Watching the news and hearing a word from folks we know living near Highland Park, Illinois, this week. Still feeling emotions from Uvalde, in the wake of Buffalo, with other mass shootings also resonating in memory. The recent Prime Minister of Japan is assassinated. We read that since the July 4 shooting to the time I’m writing on July 8 somewhere around 160 people have been killed by gun-related homicide in the U.S.. I suppose we don’t know their names because they were killed one by one in too many places for the media to cover.
I admit that I tire of writing responses as though a few words—may be in a different order, but essentially the same time after time—is sufficient for a pastor’s response. Silence seems, perhaps, a more fitting response. But silence only speaks in response to words. Silence could signal indifference or even a giving up on hope. Silence can also be a way of saying that there are no words that can easily clear the stain of sin, even as we continue on. We resolve to keep on keeping on in the flow of faith, to refuse to hear the counsel of despair that evil seeks to force on us and to open space for God to speak and ask for the wisdom to act on what we hear.
For God has spoken.
God’s response to evil has come to us in words:
You shall be free.
Choose this day whom you will serve.
Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.
Do not be afraid.
I will lead you.
Take up your cross and follow.
Peace be with you.
I am with you always.
God’s response to evil has also come to us in action embodying the hope of those words:
God giving vision to ragtag folk who look to the heavens for help.
God leading those folk out, from slavery to hope.
God nudging and reminding and accepting and challenging and calling those same people to return to truth and do good.
God being born among us, teaching the way of peace and freedom, saving us from the pits we dig ourselves, embodying Love by going to the cross without doing violence, by suffering at our hands, by bearing the evil of unjust death, by rising again to new life, and by sharing with us the power of resurrection.
And God’s response to evil has also come in the power and grace God gives us—as imperfect people—to bring words and actions together as we imitate Christ. We imitate him as we pray together, mourn together, and talk together. We also imitate him as we take practical action—in as many ways as can and as boldly as we can.
And so by what kind of action? I guess by tending to those who are hurt, by working to quarantine evil wherever we can, and by lessening the severity of sin or the preponderance of evil acts however we can. Boldly. Mercifully. Honestly. Prayerfully. In careful and courageous conversations.
But I still must admit that events in Highland Park on July 4 feel especially hard. It was a mass shooting at a July 4th parade after all, with casualties between 8 and 85 years old. Every shooting is personal—for every casualty is a part of networks of relationships and any casualty is a child of God. Yet I feel a very personal connection to this one, as I lived and pastored just down the road from there. I know the corner where it happened. I’m connected to people who were there. I know pastors in the neighborhood who are responding faithfully and carefully. And I know that in our congregation here in Scottsdale we have participants who live there now, have lived there in the past, or have friends there.
Yet an intimacy with Highland Park doesn’t make that event any more significant than other shootings in other places. If anything, it might help us realize how significant all places are—from Buffalo to Bethlehem, from Uvalde to Ukraine. So . . .
Let’s be quiet enough to hear God speaking.
Let’s talk about these things when words come.
Let’s embody what we together hear the Spirit saying.
Let’s be God’s people in the world God loves.
Let’s act with courage.
And let’s pray for God’s mercy on us all.
