Sonya Massey rebuked a deputy in the name of Jesus. He said it was a threat

With eight words, the encounter between two sheriff’s deputies and a woman who called for help rapidly deteriorated.

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” Sonya Massey told them, body-camera footage shows.

With that, the mood transformed from relative calm to extreme intensity. Within seconds, one of the deputies screamed and swore at Massey, pulled his gun and fatally shot her inside her Springfield, Illinois, home on July 6 after she had called 911 about a possible prowler.

Pastors, religious studies professors and churchgoers said that verbally rebuking someone or something in the name of Jesus has a deep history in some Black communities, primarily as a way to call upon spiritual power but also as a way to dismiss or reject something someone has said. It’s not a phrase typically associated with physical violence, they said.

On Monday, officials released a report in which Sean Grayson, the Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy who has since been fired and charged with first-degree murder in Massey’s killing, said he thought Massey was threatening him when she said those words. He said that he feared “great bodily harm or death” as Massey had a pot of boiling water, according to the report, and that she threw the liquid toward him after he drew his gun. Grayson’s movements block the view of the second deputy’s body camera a second before the shooting.

The interaction between Massey and Grayson started early on July 6 when he and another deputy went to Massey’s house because she had called 911 to report a possible prowler, prosecutor Mary Rodgers wrote in a sworn affidavit. After the deputies went inside to get more information, Grayson saw a pot on the stove and told Massey to remove it to prevent an accidental fire, body-camera footage shows.

Massey turned off the stove, carried the pot to her sink, turned on the faucet, and, when she noticed one of the deputies backing away from her, asked where he was going, according to the video. He told her he was getting away from “your hot, steaming water.”

Then, Massey said, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

“Huh?” one of the deputies responded, according to the video.

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she repeated.

Grayson, using expletives, told her that she better not, threatening to shoot her “right in” the face as he drew his gun and pointed it at her, the video shows. Massey apologized as Grayson yelled at her to drop the pot, and then she ducked behind the counter separating them, according to the video. The sound of three gunshots followed as the video shows Grayson move toward her and around the counter.

About 3½ minutes later, as Massey was on her kitchen floor, Grayson told an unidentified man off camera that he and the other deputy had cleared the house and that Massey was the only one inside, video shows.

Grayson told the man that Massey had not been armed with a gun, according to the video.

“She said she was going to rebuke me in the name of Jesus and came at me with boiling water,” he said in the video.

It’s impossible to know what Massey was thinking when she said those words in the moments before she died. The Rev. T. Ray McJunkins, lead pastor at Union Baptist Church in Springfield, Illinois, said that based on his understanding after years living in and studying Black church life, the phrase is commonly used to combat demonic forces, de-escalate tense moments and summon protection.

McJunkins said he uses the phrase regularly, including as a way to intervene during disagreements. During a recent meeting with his church’s officers, he recalled the leaders discussing the annual budget when some began talking over one another and getting heated. McJunkins said he rebuked them in the name of Jesus before leading them in prayer.

“That calms everyone in the room down,” he said. “It raises their awareness that, ‘Hey, we’re not acting like the body of Christ the way we should be.’”

Cheryl Sanders, a Christian ethics professor at the Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor at the Third Street Church of God in the District, said she reserves calling upon that power when she prays to rid the country of hatred, racism, gun violence and other such problems, especially those that seem immune to efforts made through the normal channels of power.

“Any manifestation of the demonic is fair game,” Sanders added.

But there are more everyday uses of the expression, like when McJunkins’s mother scolded him for breaking curfew when he was a teenager in the 1970s. When he slinked into the house through the front door, she was waiting. She would point a finger at him and rebuke him in the name of Jesus, McJunkins recalled, as a way to convey that his behavior was not appropriate.

Wil Gafney, a professor of Hebrew Bible at the Brite Divinity School, said people also ironically use the words’ inherent gravity for humorous effect. She said she once saw a man at an ATM, upon discovering how little money he had, rebuke his account balance.

But for the most part, it’s used seriously, she added.

“Every person raised in a certain kind of black church knows the power and gravity of those words,” Gafney wrote in a July 23 blog post titled “Sonya Massey’s Rebuke.”

“It is not a prayer to save one’s life or for God to come down and prevent the flagrant act of violence to come,” Gafney wrote. “It is something between a benediction and a malediction.”

The Rev. Cary Beckwith, the senior pastor at Grace United Methodist Church who delivered Massey’s eulogy, said the words are also used to condemn someone’s actions or attitude.

“We may say ‘I rebuke you in the name of Jesus’ because I’m opposed to your actions. Your attitude, your will does not line up with God’s will in that moment,” Beckwith said.

Jeffrey Fagan, professor of law and public health at Columbia Law School, said the moment highlighted the need for law enforcement officers to do more to understand the communities in which they work.

“If you’re not a member of that community, and you’re a white cop, it’s threatening,” Fagan said.

Austin Channing Brown, a racial justice activist who grew up in the Black church, agreed that law enforcement officers need to be culturally aware of the communities they are policing.

“It is wild how much work Black women have to do to understand white culture and how white culture operates, but how little white folks are ever even expected to do to understand who we are and what is normal for us,” she said in a 31-minute Instagram video reacting to Massey being shot.

“And instead,” Channing said, “she’s gone.”

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Justine McDaniel and Kim Bellware contributed to this report.