One boring afternoon as a teenager, I was channel surfing and stumbled upon a wildlife documentary that stopped me in my tracks. A herd of zebras was congregating adjacent to a brush harbor when a lion inadvertently detected them from a distance and slowly made its way toward the zebras in stealth mode. Suddenly the lion leaped into the foreground causing one baby zebra to panic and in a matter of seconds, the lion tracked the confused zebra and initially snared the young mammal with the claws in its paws. Almost immediately, as if driven by nature, the lion pounced on the zebra, and just when I thought it would brutally maul the zebra, killing it instantly, the lion opened its mouth extremely wide, and lunged for the zebra’s neck, using its four long canines as a vice grip, completely encompassing the zebra’s neck, and then waited patiently for the life to slowly seep out of the young mammal. The lion was neither in a frenzy of rage, nor out of control; it was content allowing the zebra to attempt to reposition itself so it could breathe, if not free itself, but the lion had mastered its hunting technique, effectively putting  a chokehold on the zebra to precisely rob it of the ability to breathe.

The other zebras watched in horror from a safe distance away —both terrified and mesmerized by the torture of one of their own. They snorted and brayed at the lion as if to curse at it for killing in cold blood, but the lion simply looked at them nonchalantly and casually while its canines suffocated its victim. Slowly but surely the zebra’s movements lessened and finally the young mammal went limp, a victim of a calculating predator that was addicted to the thrill of striking terror and killing its prey deliberately and methodically.

Fast forward many decades later to May 25, 2020, and the recording of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s behavior as he confronted George Floyd revealed that it is quite possible, Chauvin  may have watched some of the same wildlife documentaries on lions hunting their prey in his lifetime. What the videos show is a predator neither out of control, nor accidentally killing George Floyd, but one who had become well-acquainted with modes of torturing and dehumanization. His facial expressions gave away that this methodology of policing was not new for him; and indeed, PBS NewsHour did some digging, and their investigators uncovered firsthand accounts from the victims in six cases where the Attorney General had concluded that Derek Chauvin had used excessive force. Just as the lion uses its power to inflict terror in order to legitimize its supremacy in the animal kingdom, on May 25, 2020, we saw a man comfortable weaponizing his badge, his gun, and his blue uniform to terrorize a community. This is simply how Derek Chauvin operated.

However, due to circumstances beyond his control, the trial lay bare for all to see, the damage to the blue wall of solidarity that normally would be able to withstand any pressure that would present itself on the rare occasion that an officer was forced to defend their actions in court. For some reason, this time the blue wall collectively threw one of its own under the bus, as multiple members of the law enforcement from the Minneapolis Police Department stated in no uncertain terms that using a knee-on-the-neck choke-hold for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds was not a part of any sanctioned police training. I watched horrified as multiple recorded videos showed how those officers treated George Floyd’s body like it was an animal, and it took me all the way back to my teenage years watching documentaries of lions hunting and asphyxiating their prey.

For many of us, this brutal execution was a replay of a bad recording spun over and over. Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Fred Hampton, Robert Hoyt, Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sylville Smith, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and the list goes on. Let’s not forget the lynchings of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Rosewood massacre; the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre; the Orangeburg massacre, the Wilmington, DE race riot, and so many others where law enforcement often comingled with members of the community to use violence on black and brown bodies. Different names, familiar narratives. And yet at the same time, I think that a growing segment of the population has sensed that something different occurred in this killing that separates this moment in time from others.

When I saw the video of George Floyd’s murder, I asked God to show me in a profound way what is going on here. Help us understand this sickening phenomenon . . . not  just this killing, but this runaway train of state-sanctioned senseless violence that privileges law enforcement to terrorize with impunity as long as they can say they feel threatened —whether a threat exists or not. How does your Holy Word Jehovah, written thousands of years ago, enlighten and empower us in this moment? What are the dynamics at play which have brought us to this moment and keep us stuck in this space of reoccurring police brutality combined with no accountability? As men and women of faith, how can we get more folks to see that all lives can’t matter until black lives matter? Whether or not the agenda of white supremacy is ever permanently nullified or not, what are the strategies that can neutralize if not overturn evil’s obsession with violating black and brown bodies?

In asking these questions from God, like Jacob wrestling with the angel and refusing to let go until the angel blessed him, God blessed me with one word: scapegoat. I took that one word and crafted a sermon, and by the end of the sermon, God had given me the template for this publication. This then is the goal of From Scapegoats to Lambs: How God’s Word Speaks to George Floyd’s Murder. God may allow all manner of evil to persist, but simultaneously, God delights in equipping men and women of faith with the tools to triumph over evil even in death.

