Resurrection and Mass Shooting in Louisville

 

TRAGEDY CLOSE TO HOME

Tragedy always hits harder when it strikes closer to home. There have been 19 mass shootings in America this year, shootings in which 4 or more people were killed.  All of them are horrific, but some of them feel more personal.

 On April 9^th Christians around the globe celebrated Easter. The next morning, with songs of resurrection still ringing in our ears, we learned of the killing of 5 people at the Old National Bank in Louisville KY.

These killings struck close to home for me.  I spent 11 years living in Louisville.  I grew into young adulthood in that city.  I earned an M.Div. and a PhD in that town, a period of transformative theological growth for me.  I made life-long friends in that place; if you look closely you can still see their fingerprints on my life.  I fell in in love and got married in that place.  A city I cherish and to which I owe a lot has been wounded.

I thought about that woundedness in light of the resurrection.

RECONCILING RESURRECTION WITH REALITY

How do we reconcile the tension between our Easter anthems on Sunday and the bloody killings in a bank in Louisville the next morning?

 The French theologian (with the German-sounding name) Oscar Cullman once made a connection between the final phase of WW II and the victory of Jesus on Calvary.  Cullman observed that on D Day, once the Allied soldiers got across the beaches of Normandy and into the hedgerows, the war was won. From there the Allies would move south and west across France fighting village by village.  They would make their way into Germany and finally on to Berlin.  When they got off the sand onto soil, the war was won.

From the hedgerows of coastal France to Berlin was, nonetheless, a long slog.  More people would die.  The road ahead held headships for sure.  As they got off the beaches and into the villages the war was won, but it was not yet over.  There was still a lot of mopping up to do.

This is where we live, in the mopping up phase of things.  The Enemy is defeated, but the Enemy has not yet yielded. The victory of God in Christ is inevitable, but battles are still to be waged. 

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 admonishes us to put on the whole armor of God. Paul, of all people, affirmed in the victory of God in Jesus. Yet Paul realized there are still some battles to be fought.  He also realized that we wage war not just against random incidental violence.  When a young adult walks into a bank conference room armed with an AR 15 style semi-automatic assault rifle intending to kill, we see we are up against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12).” We see this is about a great deal more than one disappointed well-armed soon-to-be unemployed worker.

HOW DO WE LIVE IN THE MEANTIME?

How do we live in the meantime, as we proclaim resurrection yet mourn Louisville and her dead and the countless other atrocities in our world? 

Victory is assured, but there are still battles to be fought.  In this time of mopping up, we carry on the work Jesus began:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)

It is still a battle.  Our world is not in favor of the work of Jesus. 

Jim Kelsey 

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State