Dear Beloved Church Family,  

We write to you now with hearts filled with pain and eyes filled with tears. Like you, we are stunned by the news of the shootings in Orlando. Like many of you, we saw President Obama on TV once again speaking about a mass shooting, and his words sounded frightening: “…the most deadly shooting in American history.” The President called the shooting “an act of terror and hatred.”

We are writing now to remind ourselves and all of you who we are….what we stand for…and what we can do. We are people of faith and so we respond to hate with love. We will pray for those lost to this act of violence, the families and loved ones they left behind, the city of Orlando reeling with grief and shock, and even for the shooter. You are good and strong pray-ers. Do what you do well: pray deep and heartfelt prayers. If you cannot pray for the shooter today, you will find a way in the days and weeks ahead.

We remind ourselves and all of you that we are people of faith who more than a decade ago committed publicly, passionately, overtly, and with pride to be a religious body that stands with LGBTQ community and we always will. Today we redouble our efforts to be faithful allies to the LGBTQ community and we pledge to love, protect, and walk with our LGBTQ siblings in every way we possibly can.

We remind ourselves and all of you that violence cannot and will not have the last word. We will fight with strength and conviction until sensible gun laws are the law of the land and we will not be dissuaded from our position, we will not quiet our voices, we will not cease to work on this front.

We remind ourselves and all of you that we feel gratitude for the heroic, selfless acts of courage and love carried out by the people in the club who saved lives, and the police and first responders who ran toward danger risking their own lives. We thank them for being brave and faithful.

We remind ourselves and all of you that if God could have prevented this horror, God would have prevented this horror. But God was present bringing moments of peace to the victims as their breath left their bodies.

What we do now is weep, wail, grieve, moan and go on. We go on praying for an inbreaking of the kingdom of God on earth and an end to violence. We go on saying that this terror cannot justify anti-Muslim rhetoric or brutality. We go on believing that there is a divine presence available to us all to bring comfort and hope. We go on stating that we will not be silenced in our demands for justice, our love of neighbor, and our passion for peace.

Be gentle with yourselves in the days ahead-for your sorrow will make you vulnerable and distracted. Pray. And weep. And pray some more. And remember,

…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God... (Romans 8:38, NRSV)

We surround you with our loving support.

Always,
Pastor Andrea and Pastor Chris