Chapter One teases out the juxtaposition of how the death of George Floyd and its aftermath serve as flashpoints that have ushered in a distinct Kairos moment, catalyzing a movement that still persists a year later, and that his death and the aftermath are inextricably tied to the legacies of police brutality in America specifically, and the legacy of the dehumanization of black and brown bodies systemically. In the weeks and months that followed this murder, the needle has moved, the veil has been lifted to some degree, the paradigm has shifted, and the landscape has changed. For a variety of reasons, the death of George Floyd has become an unmistakable fault line in the annals of history such that I believe scholars will look back one day and compare and contrast how we looked at police brutality before George Floyd and now after George Floyd. At the same time, by tying George Floyd’s death to the larger legacy of dehumanization of black and brown bodies, the narrative is driven home that what happened is much bigger than one man and one murder, and why the power of his one death is immeasurable when it is connected to a past with roots that run centuries deep.

Chapter Two details the theological history and significance of scapegoating by looking into the significance of the Jewish festival called Yom Kipper, mining through the exegetical insights of Leviticus 16, and tracking how some scholars value its connections to ancient Near Eastern narratives outside the Bible, while others have found the underpinning of scapegoating in the OT narrative of Joseph’s brothers kidnapping and selling him as a slave in Genesis 37: 12-36. In this way, we begin to examine the roots of communal scapegoating in the Bible to set the foundation for seeing whether those same dynamics are at play today.

Chapter Three looks at the violent scapegoating of a suffering servant, by doing a deep dive into the nature of interpreting Isaiah 53 from the realization of oppression heaped upon an individual by a community and how such realization transforms who the facilitators of oppression are and how the world sees the oppressed. It is in the Suffering Servant motif that the notion of redemptive suffering finds resonance in the African American experience of marginalization and dehumanization by the other yet finding validation and empowerment through the suffering in a way that exposes the wickedness of the perpetrators of violence and makes known the sovereignty of the Almighty to redeem those deemed unworthy.

Chapter Four looks at the ministry of Jesus as told in the four gospels and chronicles how from just after His birth, until His death, Jesus is compelled to address the scapegoat narrative. I compare how the purpose, and persona of each of the four gospels' writings influence how they portray the way Jesus deals with scapegoating, and in so doing, gives us strategies and examples for how we can address scapegoating today.

Chapter Five attempts to connect the dots between the scapegoating dynamics between Joseph and his brothers, Leviticus 16, Isaiah 53, and scapegoating in the gospels with the vicious communal scapegoating in the form of George Floyd’s murder. I contend that in death George Floyd triumphed over evil as his death became a community sacrifice, transforming him from a defeated scapegoat to a victorious lamb.

Chapter Six is a tribute to the father of the Scapegoat Mechanism, Rene Girard. His two works largely dedicated to the subject, The Scapegoat, and Violence and the Sacred are briefly analyzed and then I attempt to use my customized, hood hermeneutic to both support and challenge his ethos.

Chapter Seven is the flushing out of —now that we know how scripture speaks to our current context in very profound ways—what do we do about it? Will communal recognition, shaming, and neutralization of oppressive scapegoating help us advance as a human race? This final chapter teases out a Lamb motif that takes us from reactionary protest to strategic, empowering protest that will position us to open more eyes and pull down strongholds. Is the persistence of racism in the form of white supremacy something that white folks alone must address, or if not, what can we do to access power as victims of violent scapegoating, to move us toward a more sacred definition of community?

This book is for people looking for a moral compass to help make sense out of the chaos, to illuminate hidden truths, and to guide them through these turbulent times as the world dares to confront in a significant way, the dehumanization of black and brown bodies head-on. As my cousin, Milton Taylor told me, “The planet is reeling,” as so many are now (finally) realizing the severity of racism in our global community, finally beginning to assess the depth of its stranglehold in our culture, our way of life. From Scapegoats to Lambs is a book that attempts to understand the addiction of violating marginalized communities and provide compelling explanations for our plight specifically as it relates to state-sponsored violence by law enforcement. As a preacher, public policy advisor and now as church planter/pastor, I have always been driven to uncover how divine revelation can speak to current circumstances in profound ways, that we may press our way forward grounded in Holy Scripture. My goal is for this book to show how the Bible sheds valuable light on the dynamics behind the legacy of dehumanizing black and brown people, especially as it relates to police brutality. At the same time, it is a clarion call for black and brown people to move beyond calling out racism, to positioning ourselves to be agents of transformation, that God would show us how to be change agents, used by God to turn evil’s agenda on its head and convert chaos into God’s global community.

In February 1991, after some reflection, Lerone Bennett Jr. of Ebony Magazine wrote: “The voices of the past speak to us personally, calling us by name, asking us what have we done, and what we are prepared to do to ensure that the slaves, activists, and martyrs, did not dream and die in vain? . . . Speaking to us, warning us, telling us, how they got over and what we must do to overcome . . . We must relate these images to the challenges and opportunities of our own lives, or we shall learn nothing, and remember nothing.”