Justice with Compassion

“…that … we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion….”

Naboth’s vineyard: it’s one of the most terrifying stories in Scripture. How could this story possibly be good news? Really, it’s more like a tragic opera. In the first act, we are introduced to the characters and their relationships with each other. First, there’s poor Naboth, the tragic victim. He has the misfortune to own a vineyard abutting a palace belonging to King Ahab. Naboth and his ancestors have kept the vineyard in their family, as the Law of Moses prescribed, and have worked hard to make it productive. Enter King Ahab. If we are serious opera buffs, we know that Ahab has done more evil than any king before him. Disregarding God’s commandment not to covet another person’s property, Ahab desires Naboth’s ancestral land. For a vegetable garden? When law-abiding Naboth rightly refuses to sell, Ahab goes home and sulks. Enter Ahab’s wily, foreign-born wife Jezebel, who assures Ahab that she has the power to wrest the vineyard from Naboth and give it to Ahab.

The second act is the tragic act. Jezebel misuses the king’s authority and initiates her scheme. Law-abiding Naboth keeps the fast and attends the assembly. The covenant between God and Israel is further set aside, and another commandment is broken, as the scoundrels perjure themselves and give false testimony. On the most questionable evidence, poor innocent Naboth receives the supreme penalty and dies an extremely painful and ignominious death. Triumphant, Jezebel bids the king, who is fully complicit in what has happened, to take possession of the vineyard. Was there anyone even there to weep over Naboth’s death? Perhaps we are the only ones, as we head out to intermission.

It’s a very old story, isn’t it? But we live in a society of laws, and things like that don’t happen anymore. Are you sure? How about this opera? It was 1948. Florida's orange industry was exploding. Citrus barons got rich through the labor of poor African-Americans, who worked under Jim Crow laws, had not been able to vote since the turn of the century, and struggled for justice in a state controlled by whites. The rich planters knew that Sheriff Willis V. McCall would keep order in Lake County. The blacks knew that McCall was a sadistic tyrant. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl said she had been raped by blacks, McCall soon arrested four young African-American men: Ernest Thomas, Charles Greenlee, Samuel Shepherd, and Walter Irvin. Shepherd and Irvin were both veterans of World War II.

Now the tragic act. Thomas was killed as a suspect by a posse after leaving the area. Greenlee, Shepherd, and Irvin were taken to jail and were beaten to force them to confess. Irvin refused to confess falsely. The three surviving men were convicted by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the event; the other two were sentenced to death. A retrial was ordered by the United States Supreme Court after hearing their appeals, led by Thurgood Marshall, who was then working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1951, as a new trial was underway, Sheriff McCall shot both Shepherd and Irvin while they were in his custody. He said they tried to escape. Shepherd died immediately. Irvin told investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood. At the second trial, Irvin was convicted again and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life by the governor in 1955. He was paroled in 1968 and died a year later.

Intermission is over. We now return to Naboth’s vineyard. Will anyone be punished for the death of the innocent Naboth? Naboth wasn’t even cold when Ahab goes to seize his vineyard. Enter the last character: Ahab’s nemesis, the prophet Elijah. Elijah has heard God’s command and confronts Ahab. Elijah names Ahab’s crime and pronounces God’s punishment, a disastrous death, in which dogs will lick Ahab’s and Jezebel’s blood. God is still a God of righteousness, evildoers will be punished, and God’s justice will be served. And as opera buffs know, Ahab died in battle. When his body was brought back to Samaria, the dogs licked his blood, and prostitutes washed themselves in it. Jezebel was thrown out a window of the palace and was trampled to death by horses. Dogs licked her blood as well. Naboth was avenged. We can leave the theater affirming the psalmist’s assertion that God hates “all those who work wickedness.”

Were the deaths and imprisonment of the Groveland Four, as the men in Lake County, Florida came to be called, ever avenged? Sheriff McCall was investigated numerous times on civil rights violations but was never convicted.

So here’s another story. The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its citizens than any other first-world country. A disproportionately high number of those imprisoned are poor and African American or Latino. Thirty-one states, including Ohio, have the death penalty. Anthony Ray Hinton, an African American, was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area in 1985. Bullets that the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home were the only evidence against him. There were no fingerprints. Neither was there eyewitness testimony linking Hinton to the murders. Even so, Hinton was sent to death row. Two years ago, after years of appeals by his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial. A year ago, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded that the bullets from the robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Two months shy of his 59th birthday, Hinton was finally a free man. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, he was the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row. Many of those 152 people owe their lives to the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Ohio Innocence Project, and other similar organizations.

Given that you are more likely to be condemned to death if you are poor, African American, or Latino, is it time for the U.S. to rethink the death penalty? Is it time for Ohio to set aside the death penalty? We profess to be followers of one who was condemned to death on the testimony of false witnesses, and who was executed by the state. Is it time for us as Christians to work for the abolition of the death penalty? Admittedly, Christians do differ on this issue. However, the Episcopal Church has been unequivocally against the death penalty since 1959. At General Convention last year, deputies and bishops passed a resolution that reaffirmed our longstanding call to put an end to the death penalty. The resolution also encouraged us to lobby our respective state governments to support legislation to abolish the death penalty, and directed bishops to appoint task forces of clergy and lay people to develop a witness to eliminate the death penalty. In Oklahoma, Bishop Robert Moody has asked parishes to ring bells at 6 p.m. on days of executions, or hang black drapery on an outside door, or tie ribbons around trees or utility poles. "I recognize that Christian men and women differ on this issue," he said. "However, as your bishop, I ask you to prayerfully address this issue anew. For me, I have concluded that capital punishment contributes nothing that betters our society, and I cannot imagine our Lord condoning capital punishment."

And we Episcopalians are not alone. Since its first official statement on the issue in 1959, reaffirmed again in 1977 and 1978, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has opposed the death penalty. In 1956, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed legislation officially declaring the church’s opposition to the death penalty. In 1980 and 2000, the UMC passed resolutions reaffirming its opposition and encouraging its membership to advocate for the abolition of capital punishment. Although the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church sanctions the use of the death penalty as a last resort, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has repeatedly called for the abolition of capital punishment in the United States in all circumstances. If you’ve seen the 1995 film, “Dead Man Walking,” you know about the work of Sr. Helen Prejean CSJ. Through her organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, Sr. Helen has worked tirelessly to save the condemned and bring about abolition of the death penalty, which she calls “one of the great moral issues facing our country.”

So like the story of Naboth, many of our contemporary operas do not end happily. We weep both for the innocent victims and for the accused. We weep most especially for those who are falsely accused and spend countless wasted years on death row, often receiving little compensation or support when they are finally released.

And yet, we are people of faith. We trust in God. We trust that God’s justice will triumph. We trust that good will triumph over evil. We remember that we are an Easter people, and we trust that life triumphs over death. We work to bring the good news of God’s victory to others, as we also work to change unjust structures that bring about injustice and death. We pray, as followers of the one who was crucified and raised, that we might be in the vanguard of those working for justice with compassion.