In whose face do you recognize Christ? Honoring Emmett Till
65 years ago, a 14-year old boy said “bye, baby” to a 21-year-old woman as he walked out of a store. He was black, she was white.
The woman later told her husband that the boy had grabbed her and made lewd advances — she would later admit she lied — and so her husband, along with his brother, kidnapped the boy, stripped him naked, and savagely beat him to death. His body was so mutilated that the police only identified his name — Emmett Till — from the ring he was wearing (his killers were later acquitted). “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness,” the author of Isaiah writes — of Jesus, but also, of Emmett.
Today is the 65th anniversary of Till’s death. We know his name today not because of what happened to him, but because his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, requested an open-casket funeral and called magazines to photograph her son’s face, and her grief, so the world could see.
The photos would help catalyze the civil rights movement and awaken the consciences of white mothers.
Lynching — of Till and of black men today by civilians and police — is perhaps our best modern-day example of what the crucifixion meant during the Roman empire. The Empire chose to crucify people on tall crosses, visible from miles away, to send a message to the public: Don’t mess with the empire.
Similarly, as black liberation theologian James Cone has written, the public lynching of Black Americans in this country was often a public spectacle—newspapers would advertise them, parents would bring their children—for white people to clarify to Black people: Do not even look at us as if we are equals. Both crucifixions and lynchings were meant to terrorize.
But the story of the Cross does not end there. An instrument that was meant to produce death and terror turned into, after three days, a symbol for new life and change. That is the power of the Christian story, of what it means to be Christian: To re-appropriate the tools of darkness and turn them into tools of light.
I believe Mamie Till-Mobley did the same thing: She took the disfiguring marks on her son’s face and held them to the light. She transformed a tool of white terror into a tool for good. By holding her son high, visible for miles across the nation, she forced America to reckon with its domestic terrorism. She forced America to confront how it has disfigured people who bear the image of God. To see, in the bloated, unrecognizable face of her son, the very countenance of Jesus Christ.
As Christians, we are called to recognize Christ in everyone. As the news of injustice and violence continues to hit us, let’s take a moment to pause, to recognize, and to honor Jesus Christ in Jacob Blake; in the bodies of protestors killed; and in all types of suffering and death.