“If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends.

You talk to your enemies." -- Mother Teresa

Four Oakland, California police officers were killed this weekend, an event that we cannot help but react to. It is the type of thing that needs to be written about and commented on.

That this happened is another sign that in case we thought otherwise, we of course still have a long way to go in the area of race relations in this country, only this time, in a sense, the shoe is on the other foot,with four police officers shot for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oakland, you may remember, is the same city in which a police officer was caught on a cell phone video, shooting an unarmed civilian point blank as he lay handcufffed on the ground, with horrified passengers at a rail station looking on. This led to street protests and a renewed call from the public for police to be held accountable for their actions and a new dialogue to be opened between City Hall – the mayor of Oakland is, ironically enough, black – the police department, and the citizens of Oakland.

This all brings back so many other past transgressions committed by both police officers and members of the communities in which they work that it leaves one speechless and full of anger and frustration (the Rodney King beatings; the Detroit race riots of the ‘60’s; the killing of immigrant Amadou Diallo; and the list goes on.) And meanwhile, in the midst of all of this, four families deal with a loss that cannot be understood by anyone who hasn’t experienced it; instantaneous, brutal, random.

If you’re not familiar with the details of the news story, I urge you to read this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29816667/ for several reasons. First, I find this surprising, but most news sources I’ve read got this one right in my opinion, because there’s no immediate mention of Lovelle Mixon’s race; neither was the race of the officers involved listed in the initial articles.

And yet it is a case about race, for obvious reasons. Mixon was black; the four officers shot were all white. You can’t help but notice this from the photos shown. The shooting occurred in an area of Oakland that, according to news stories, is a black neighborhood. And a neighborhood in which residents are open about the fact they don’t trust police; even though area residents knew where Mixon was hiding after the initial shooting, they didn’t tell police where he was holed up, and police had to spend an hour barricading a neighborhood to find him.

My current interest in writing about this news story is not only about race relations. From a broader perspective, I need to say all this:

A few weeks ago I was reading in I Corinthians, and came across a passage about spiritual gifts, specifically speaking in tongues and the gift of prophecy, and about the edification of the Church: “…he who prophesies edifies the church” Paul writes, and “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.” These were from Chapter 14, if you’re interested, a chapter that gets little notice, especially seeing how it comes after Chapter 13 -- the Love Chapter,the one so often read at weddings.

Paul’s emphasis on prophecy in this passage struck me. Several things began to gel in my mind and heart, I think, over the past month or so, and it has felt as if God has been telling me something about the church I attend, the Church around the World, our roles in society, and my role in our local congregation.

Prophecy is one of those things we think we understand so we don’t study it. Or maybe it doesn’t even seem relevant enough to warrant our attention, something we don’t think really applies to us in the 21st century.

I think we’ve got it all wrong. That seems apparent to me when I study the early church shown in Paul’s writing. We have little prophetic voice in the church. We have no one holding our community, our church leaders, accountable for their actions.

I’m writing more about all of this soon, so I’ll only add that I’m learning that any voice that stands up to take to task injustice in the community is a prophetic voice.

And part of that prophetic voice could be this blog.

So what does this have to do with Oakland, California, a community 2500 miles away from me, stuck at the same crossroads it was at a month ago, three months ago, decades ago?

I am an outsider to California, but an insider to human nature and several things felt very clear as I read about what had happened: that all tragedy happens for a reason;
that the U.S. as a community has much to learn from what happened in California, if we seek truth, if we seek the will of God in all this; that the citizens of Oakland, California, while not responsible for the individual actions of Lovelle Mixon, are at the same time responsible for the myriad of actions and the conditions that led them to the place they find themselves in.

Consider: a multitude of people within that community knew he had an AK-47 (I’m not a convicted felon, but I do know it’s the kind of thing you can’t get on your own – there’s a supplier and a buyer – and it isn’t the sort of thing you can hide); they knew he had a handgun, knew he was a convicted felon, knew he was not allowed, by law, to own or even possess those weapons; the community refused to assist police in finding him, even when, by their own admission, residents knew where he was (this was taken from published news interviews in which residents stated this very thing); that family members knew he was struggling with depression – again, by their own admission – and yet still allowed him to be alone with a handgun and an assault rifle.

The problem now becomes this: a tiny percentage of residents of Oakland – perhaps 5% -- have led Oakland to this situation by their own inaction. By their refusal to address what should have been addressed, refusal to stop what could have been stopped. A simple call to the police would have prevented him from owning an AK-47. It’s the sort of weapon meant for mass destruction, not protection, and the kind of weapon police are most anxious to get off the streets. It would have been easy to find.

So this 5% has put an entire city back on a knife blade, teetering on the brink of either starting back at square one trying to open a dialogue with police, or instead toppling into anarchy, into further, harsher street violence, into another hard crackdown from an angered police department who will deliver justice on their own terms. And they will deliver, we all know this from past experience. If the citizens of Oakland in these communities rampant with violence and drugs are unwilling to open up to the idea of dialogue to fix the problems everyone knows are there – problems that poke their ugly heads out in news stories like this latest one – the police will come up with their own way to ‘fix’ the problems they see, and these fixes won’t be pretty or nice.

What I do know of human nature, too, is that people need control and if they feel out of control, they will take it in whatever form they can. If one police officer is gunned down, someone will be held accountable. The killer will be found. If the community is not willing to help, the police will resort to whatever means necessary to find the person.

If a group of police officers is gunned down like this, there is now a situation where the police feel out of control. Holding one person accountable – even if only one is responsible – isn’t enough. It isn’t fair. It’s a ratio of one to four.

This is all especially true in a situation where people could be perceived as culpable. People knew where Mixon was holed up; they said nothing. Two MORE police lives could potentially have been spared had someone stood up to give the police the information they needed.

(Note that I am not condoning a police overreaction; I am only saying it's most likely coming, if Oakland doesn't work proactively with their police department.)

So then the question becomes: what control can the police get back? With the equilibrium disturbed, how can things be brought back into balance?

It appears the only route available for Oakland to take is through dialogue. If the community has the courage to own up to its problems and take the inevitable criticism that will come, change could happen. It’s a big if, but it’s the only avenue left. Without that dialogue, without critical discussion, humans are no more than animals.

The Christian community needs to pray for this kind of dialogue in Oakland to take place; it also needs to encourage and listen to whatever prophetic voice from within its congregations or even from the outside might stand up to speak truth. And it needs to pray for the courage to listen to that voice and act.

We are all accountable to and for one another; perhaps that’s the most important thing to be learned from Oakland.