Hot spring for healing water in Karlovy Vary

I want to be honest with you this week. I do not really know what to write in the wake of the shooting in Buffalo. I can take the time to build a theological argument about the ills of racism and the systems that perpetuate it in our country. I can build a theological argument for the ways that we continue to participate and perpetuate the sins of colonialism in our country. I can reflect on the ways that these acts of violence rip open a new wound in our collective body. But, I have to ask myself a simple question: why do it? Will it make any difference? Does it matter anymore if I say something or anything about these atrocities in our nation at this point?

Perhaps the big question was asked by our bishop in her own reflection on the shooting when she wrote, “As my heart has been hurting the last few days over the racially-motivated murders of ten people in Buffalo, NY, I keep hearing Jesus asking that question of us. “Us” could mean any of several groups of people: Americans, people who are White, elected government officials, Christians… the list goes on and on. Do we want to be made well?”

I want to encourage you to take the time to listen to what Bishop Reddall has to say in the embedded video. And after listening to our bishop and praying about it for a little while, I hope that you will find a way to respond that is filled with God’ generative love. Each of us can participate in the ministries of our own Courageous Ground Task Force as they seek to lead our parish into healing and being a beacon of love for all who live in this corner of God’s hundred-acre wood.

There are not many words left to say in this moment of tragedy. I think it is time for all of us to commit ourselves to the kind of prayer that leads us deep into the waters of healing justice for our communities and to share God’s love, which St. Paul reminds us is “patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NRSV)

At the end of the Gospel according to John, Jesus gives to his disciples a new command. He says to the disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Let us be known as disciples of Jesus. We are invited to love one another as Christ has loved us, and as Bishop Reddall says, “Jesus wants us to be made well. Jesus does not want us to remain in our sin—neither the sin of active racial hatred nor the sin of apathy at addressing it. And those of us who do want to be made well cannot give up in our actions, our teaching, and our advocacy. Because someday we will get a new heart and a new spirit, and we will be well.”

In Christ,

Hunter+