And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:7
Our community continues to mourn and process the disturbing violence targeted at local elected officials this past weekend. We grieve and pray for the family, friends, and colleagues of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and pray for healing for Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. We give thanks for the leaders, law enforcement officers, and community members who worked together to apprehend the shooter. And we continue to pray for our neighborhoods, our communities, our congregations, and the ripple effects: officers and first responders, investigators, medical teams, civil servants and elected leaders, reporters, frightened neighbors, those already weighed down by anxiety, and kids feeling the stress.
While the violence unleashed in Champlin and Brooklyn Park over the weekend is uniquely painful for Minnesotans, we know that the traumatic impacts of violence are being felt around our world. Our partner church, the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria, is grieving the death more than 100 villagers in north-central Nigeria who were killed over the weekend in disputes over land and water rights. War and devastating violence continue in Gaza, and this week Israel and Iran exchanged bombings that killed dozens on both sides. And, today as a church we commemorate the martyrdom of the Emanuel Nine – the individuals murdered during a bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina ten years ago. The pain and grief of violence is unfortunately an all-too-familiar and global experience, and we condemn it, and particularly the actions and attempts in our community in the early morning of June 14.
When violence of any kind strikes so close to home, it can be jarring and unsettling, prompting us to reevaluate the state of our world, our communities, and our role within them. It can leave us feeling unmoored and uncertain, grasping for understanding yearning for a response. Amid this uncertainty, we can ground ourselves in the certain presence of Jesus, remembering…
- that Jesus Christ, himself a victim of violence and terror, is with each of us today, tomorrow, and in the weeks to come.
- that in the face of violence and terror, Jesus responded with love, resilience, and a commitment to the promises of God.
- that we are called to be both wise and tenderhearted, trusting that God will guide us with words and actions when we may feel we have none.
As people of the cross we can also commit to calling a thing what it is, not shying away from the truth, even a painful truth. We can walk together in our grief and lament over the ways the human family continues to harm one another. Laments like this one from “Sighs Too Deep for Words” provide us with ritual and practice for expressing and processing our shared experience of violence, calling on God to be faithful and to let peace and justice be realized here and now.
What is our call? We know that our communities are resilient, and that this act of violence does not define us. Rather, as faithful people set free in Jesus, we embrace our call to be peacemakers, truth-tellers, and caretakers in our neighborhoods and communities. And we trust in God’s faithfulness, looking to a future rooted in God’s justice.