Pieta by Tylonn J. Sawyer
The guilty verdicts in the George Floyd murder trial brought a momentary sense of relief and vindication that it is possible to achieve a measure of justice in a case involving the police killing of an unarmed Black man. Yet there is also the realization that the struggle for justice in such cases is far from over. While we will have to wait to see if this week’s verdict signals a new era in the policing of Black bodies and Black communities, we do not have to wait to see what is at stake in this and many similar cases for those of us who claim a faith revealed in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The very first chapter of the Bible includes the following verses that form the foundation for the God given value of each and every human life:
Genesis 1: 26-27
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
27 So God created humankind in God’s image,
in the image of God, God created them;
male and female God created them.
The ongoing struggle for racial justice is the struggle to see every person as made in the image of God, especially those who have been marginalized and stigmatized by the social construct of racism. Since the murder of George Floyd on May 25 of last year, the horrific images of the last nine minutes of his life have been shown countless times. Those images are so disturbing because of the casual violence in which a white police officer degrades the humanity of a Black man while in the process of killing him.
The image posted above shares a different image focused on the inherent humanity of Black people. The Pieta by artist Tylonn J. Sawyer makes a powerful and immediate connection between the state sanctioned killing of Jesus and the police killings of innocent Black people. It also draws a direct parallel between the suffering of Jesus’ mother Mary and the suffering of Black mothers who have lost children to police brutality. Until the striking image of the Black Pieta becomes a relic of our nation’s past, the struggle for racial justice continues. We can be grateful for steps along the way such as this week’s verdicts, but we cannot mistake such a step for the end of the journey.