Beyond the Pulpit 9.8.24

There are LOTS of opportunities for you in this week’s eNews. I’m not going to reiterate them here, but I hope you’ll take time to find an opportunity to get connected this fall at Crozet UMC.

Instead, I want to take this moment to address this past week’s news of another school shooting – of lives lost in an act of violence. Families broken and a community ruptured. It is hard enough to hear and see this news from a distance. Most of us can’t even fathom the intensity of that grief, pain, and anger up close and on the ground. We don’t know how we would handle it, how we would manage it, how we would process such a tragedy. How would forgiveness even be possible? Aren’t Christians supposed to forgive?

Forgiveness is hard and messy. After all, forgiving someone for yelling at me in the grocery store is easier than forgiving an act of evil perpetrated on others. Forgiveness requires grace and grace in abundance.

I don’t have the easy plan, or the five-steps for forgiving even the most abhorrent actions. What I do know is that the more we speak into and step alongside the brokenness in people’s lives with compassion and kindness, the less room evil has to reside and flourish. In other words, may our prayers for the families impacted by the shooting this weekend translate into individual and collective gentle words and acts of mercy and justice for all God’s people.  And, maybe, somewhere along the way, evil might be crowded out by the force of love moving in us, among us, and through us. And then, forgiveness happens.

In the meantime, we gather for worship this week to relearn how God leads us into lives of meaningful relationship with God and with one another. May we gather to sing, to fellowship, to listen, and to pray together as Jesus taught us, with the words, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Amen.