It was in the early hours of Friday, December 2nd when they executed Kenneth Lee Boyd in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was the 1000th person to be executed in the United States since [executions resumed in] 1977. Over 200 people kept vigil in the cold, misty rain outside of Central Prison on Western Blvd. It was 2:30am, and it was dark.

By the time the execution happened, 17 of us had been taken away in police vans after trying to block the entrance to the prison. Our collective conscience pricked, our hearts sore from a steady string of executions this fall, we chose to put our bodies where our mouths had been. "We've come to stop the execution," I said to a police officer. "You have to back up," he said. I kept walking until he put his hands against the sack cloth on my chest. In my hands was a bag of ashes - symbol of the dust we are made of, officers and resisters alike. Symbol of our fragility. Symbol of all the reasons why we are not the Lord over life and death. When we could go no further, we poured the ashes over our head and quoted Lamentations 3:

When all the prisoners of the land are crushed under foot, when human rights are perverted in the presence of the Most High, when one's case is subverted - does the Lord not see it?

Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts as well as our hands to God in heaven. We have trespassed and rebelled, and God has not forgiven us.

My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of my people. My eyes will flow without ceasing - without respite - until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees.

It was 9am when they crucified Jesus, Mark's gospel says (Mark 15:25ff). There, too, were mourners. Faithful women who had heard the good news of the coming kingdom that Jesus proclaimed. The beloved disciple, John, who knew somehow that the One whose flesh was being crucified was the Word by which the world was made. Some were gathered to lament. But others were there as well.

On his left and his right, bandits, Mark says. Criminals. Fellow death row inmates. Jesus hung on the cross, executed for trumped up charges, killed for a crime that he didn't commit. But he was not alone. With him were two criminals, and we have no reason to think that they were not guilty of their crimes. Bandits, Mark calls them. Yet they were by Jesus? side. He who ate with the outcast and befriended the friendless also died with criminals. Not because he felt sorry for them. Rather, in the eyes of the world, Jesus has been counted among them. Jesus was made criminal for our sake. Jesus got put on death row with Kenneth Boyd and all others the world would rather have dead.

The church proclaims that Jesus' sacrifice of himself was the end of sacrifice, putting death to death and making it possible for us to live nonviolently in the world. This is the good news of the gospel. This is eternal life that the power of death has been defeated. We need no longer live out the myth of redemptive violence that says the only way to right a wrong is to pay back life for life. Jesus' death is the end of sacrifice. This is what Christians believe.

But we know that it has not meant the end of wrongs. Kenneth Boyd killed two human beings, also our brother and sister, in a horrific act of rage. We cannot forget this. We cannot neglect our need to mourn their deaths. We cannot ignore our anger at such disregard for life. We cannot deny our desire for vengeance. It is real. We feel it even now.

But, "'Vengeance is MINE,' says the Lord." The very fact that we feel our vengeance still is a testimony that our decision as a people to kill Kenneth Boyd has not redeemed the people that Boyd killed. Not only could it not bring them back, It has not brought us as a people any closure either. All that we can say is that yet another brother is lost. Another life refused. All we can say is that it looks as if death has won again. So we weep bitter tears.

But we weep them gathered around a cross, the instrument of execution upon which our Lord died. We weep them together as Christ?s body, the church, that body which has committed to give itself for the life of the world. We weep believing with the centurion that Jesus was indeed God?s Son. That though he died, he did not stay dead. That on the third day, he rose again. That he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, ever making intercession for us. That he is here with us, even now, bottling up our tears, hearing our prayers, and inviting us into a new way of life.

Even in this present darkness, Jesus speaks good news: Death has indeed been defeated. Jesus lives to remind us that death has been dealt a fatal blow. Like a snake that writhes, even after its head has been cut off, death continues to wreak havoc in our lives. The myth of redemptive violence that has been reinforced by a state execution every ten days for the past 28 years, continues to play out between gangs on our city streets, between terror cells and U.S. soldiers, between suicide bombers and an unsuspecting public. Death continues for a little while. But only for a little while. Only a little while, and the ungodly are no more. Only a little while, and the victory that Christ has already won will be acknowledged by all the principalities and powers. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This is what we believe.

When we bend our knees to worship Jesus, we mock death. We know death's pain. But in Christ we know the One who has already defeated death. We may face another murder, God forbid. It may take us a little longer to convince our legislatures that execution is not the answer. But Jesus is with us now. As we bow in worship we are already with the One who was executed so that executions might come to an end. We are members of his body, beaten and broken, but not defeated. For the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is within us. By that power we will end the death penalty in North Carolina and the United States. By that power we will become a community that can forgive. By that power we can be a people that would rather die than kill. May God give us all that power.

(Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives with his wife, Leah, and other friends at the Rutba House in Durham, N.C. He is the author of TO BAGHDAD AND BEYOND: HOW I GOT BORN AGAIN IN BABYLON [Cascade, 2005]. He is a regular contributor to PRISM Magazine and the ePistle.)