There is a synagogue in my neighborhood. Every week, my neighbors flow in and out of it, walking to and from their house, honoring the Sabbath. And if the temple is open, standing in the mix of the goings and comings, you will always find an armed security guard. Always. I grew up in this neighborhood and some version of this person has duitfully been present for as long as I can remember.
After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, it seems the path of least resistance is to let fear abound. Fear over the ideas and actions our political culture helps foster and enflame. Fear for our own safety. Fear that isolated tragedies could snowball to something more.
It is either that, or we swing toward blame and guilt. We throw those feelings onto ourselves or others. Thinking because we are not a part of a group that has been targeted, we are in some way responsible that others are. We wonder shamefully how our rhetoric, anger, or non action has stoked more unhinged people to act in such terrible ways. Or we use a shooting like this to justify what we have thought and cement our own form of hatred rather than allow it to open us to love.
Yet alongside that, what I also know and cannot shake is that as long as Kairos has been at the Riverside location, no one has ever asked that we have a security guard present so we can safely worship. It is not a fact we need to defend. It is simply a privilege we have been given and should be grateful to have.
This all leads me to confess that I struggle to know the role of the church in moments like these because I easily find myself wrestling with all of the above. That said, I am certain God does not desire for these tragic events to heighten our fear, drown us in guilt, or help us to facilitate blame. I am quite sure the greatest temptation for followers of Jesus in times like these is to use God and not turn toward God.
In the book of Esther, the Jewish people are in an equally confusing and precarious time. They are ruled by the dominant Persian culture, but by a series of fortuitous events, a Jewish woman, who has hidden her heritage, named Esther finds herself assuming the position of Queen. But as the story progresses, one of the King’s advisors persuades the King to exterminate the Jewish people. The order is signed. The date is set.
So Esther, a woman who neither asked to be queen nor earned the position. A woman who is portrayed as neither better nor more special than anyone else. This woman finds herself in a position that is slightly less threatened, slightly more protected than those around her.
As is natural, Esther tries to ignore and deny this truth about her life until, finally, her friend and confident Mordecai says this,
“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Friends, today, we know so many things. We know how we feel. We know how fruitless and small any individual response to acts of violence can look. And if we are honest, we know, like Esther, that we will never be able to justify or shed the privileges we have been given. But if in faith we turn toward God’s story, if we open our lives to the mystery of grace that cannot be comprehended until it is encountered, who knows maybe we will find we have come to this place in life for such a time as this.
In the end, Esther does use her position. The Jewish people are saved, but Esther does not act alone. She asks her people to fast for her. And since I don’t think any of us can predict the fruits of God’s grace, I think fasting might be a good place for us to start.
So know from 7 to 7 today, I am fasting, fasting for myself, for you, and for our greater community. And if possible, some time this week I would encourage you to do the same. Not because you should or because it will solve something but because fasting is a discipline we have been invited to use to open our lives to the story of Jesus. We do it because, when the world gives us no easy answers, we claim faith in a God who is on the move, and we don’t want to miss where we are being called to join.
Grace and peace,
Drew