Bright Shining as the Sun

Wednesday night in the south is church night--the most casually unscientific observer would know this fact by simple osmosis.  Church parking lots are full, church windows ablaze, perhaps church doors are propped open.  Wednesday night is church night--I've heard and said it so often it sounds like the chorus of an old familiar hymn. 

In Charleston, S.C., church night became the night for slaughter.

We raised our kids in an old, downtown Methodist church, known for its faithful respect of Wesleyan ritual, for its heritage, for its beautiful building, all of which I, too, enjoyed.  One of the high points of my personal liturgical year during my time in this congregation was Ash Wednesday.  Every year, on this one special day, we gathered together with the congregation and choir of Taylor Chapel AME Church to usher in the season of Lent.

We shared our supper with our crosstown friends and then we all trooped into the sanctuary, groups of two or three or four trickling in from the Fellowship Hall, talking and laughing, perhaps hugging when we saw a familiar face.  Then the beautiful and talented voices of Taylor Chapel shared their gift of music with us, and what a gift it was.  Their pastor blessed us with his gift of words.  Then we all lined up, together, and received the mark of an ashen cross on our foreheads.

I will always remember those Ash Wednesday services--no matter how delinquent my Sunday attendance might have been, I tried to show up on that special night, and I left better for it.

Today Taylor Chapel AME sent out a crosstown call for all who mourn Charleston to join them in prayer.  I went, and, once again, I left better for it.

We sat shoulder to shoulder on church pews and listened as three men of God tried to find words for our ears and for our hearts.  Pastor John Lee of Mt. Zion Baptist prayed a prayer that rippled through every single listener as he lifted up the lost, their families, their church, as he prayed there would be no more copycats driven to mimic evil, and then a sudden stillness fell across us all as he prayed for the shooter.  I felt every mind and heart in that congregation turn inward as we challenged ourselves to that tallest and most difficult of Christian tenets.

Pastor Jay Smith of State Street Methodist prayed with a voice thick with emotion, beginning in the painfully still relevant words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and moving seamlessly into his own supplication--for hope, for peace, for us to help one another.

Pastor Joshua Hale of Taylor Chapel looked out upon us and said, "Isn't this the church that Christ intended--brothers and sisters of all races together?"  His question was answered with a chorus of amens.  

Pastor Hale called the names of the murdered.  He gave their ages and a few brief details about them, and as he lit a candle for each, they and their lives, their loss, became real to each of us.  The room was heavy with the grief of nine families, of a church, of a town, we could only begin to imagine.

We joined hands, pew to pew, around the entire room, and we raised our voices together in a shared prayer we all knew by heart, the Lord's own prayer, and those words "thy will be done" were perhaps more difficult to utter on this night.  

Before we left Pastor Hale let us know that the good people of Emanuel AME would receive copies of the register each of us had signed, so they would know that on this night 100+ souls were with them.

Tonight we lit a candle.  Our candle says to evil you will not win.  We will not speak your name because you deserve no name.  We will speak the names of the lost and we will remember them.  

And let it be known that on Thursday, June 18, 2015, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, hope lit up the stained glass windows at Taylor Chapel AME.  It's a hope that can light up the world.