SPECIAL EDITION
UPSTATE NEW YORK SYNOD
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
June 25, 2015
Bishop Macholz

As a county and a church we continue to mourn following the shootings in Charleston last week and wonder about next steps as well as a path forward in the midst of what is a very challenging conversation and time. Below is a statement from our Presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton. I encourage you to read what she has to say.

 

I also want you to know that Bishop Eaton will be present at the funeral service for Pastor Clementa Pinkney at Mother Emmanuel AME Church along with Bishop Herman Yoos of the South Carolina Synod and Bishop Michael Rhyne, Bishop of the Allegheny Synod; a good friend and classmate of Pastor Pinkney.


Please continue to keep the families of those who lost loved ones as well as this country in your prayers in the coming days. We have much work to do and the journey will be long. Yet we have no other option than to pursue justice and reconciliation with one another; that is our calling, our baptismal grounding.  Join with me and countless others who believe this is a unique moment in time that offers the opportunity to begin a conversation around the issue of race that might actually make a difference in our world. It begins with each of us. May our God open our hearts, minds and lives to the possibilities that await by the Spirit's guidance and direction.

 

 

It has been a long season of disquiet in our country. From Ferguson to Baltimore, simmering racial tensions have boiled over into violence. But this ... the fatal shooting of nine African Americans in a church is a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism. The church was desecrated. The people of that congregation were desecrated. The aspiration voiced in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are "one nation under God" was desecrated.


Mother Emanuel AME's pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, as was the Rev. Daniel Simmons, associate pastor at Mother Emanuel. The suspected shooter is a member of an ELCA congregation. All of a sudden and for all of us, this is an intensely personal tragedy. One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.

 

We might say that this was an isolated act by a deeply disturbed man. But we know that is not the whole truth. It is not an isolated event. And even if the shooter was unstable,the framework upon which he built his vision of race is not. Racism is a fact in American culture. Denial and avoidance of this fact are deadly. The Rev. Mr. Pinckney leaves a wife and children. The other eight victims leave grieving families. The family of the suspected killer and two congregations are broken. When will this end?

 

The nine dead in Charleston are not the first innocent victims killed by violence. Our only hope rests in the innocent One, who was violently executed on Good Friday. Emmanuel,God with us, carried our grief and sorrow - the grief and sorrow of Mother Emanuel AME church- and he was wounded for our transgressions - the deadly sin of racism.

 

I urge all of us to spend a day in repentance and mourning. And then we need to get to work. Each of us and all of us need to examine ourselves, our church and our communities.We need to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us. We need to talk and we need to listen, but we also need to act. No stereotype or racial slur is justified. Speak out against inequity. Look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth. Above all pray - for insight,for forgiveness, for courage.

 

Kyrie Eleison.

 

The Rev. Elizabeth A.Eaton PresidingBishop

Evangelical Lutheran Church inAmerica
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