Oh Lord, Do Not Leave Us Comfortless

When I woke up last Sunday morning, my mind was filled with all the details involved with preparing for worship and the picnic for St. Barnabas Day. As I glanced at my phone and saw a news notification about the tragic shooting in Orlando, I thought, “Oh, no, not again.”  I didn’t spend much time finding out the details (and they were still sketchy at that point), but I immediately thought that we needed to add a petition to the Prayers of the People about the incident, both as a way to connect what we do in the church building with the greater world and to find some consolation in the midst of such horror.

Since Sunday, both our Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael Curry, and our Diocesan Bishop, The Rt. Rev. Chip Stokes, have offered statements about the events, which can be found on the St. Barnabas Facebook page (www.facebook.com/StBarnabasNJ).  These are messages of solidarity with our LGBT sisters and brothers, reminders that our Baptismal Covenant include a vow to “respect the dignity of every human being.” This include those with whom we disagree or dislike. 

I believe in such situations, when the loss and grief are so overwhelming that we can loose part of ourselves, we need to be reminded of and grounded in the tenets of our faith.  We need to remember that Jesus chose to dine with tax collectors and other sinners, not with the social elite.  He had conversations with the Syrophoenician (Mk 7:24-30) and Samaritan (Jn 4:4-26) women – scandalous situations due to both gender and culture.  And yet Jesus offered respect to each of them and all were affected by the encounters.

These stories demonstrate the importance of relationship with the “other.”  Rather than demonizing a group due to some surface characteristic, we need to choose to make the time to know the “other” until that label no longer applies.  With respectful listening, misconceptions can become understanding, ignorance becomes recognition.

The unfortunate reality is that some do not engage in such conversations and choose to adhere to their own ideology that does not tolerate another point of view.  Jesus himself was the victim of such patterns of behavior.  And so we follow in Jesus’s footsteps and pray for those who believe the only way to respond is through violence and death.  We pray for those who are mental ill or unstable.  We pray for those whose profession is to keep us safe – the police, first responders and other agencies.  

We pray for ourselves, that we can find a better way forward, even when love seems counter-intuitive.  We pray for the victims, that they rest in peace.  Most of all we pray for those who loved the victims, whose loss is too deep for words, yet never far from God’s presence.  May their grief not be so overwhelming that they loose themselves, as that would be even more of a tragedy. 

O God our strength in need, our help in trouble: stand with us in our distress, support us in our shock of the deaths of so many in Orlando, who you know each by name, bless us in our questioning, and do not leave us comfortless, but raise us up with Jesus Christ. Amen.

In Christ,
Rev. Valerie+

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