As Holy Week began on Palm Sunday, a murderer attacked a Jewish community center in Kansas, killing a 69-yr-old grandfather and his 14-yr-old grandson. The killer stood next to their car as he fired. These hate killings brought home to us the horrible fact that violence, from such national-news crimes to the mundane dailiness of gangs, domestic abuse, and all kinds of societal violence and war, are a backdrop, if not foreground, to all our lives.
We participants in “Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace: An Episcopal National Gathering To Challenge the Epidemic of Violence” were barely home from two and a half days of meetings, workshops and worship that challenged us to help turn this bloody tide when we heard this news. It called us right back to the personal pledges we had been asked to make.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori and Archbishop Justin Welby both spoke. The Archbishop said, “Violence is addictive, and corrosive of all other human values.” Bishop Eugene Sutton of Maryland noted that, “We have become intoxicated with violence as the only effective means to achieve our personal goals or national aspirations. We have worshipped for far too long at the altar of the gun to solve our problems.”
The Rev. Kathie Adams-Shepherd, Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, CT talked about the experience of the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter. Later, at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, Melissa Houston, a survivor of the 1995 Murrah Building bombing, told us her story. At St Paul’s Cathedral for service, we were asked to write two things we would do to involve ourselves in the struggle against violence. As we came forward to receive communion from Bishop Jefferts-Schori or Oklahoma Bishop Ed Konieczny, we put these sticky notes on a cross at the altar rail. Later, at dinner, Bishop Laura Ahrens of Connecticut challenged each of us to turn to the person next to us and commit to these personal goals.
My own pledges feel like they show the Spirit at work. Over the past year, I have mostly been involved with the soup kitchen and homeless shelter. But just before the Gathering, I was invited to join the Port Huron domestic violence/sexual assault council for Blue Water Safe Horizons, the local non-profit that operates shelters, a housing program, and the DV/SA crisis center; I’d also become involved with two local LGBTQ groups that now meet together at my church, Grace-Port Huron. So I found myself given two new ways to commit to working against violence. I would also like to see the Episcopal Peace Fellowship bloom in our diocese.
Holy Week is the busiest and most sacred time of the church year. Yet 220 people, including 34 bishops, took time to be at this gathering. We created new nodes in a network of Episcopalians committed to justice. It was energizing and exciting. There is so much to be done, so little we each can do alone. But together, we can do a lot.
I always recall the last of the “Fourfold Benedictine Blessing” when I am faced with so daunting a job as helping to end the epidemic of violence:
“May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.” Amen.