Published: May 18, 2022

Sunday, May 22, 3 pm, Baber AME Church (550 Meigs Street, Rochester, NY 14607)
Join in on the livestream

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me? 

How long must I bear pain in my soul,

and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”
— Psalm 13:1-2

The shooting deaths over the weekend of ten Black people in Buffalo by a young white supremacist should shock us. We should be shocked that it happened at all, that it happened so close to home, that it was so easy to carry out.

It should shock us, but it doesn’t. 

We have grown so accustomed to the news of mass shootings that all we need is the location, the body count, and the targeted group and we can fill in the rest—ready to begin again that inevitable cycle of outrage and apathy. After four hundred years of rape, torture, and oppression of Black people by white people, we are not even surprised that it was motivated by sinful and erroneous notions of Black inferiority and white “replacement”—a theory espoused and dignified by online trolls and depraved media personalities. 

We mourn the loss of life, the scourge of white supremacy, and the feeling of apathy and helplessness that too quickly sets in following these atrocities. While it might be tempting jump to conversations about healing, to do so risks ignoring the very real pain and anger that is still growing in so many, particularly in our siblings of color.

Fortunately, within our faith tradition we have a shield against apathy—an act of grief and anger that is designed to help us feel the moment faithfully. We call it lament. 

Make no mistake, this is a moment for lament.

To that end, we are joining with our Pan-Methodist siblings for a special Joint Service of Lament on Sunday, May 22 at 3 pm to be hosted by Baber AME. We invite you to join us. 

If you can’t be there, we ask that you pray for peace, for justifiable outrage, and for earnest and honest lament in the wake of undeniable evil. May it someday be unimaginable. May we, by God’s grace, find our way to a world in which this kind of act would be shocking again.

In Christ,
Stephen