Pastoral Letter: 4/28/22 

Dear Church,

It has been a heartbreaking and challenging week.

And before that, another challenging week. The recent violent events have us all feeling a range of anger, fear, shock and pain…

All the emotions that grief often brings. And of course we each have our own personal challenges and struggles which we face in our own lives and individual situations each day.

I want to assure you this evening that your pain, anger, fear or whatever emotion you are experiencing right now, it is felt, seen and heard. And that you are not alone in it.

This has not been an easy week to be human. And in particular, this week was hard for me as the victims of the Uvalde, TX were the same ages of my own children, and they all lived in a town very close to where Sean grew up. Sending our kids off to school this week was a particular kind of difficult.

The white-supremacy motivated shootings in Buffalo, which we prayed about collectively when we last met, the church shooting in our own city a few weeks ago, the fear instigated with the threats and uncertainty over Roe v. Wade, and the confirmation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s list of 700 cases of covered up sexual abusers released, has made all of this news incredibly diffucult to process in such a short time.

This is a form of trauma. And if you are not okay, that is okay.

Part of our job as a church community is to be in solidarity with each other, and to seek out opportunities to listen, to hold space in grief, and to be truth tellers when things aren’t right.

Practically, this is what “being the church” looks like.

And you are not alone.

To be the church in our cultural moment is to lament and continue to seek God in the darkness. We must remember that we carry the light, as bearers of the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus called us into darkness, so that it would not stay dark.

The presence of Jesus with us reminds us we need not be afraid. And we do not need to avoid the darkness.

But in fact we are invited to seek it, have empathy, and be agents of reconciliation where there is pain and brokenness.

God’s presence is evident in the places where you go. In where you place yourself, your efforts, your time, where you rest. Where you work.

This is our call, church.

And you are doing it.

We are called into seeking change both with the power of the Holy Spirit, but also with our own opting into a conscious effort to be advocates where advocacy is needed.

Jesus is in the pain and the injustice.

And Jesus always has mercy.

Your pain, grief, efforts and prayers never go unnoticed or unappreciated.

Jesus undid the power of death and darkness already, and we are those who get to bear witness to that truth.

And we act as partners with God to bring justice and reconciliation into the world, the way God has intended it.

This is the work of our time church, and you are not alone.

Wherever you are this evening, I pray your night has hope and lightness and joy in the midst of the grief and the work of healing.

I am grieving, praying and allowing myself to rest with you this weekend.

I look forward to seeing all your faces again on June 5th.

May we be a people who care deeply enough to put the lives of our neighbors before our own and seek the welfare of the city where God has placed us.

May we be people that are aware of the light we carry because of Jesus.

And may we be emboldened because of it.

Always praying and always with you,

Love,

Cara