I was standing at the register in Walmart, wrapping up some shopping for a church event. Two employees came up to the cashier. Only two words — “They’re outside” — were needed for the cashier, and me, to know exactly what was going on.
Earlier in the week, we’d all heard reports that Customs and Border Protection agents were moving out of Chicago and headed to Charlotte; it was confirmed later in the week when CBP said they’d be here for a limited and targeted operation. Few, myself included, believed they would limit the scope and breadth of their actions.
Saturday morning came with reports of CBP agents in several parts of town, including South Charlotte and East Charlotte. Of particular concern was the Central Avenue corridor, where I happen to live and not so far from the Walmart where I shopped. East Charlotte and Central Avenue are also home to an especially large and vibrant Latin American community, including families and students (Eastway Middle is one of the most internationally diverse in the city), the city’s Latin American advocacy and support organization, small businesses, and individual entrepreneurs just trying to scrape by and build a life for themselves and their families off whatever money they make as street-side vendors.
I finished paying and walked out of Walmart, my eyes peeled for any sight of CBP. I didn’t see them at first, but as I made my way up the parking lot aisle a loud SUV with blacked-out windows and an out-of-state tag drove by a little too fast for comfort. I knew immediately it was them. I could just sense it. I looked back and a whole line of five or six other SUVs was coming up behind them.
I didn’t immediately know what to do or how to react. What could I do? What power did I have in that moment to stop these misguided people from going on about their work targeting, scaring, and scarring the lives of my neighbors?
Only a few seconds had gone by, but it felt like forever.
Finally, I raised my hand with middle finger extended and repeatedly shouted “Shame!”
Perhaps the middle finger was too much, I quickly thought. Maybe this is not the most polite or “Christian” thing to do. But it was, in the moment, the only thing in my immediate power I could think to do to express what I was feeling inside.
Two SUVs passed. And then another, this time with windows rolled down with men in camouflage, faces covered, hanging out the passenger-side windows.
“Have a nice day,” they exclaimed.
Two other SUVs passed by.
The same camo-clad, face-covered men.
The same exhortation:
“Have a nice day!”
I shuddered inside. Tears welled up. A righteous anger began rising. What did my neighbors — so many of them poor and, just like me and the rest of us, trying to eke out a life for themselves and their families — do to deserve the treatment they’re receiving at the hands of my government?
I had done only what I could in that moment, safely of course, because these men weren’t looking for white men who looked like me. Armed only with white privilege, citizenship, and the First Amendment (though the latter two are increasingly losing their cachet), I had registered my displeasure and imparted a word of “shame” that I can only hope these men hear everywhere they go. Given enough time, as more and more people express their indignation, perhaps the weight of their consciences or, we can pray, the movement of the Holy Spirit, will finally convict them of the evil, imago Dei-destroying nature of the work they’re about in the world.
Evil likes to hide.
It works in the dark.
It covers and hides its faces.
It smiles and offers a deceptively cheerful “Have a nice day.”
But evil can and should be exposed, called out, and confronted, so that its deadly machinations can be revealed to its perpetrators and so that justice might be done.
In Acts 16:35-39, we’re told about Paul’s and Silas’s arrest in Philippi and how Paul confronted the shameful (and illegal) behavior of his captors:
When morning came, the magistrates sent the police, saying, “Let those men go.” And the jailer reported the message to Paul, saying, “The magistrates sent word to let you go; therefore come out now and go in peace.” But Paul replied, “They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Romans, and have thrown us into prison, and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.” The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Romans, so they came and apologized to them. And they took them out and asked them to leave the city.
Paul, a Roman citizen illegally detained, demanded that his captors be confronted with the shamefulness of their behavior. He insisted that the wrongs done to him in secret be exposed to the light of day. He expected, as we should expect when we or others are wronged, that those who had done what was wrong, what was illegal, what was shameful stand before him and apologize for their wrongdoing. Under the weight of their own consciences, they did just that — apologizing to Paul and sending him and Silas along their way.
As Paul and Silas left prison, his Roman captors didn’t share a “Have a nice day.”Instead, they apologized and attempted to make right on what they had done wrong. So far, the Rome of our day is failing this same test. CBP agents and the administration that commands them are offering no apologies in Charlotte this weekend, just as they’ve offered no apologies wherever CBP or ICE actions have disrupted communities across the nation.
But, you and me and our neighbors, we, as Paul did for himself and Silas, can stand in the gap. Where our neighbors cannot take the same stand as Paul, we can step up and speak out. We can register our displeasure — however small and insignificant it seems at the time — and demand that those who vandalize the imago Dei in our neighbors be confronted with the wrongs they are perpetrating.
There will come a day when we all stand before a throne much larger and more powerful than that in the Rome of Paul’s day and the Rome of our own time. When we are asked what we did to fulfill our Messiah’s mission what will we say? I hope that you, like me, can say we did everything in whatever power we had to fulfill it:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Postscript: On the same day I saw Customs and Border Protection at Walmart, many other reports were made of CBP’s actions and arrests around Charlotte, including a report by The Charlotte Observer of an action at a local church. Church members had gathered on a Saturday to do groundskeeping work, only to be met by federal agents who sent them scrambling. Though the church leaders knew about potential CBP actions, they assumed their normal stewardship was of no concern. They were wrong. A 15-year-old member of the church remarked, “We thought church was safe and nothing gonna happen. But it did happen.”
