Rev. Debbie Cato
Fairfield Community Church
Psalm 13 and John 11:11-37
May 29, 2022
O God, as we
fully experience the good news of Easter and look toward the coming of the
Spirit at Pentecost, open our hearts and minds to your Word dwelling within us,
calling us to unity in Christ.
Lament
I threw away my sermon this week. I could not just get up and preach about Paul
and Silas this morning after the soul deadening, horrifying school shooting in
Texas and the 2 previous massacres just 10 days prior. It would not be faithful to what’s happening
in our country and in our faith. That’s
why we had different Scripture passages than planned. I have to speak to the horror around us.
On Saturday, May 14th, an 18-year-old white man drove 200 miles to Tops Friendly Market Grocery Store, in a predominately Black neighborhood and killed 10 people and injured 3 more. He had driven down in early March as well as the day before the massacre to look over the surroundings. He went inside the grocery store and looked around on Friday, the 13th. Saturday, May 14th, he wore combat gear and carried assault weapons with no other agenda than to kill. The beloved people he killed deserve to be named. They were people with lives that mattered.
Aaron Salter, 55 years old. Mr. Salter was the security guard at Tops Friendly Market Grocery Store. Mr. Salter fired at the attacker, striking him once, but the bullet was caught in his body armor. Ruth Whifield, 86 years old. Ruth had just visited her husband in a nursing home near the store and was there to pick up a few items, but she never made it out of the supermarket. Katherine Massey, or Kat as she liked to be called. 72 years old. Kat was a member of the community group called We are Women Warriors who were tackling youth violence. She wrote for the local paper about escalating gun violence in Buffalo and many other major U.S. cities. Pearly Young, 77 ran a weekly food pantry every Saturday for the past 25 years. Heyward Patterson worked as a driver who gave rides to residents to and from the grocery store and would help with their groceries. The 67-year-old regularly attended The State Tabernacle Church of God and would stand at the doorway to welcome people into the worship service on Sundays. Celestine Chaney was at the grocery store to get shrimp and strawberry shortcake. The 65-year-old was a grandmother to six and had a great-grandchild. Celestine was also a cancer survivor. Roberta Drury, 32, was at the supermarket to get food for dinner. Roberta lived in the Syracuse area but was in Buffalo to be with her brother that day. She often shopped for her adoptive brother, Christopher Moyer, and his family, who lived near the grocery store. Roberta was recovering from leukemia. Margus Morrison, 52, was the father of three children. Andre Mackneil, 53 years-old went to the store to pick up a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son’s birthday but never made it home with the cake. Andre was engaged to be married. Geraldine Talley was 62 years old and lived in Buffalo.
You see, it matters when you name the people who died. When you make them real. For us it can feel like this happened on the East Coast so it doesn’t impact us. This was a racially motivated hate crime and we live in a predominately white community. We can say that issues of racial hate don’t have a bearing on us. We don’t need to be concerned. But these were all beloved children of God, made in His image. As Christians, we must care. Racially motivating killings must matter to us all. This was the 126th racially motivated killing this year. 126 in 5 months. Enough. Enough killings.
The very next day, Sunday, May 15th, while we were celebrating our pre-K graduates and our High School graduates in our church, another church in Laguna Beach, CA – Geneva Presbyterian Church, a Taiwanese congregation, was having a luncheon to honor a previous pastor who was coming back to serve them. A 60-year-old man of Asian descent entered the building and began shooting. Investigators say the mass shooting was a hate-filled attack. The gunman chained the exits shut and sealed locks with super glue before unleashing a spree of gunfire. They found notes showing the suspect’s hatred of Taiwanese people in the car he drove 275 miles to get to the church. Dr. John Cheng was killed. Dr. Cheng prevented additional deaths, by throwing himself in front of the gunman and giving other members of the congregation an opportunity to get his weapons away from him and hogtie him until law enforcement arrived. Five other people were injured in the process. This is not the first mass shooting in a church. The first racially motivated shooting in a church. I found myself crying out to God, Enough. Enough killings.
10 days later. Tuesday, May 24th. An 18-year-old, after shooting his grandmother, entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and murdered 19 children and 2 teachers before law enforcement killed him. Nineteen children and 2 teachers. Seventeen other children were wounded. Enough, God! Enough killings.
These children and teachers have names. I hope I pronounce their names correctly. Jaliah, age 10. Jayce, age 10. Jackie, 9 years-old. Maite, age 10. Annabelle, age 10. Uziyah, 8 years-old. Amerie, 10 years-old. Xavier, age 10. Alithia, 10 years old. Eliahana, 10 years old. Miranda, age 11. Rojello, 10 years old. Tess, age 10. Ellie, age 9. Jose, age 10. Layla, age 10. Makenna, age 10. Nevaeh, age 10. Alexandria, Age 10. Irma Garcia, age 48, 4th grade teacher. Eva Mireles, age 44, 4th grade teacher. Some of the families waited more than 12 hours to learn that their child had died.
I pray, God, where are you! Where are you, God!
1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget
us forever?
How long will you
hide your face from us?
2 How long must we bear pain[a] in our souls
and have sorrow
in our hearts all day long?
How long shall our enemies be
exalted over us?
In our passage from John, Jesus wept. Lazarus, one of Jesus’ closest friends has died. Jesus knew he had died before he went to him. He had been dead 4 days. When Jesus arrived, Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters were mourning, they were crying. And Jesus wept. He would raise Lazarus from the dead, but for now he wept. He wept because his friends were hurting. Perhaps he wept because death was a fact of life. But Jesus wept.
In our story in John, Jesus weeps. We must sit in the sorrow long enough to really feel the sorrow, but then we must take action. Jesus wept and then he raised Lazarus from the dead. As followers of Christ, we are called to action. We are called to pray and then to do. We must sit with our grief long enough to feel the depth of the grief and to lament our grief and our rage to the point that we understand that something is very wrong and it compels us to stand up in the morning and take the steps needed to help change and heal our world.[1]
Whatever that might look like for you. We must change our culture of hate and violence to one of tolerance and understanding. We must improve mental health resources in our country. This pandemic of violent people with guns must come to an end. We must improve accountability when we see things on social media or hear things that sound alarming or concerning. We must talk with our congress representatives about issues that concern us. We must be responsible citizens, not only responsible for our perceived rights but responsible for one another. We must ask, what does my faith ask of me in a time such as this?
This is a time of deep despair. But we must remember that we do not despair without hope. We worship the God of the resurrection. We know these children, these teachers these 10 beloved lives in Buffalo, and Dr. Cheng live eternal. God is with them just as he is with us. As Christians, we know the worst thing, is not the last thing. God has the last word.
God will redeem even these horrible evils, but we must remember that we are Christ’s hands and feet in the world. We need to keep praying but we need to act. We must be part in the solution. The great Oswald Chambers said, “Prayer changes me, and then I change things.” Even living here, in Fairfield, Washington, we can and must be part of the solution. We already know, it can happen even here. Amen.
