Syncopating, Improvising and Responding to the Call of a Love Supreme (p3)

That is the question isn't it?  How do you follow strange fruit?  We as followers of Christ wrestle with that everyday.  How do we follow strange--unnatural--fruit.  For the loveliest lynchee was our Lord!

Without Sanctuary:  Lynching Photography in America is a pictorial history of lynching.  Each stomach turning page brings home the reality of this form of execution.  Of the hundreds of photo's there are three of a man named Frank Embree that are forever seered into my memory.  He stands stripped bare in the back of a buggy.  Handcuffs on his wrists.  He was only 19 years old though the look in his eyes betrays centuries of suffering as he stands tall trying to maintain his dignity.  The only sign that he is in pain is the slight grimmace of his mouth.  His legs are lacerated on all sides.  Long deep cuts run in all directions over his body.  He has been whipped 105 times.  He is moments away from a humiliating death by hanging in front of a crowd of more than one thousand people.  A final photo shows him stretched out dangling...crooked neck...arms restrained...eyes still open...loin cloth covering.

Writing about a similar picture, one author says, "He had been stripped of all his clothing but what appeared to be a loin cloth positioned below his hip.  The figure was eerily reminiscent of the image of Christ being crucified on the cross."

How do we follow strange fruit?

Comments

[joel]

Brother, I have been reading this and thinking. As a white guy I read the strange fruit as calling for personal repentance. I hesitate to say this only because it seems like a call for me as a white guy. It seems like what follows for an African American would be quite different. . .

The conviction that comes through strange fruit is not unlike the conviction that comes from the law. . . clearly this is NOT the way it is supposed to be. What follows that would be repentance (for me). . . a longing to return to the Lord's table to be reminded of the truth of the gospel.

What's follows it for you? Do you think I am right in seeing different responses?

[jazztheologian]

Joel,
Let me know what you think after a few more posts...Strange fruit is Jesus and we are to be strange fruit as well. Strange Fruit is a call for repentance yes, but on the basis of us not being it ourselves.