for taking up the mantle of the prophet in Isaiah and proclaiming freedom, liberation and rebuking the empire that would kill him but that would also die its own bloody death. And Jesus was marked for death by the woman who anointed him with oil. She was preparing him for a death that had already been decided by those who called him too dangerous to live. She made visible the cost of preaching this gospel, of living this gospel, a cost Jesus was willing to bear to break the back of the empire’s bloody threat. Now death no longer has the final word. Not even a horrific gruesome murderous death at the hands of the police or occupying forces in Jerusalem, in Babylon, in Gaza, in Illinois or even in Hawaii, past or present.

Jesus, who was marked for death, came to deliver us all from the oppression that holds us captive and the oppression we participate in. And woe unto the architects of oppression, for the word in Isaiah also prophesied the coming vengeance of God: a year of the Most High God’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God. Those who do not heed the rebuke of God will be subject to the vengeance of God.

How can anyone remain silent at such a time as this? Choose your words and choose carefully. Though our words are not enough, for some of us they are all we have. And God is able to take those words and the souls of those who uttered them with their last breath and weave a tapestry of salvation, redemption and justice. And those who were once marked for death will be marked for eternal life. Amen.