Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park

The other number is always changing. That’s a drag, not because I need to print a new sign each week (I do have to print a new sign each week, because not a week has gone by so far in 2017 without a gun death). It’s a drag because the violence is so relentless. I printed a new sign yesterday with the latest number, 124, but by the time our speaker, Rev. Brenda Mitchell, arrived to speak at our midweek Lenten service, a seven-year-old had been shot and killed in Englewood, and the sign needed to be revised.

Brenda was eloquent in describing her spiritual journey after the death of her 31-year-old son more than a decade ago. A couple of men who have worked as violence interrupters in Englewood came, and they are interested in working with our congregation to bring our prayers to our close neighbors in Englewood. It was such a good evening, and at the same time, it was such a drag. It’s a drag that we need to be concerned, endlessly concerned and active, in confronting violence in our city. Violence is so draining and so relentless. Each incident makes you feel helpless and hopeless. Interest on savings may not be compounding so fast these days, but violence seems to be compounding exponentially. It casts a very wide pall on our landscape.

Rev. Mitchell had the words to direct our prayers and hopes. In delivering the message in worship, she talked about God transforming her mourning into action. She taught us that peacemaking, that endless work of confronting violence and building peace, is rightly at the center of our Christian life. It never ends, but it brings gifts as well, like friendship and partnership in the work of kingdom building, empathy and fellowship in the gospel, the joy of worshiping with our fellow Christians. Peacemaking is the process of creating the kingdom of God in the midst of a violent world.

Our guests will likely be back with us after Easter for another morning of prayers out on the street, bringing church and our concern for gun violence out onto 55th Street. They are also interested in working with us on something I call drive-by prayers, where we can pray on the spot for our neighbors in surrounding areas. If you’re interested in helping to plan activities to respond to violence, let me know.

If you would like to keep track of gun violence in Chicago for yourself, so that you can pray about it and take action on it, bookmark dnainfo’s Murder Timeline. This is an archive of every gun death in Chicago since 2012, with photos, names and information on every victim, maps and links to news stories on every incident. It puts names and faces with the numbers.

Next Thursday evening, we’ll meditate on some important vocabulary for peacemakers – solidarity, accompaniment, preference and self-determination. In times when many things we value are being torn down, it’s good to build our skills that can be used for the difficult work of building up.

Because we adopted our expanded Statement of Welcome at the end of January, our representative, Dorothy Pytel, was able to say “yes” on behalf of Augustana to signing onto each brief. That ability to move quickly was crucial; other representatives from faith communities couldn’t sign, because their communities had not discussed the question of whether or not to stand with undocumented immigrants. This is a good example of the power of statements and how valuable it is to make them; in this case, it meant that Augustana could move quickly to advocate on an important issue with widespread consequences.

Our mailing address is:

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list