How Shall I Make Expiation?

FAMINE CRACKED the earth, causing children’s bellies to swell. Mouths opened wide, babies’ heads hung limp over their mothers’ arms. For three years no rain fell. Well water became a distant memory for the people of Israel.

David asked God why suffering was overcoming his people. God said: “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

Saul was the previous king who tried to wipe out the Gibeonites during his reign—even though Israel had sworn to spare them. What comes next in 2 Samuel 21:1-14 takes my breath away. David calls the Gibeonites to the court and speaks with them directly. He asks them: “What shall I do for you? How shall I make expiation, that you may bless the heritage of the Lord?” (verse 3).

America’s 45th president will be held responsible for the decisions made during his administration. But also the physical health of our land and people will reflect the measure to which President-elect Trump faces and corrects his own sins as well as those that past presidents have perpetrated against our citizens and our global neighbors.

David asks the Gibeonites: “What do you say that I should do for you?” Could we imagine our next president calling together a conference of African-American leaders or Native American leaders or Latinx leaders and asking them: “What do you say that we should do for you?” Can you imagine putting that level of power in the hands of the oppressed—power to set the framework for repair?

One year ago, I spent five days on Robben Island investigating the relationship between forgiveness and justice. There, it occurred to me that the call to black and “colored” South Africans to forgive the atrocities of the Apartheid government was for their sake, not the sake of the white South Africans. Forgiveness cut the ties that bound oppressed to oppressor. Forgiveness redirected the prayers of the people to God. Now God needed to restore what had been taken.

But if forgiveness was for the sake of South Africans of color, then what was the message for the white South Africans? Repentance.

I walked back from Mandela’s cell with a young man named Nkosi, who lives in a black township and is a part of the Rhodes Must Fall movement of young people demanding the end of South African colonization. I asked Nkosi, “What would repentance look like in your country?” He said, “Restitution.”

Restitution is simply the act of restoring what was taken. In South Africa’s case, it means restoring the people to the land that was taken from them.

A few days later I sat at the dinner table with a white South African family. When the question of restitution surfaced in our conversation, questions rose and clouded our vision. Suddenly, it seemed we could never realize restitution because: How could we determine exactly who owned the land that was stolen? How could we determine exactly who is of indigenous ancestry and who is a more recent immigrant to South Africa? How do we determine how much each family should receive?

These questions are the very ones that cloud the question of reparation in the U.S. They rise like smoke, creating an opaque screen obscuring collective view of justice, rightness, wellness, wholeness, and holiness.

It occurred to me, perhaps these questions are the problem. They immediately address the challenge through the framework of legality. But the problem is not fundamentally a legal one—it is a relational one. Relationship was broken the moment the first European explorers landed on South African shores and determined the people living there were not called by God to exercise dominion on that land. Repair of this relationship requires that we go back to that moment—to recognize the people’s right to steward the land, and thus submit to their legitimate authority.

“What do you say that we should do to make things well with you?” we should say. Then the relationship could begin to be repaired.

And the scripture says: “After that, God heeded supplications for the land.” This is the first requirement to repair our broken world.