Grieving Ahmaud Arbery

The book of Esther is a portrait of lament. The moment injustice is illuminated–the racist plot by Haman to murder every Jew in the land–grief and lament go public:

When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2 He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3 And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. (Esther 4:1-3 ESV)

At this injustice, Mordecai grieves publicly not privately. He makes visible changes to his clothes, putting on sackcloth and ashes, so people can see his grief. He goes throughout the city with a loud and bitter cry, so people can hear his grief.

Others follow his example. They too grieve publicly not just privately–they change their clothes to sackcloth and ashes; they weep and lament. Later in this same chapter, Esther joins in this open form of grieving.

And at this injustice, Mordecai grieves corporately not just personally. He laments not just for his own suffering–for he too has been targeted by Haman’s racist hate. He laments also for the suffering of all those about to be impacted by Haman’s decree. He sees the injustice against others, not just against himself, and that moves him to grief. We know this because when Esther asks him to explain his grief, he says it is being prompted by “the destruction of the Jews” (Esther 4:7).

This public and corporate grief belongs now as a response to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. In February twenty-five year old Ahmaud, an African American, was murdered while jogging through a Brunswick, GA neighborhood. Greg and Travis McMichael, both white, confronted him with a .357 magnum revolver and a shotgun and shot him. A recently released video online shows the horrific murder in detail.

Ahmaud was murdered on Feb. 23. And only now is a grand jury review being recommended.

Ibram X Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist, tweeted in response, “Sometimes words can’t paint the picture of thoughts, of feelings, of rage, of reckoning again with one’s existence as a Black American–an existence of always being one step away from racist terror, from death.”

The video of the murder appeared online the day after Ida B. Wells was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her documentation of lynching. Ahmaud’s murder echoes the very lynchings Wells lamented. Ahmaud was killed three days before the anniversary of the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed African-American teenager whose confrontation with a Florida neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, helped ignite the Black Lives Matter movement. Andrea Young, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia wrote: “Both incidents are a reminder that white supremacy has been a foundation for our country and leads repeatedly to the targeting and harming people of color, particularly African Americans,”

Such injustice demands justice. And it demands grief. Public, not just private. Corporate, not just personal. Grief that is seen. Grief that is heard. As a nation, as a world, as humans who all share in the image of God, we cannot merely swipe past this injustice on our social media feeds. We cannot minimize it or defend it. We must grieve it. And we must end it.