Open Door Community and Execution Vigil

Mark knew he would die at 7:00 pm.

…

“We will serve a feast today, a feast of resistance. Just as the state executioner and his minions will sit down to a feast before they take the life of our brother Mark McClain. The helicopters will swarm the state penitentiary and Mark will die today at 7:00 pm.”

Ed Loring, founder of the Open Door Community, was red in the face. He launched us into Bible Study with this tremulous, strained entreaty; "We will serve a feast today."*

For the next hour, we studied a passage from Leviticus 23 discussing the Festival of Shelters. God asks His people (or Her people, as Ed would say) to erect crude shelters and sleep in them for 7 days to remember their exile in the Wilderness. The Festival was be a time to take off work and feast together, but also a time to honor the humble past the Israelites emerged from. The Open Door was celebrating its own Festival of Shelters this week. Tonight, they will share a meal and sleep in the yard alongside their homeless friends. It will be an acknowledging of circumstances, an education of the body, a rejoicing, and a grieving.

Tonight, Mark McClain – on Georgia’s Death Row since 1996 - would die.

The vortex of emotion was palpable. Today at the Open Door, in our serving lunch, in our Bible Study, and in our own lunchtime meal, we would celebrate Mark’s life, mourn the loss and injustice of his execution , and most of all, we would resist the black hooded toll collector of the state (personal ethics aside, the Atlanta Journal Constitution points out that of 55 people convicted of murder during armed robbery in 1995 in Georgia, Mark was the only one sentenced to death).

…

A few of us from my house mounted our bikes at dusk to ride to the steps of the State Capitol for the execution vigil. The crisp fall air was electrifying. We pulled up to the steps to meet a diverse group including: the Open Door Community, several of downtown’s homeless, ministers from Central Presbyterian Church, and a Mission Year house. We lit those white Christmas Eve Service candles with the card stock collars, and I thought about the reverse circumstances under which we held them.

The sun set, bouncing off the gold dome behind us, and we sang “This Little Light of Mine.” The traffic streamed by, each single driver glancing at us between I-Phone texts, trying to remain aloof and uninvolved. We remained planted silently on the steps, our candles, t-shirts, and signs speaking and our prayers uniting with those of six other vigils held simultaneously around the state.

It neared 7:00. What was Mark thinking? Were the executioners wadding up cloth napkins, their chairs scraping away from a golden goblet-laden table? What do we think about before we die?

Ed Loring’s reflection on Mark reached a fever pitch. He lurched into traffic, screaming at the cars, imploring, “What are you going to DO ABOUT IT? DO ABOUT IT?!!!!”

The question hung in the air, unanswered by straight-forward stares and unopened steel car doors.

Silence.

“Condemned inmate Mark McClain was killed by lethal injection at 7:24 p.m. Tuesday in Jackson…As his death drew near McClain's ruddy complexion turned pale. His body lunged forward slightly as the potassium chloride raced through his veins, but otherwise his passing was quiet” (Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Across the street from the capitol steps, Central Presbyterian rang its bells. A MARTA bus swooshed by and I caught our reflection in the sides: a lump of human forms punctuated by flickering light. My eyes moved to the solid stone church bell tower. Just to the right, a shiny glass skyscraper stood on the horizon. The letters on the side read “Equitable.”

Equitable indeed. An eye for an eye. “Why do we punish killing by killing?” read a shirt in front of me.

After a significant length of verbal silence (my head and eyes were overwhelmed with noise) we broke into “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.” I wished we had sounded better, but the dissonance seemed appropriate too. Worlds were clashing there on the capitol steps. After the song, Ed came to the front again. “Good night sweet Mark!” he yelled. Over and over. “Good night sweet Mark!”

Our bike fleet departed. I can’t be sure if it was 7:24 yet, or if Mark was still waiting.

*The Open Door Community is a Christian community made up of formerly homeless and those making a conscious “downward mobility” decision. They have an active homeless and prison ministry. I have become one of their regular weekly volunteers in the soup kitchen, which serves a hot meal to 120 homeless friends 3 times a week. A mixture of residents and weekly volunteers gather for a Bible study before serving the meal, and stay to eat together and reflect on the experience afterwards. Not that I agree with everything that is said there, but The Open Door usual manages to blow my mind.

October 20, 2009.