There are eighty names on the list: the oldest was 74 and the youngest 12. They are the names of the victims of gun violence in Montgomery County over the past five years. Many of the victims are in their twenties and thirties. Tomorrow, at Good Shepherd, members of our campus ministry and young adult ministry will install a Memorial to the Lost in front of the church on Lancaster and Montrose Avenues. The Memorial will include T-shirts with the names of all eighty victims of gun violence in Montgomery County over the past five years. The Memorial is sponsored by Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence, a local organization that “seeks to energize the American faith community and actively seek an end to gun violence through public witness and policy advocacy.” Heeding God’s Call is not a partisan organization; it’s an organization that tries to encourage people of different viewpoints to work together for commonsense advocacy to ensure that the streets of our communities can be safer places.
Barry Levis, one of our parishioners, serves on our diocese’s Anti-Gun Violence Commission, and Barry has helped us connect with Heeding God’s Call to host the Memorial to the Lost on our lawn for two weeks. I’m grateful to Barry for his work on this commission. Bishop Gutiérrez is also a co-convener of Bishops against Gun Violence, a group of more than 100 Episcopal bishops working to address the gun violence epidemic in the United States.
I see the installation of the Memorial to the Lost at Good Shepherd as a witness to the local community of our Christian commitment to peace. When people walk by our church and see the Memorial on our lawn, I hope they will know that we are doing our best, with God’s help, to be a place of reconciliation, hope, and peace. True peace is not simply the absence of conflict; it’s a state of being in a state of harmony and unity with one another. As Christians, we believe that only Christ can give the world the peace it so desperately needs. When we exchange the peace of Christ at Mass, it’s not social hour. It’s a holy offering to each other of the peace that comes, first and foremost, from Christ himself.
For the installation of this Memorial at Good Shepherd to be more than a shallow gesture of goodwill, we must see it as sacramental in some way: effecting what it says. For it to effect what it says, it must move us to be a different kind of people, a people united in the peace of Christ. We, as a Christian community, are called to be together, to work together, to receive Eucharist together in spite of our different viewpoints, personal whims, or political beliefs. The Church is not a monolith but a living organism of diverse peoples with a variety of gifts. The point of being a Christian is to die to self to rise to a larger life, a life in shared fellowship with one another. Our own grievances, stubbornness, and ideologies are smaller than Christ’s call to honor one another as children of God.
Our Lord showed us another way than that of violence. When Peter unsheathed his sword to cut off the ear of one of Jesus’s persecutors during his Passion, Jesus rebuked him. Jesus’s death is the defeat of all cycles of vengeance and violence. If we are his followers, we will ask for his grace to refuse to be a part of such vicious cycles. The violence that we renounce as Christians is not just physical violence; it’s the violence of hateful speech and rhetoric, of passive-aggressive anger, of unkind words, and of factional infighting. Even today, the universal Church is rife with dissension and petty arguments. To be a sacramental witness of peace, we must rise above such behavior, even as we are in disagreement with one another. Perhaps the Church is the only place left on earth that is intentionally organized around such a premise.
After Sung Mass on Sunday, I ask you to join me and the acolytes on the lawn following the organ voluntary for a brief dedication and blessing of the Memorial to the Lost. I pray that this Memorial will be not only a public witness on behalf of Christian values but also spur each of us to witness to Christ’s peace, in whatever way we can, in a world that can only be healed by the hand of almighty God and his peace which passes all understanding.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle
In memoriam:
Ja'vein Brown
Jeremiah Hawkins
Tyrell Brown
Nathaniel Harris
Mary Meister
Wanda Deshong
Adam Deshong
Ziyir Wright
Joshua Gonzalez
Michael Gillins
Derek Mayo
Ryshid Simpson
Arthur Thomas
Alhaji Koroma
Shafeeq Robbins
Jordan Hayward
Wesley Smith
Rachel King
Nevaughn Beasley
Frank Acosta
Daniel Hawkins
Anthony Pinckney
Daquan Tucker
Anthony Johnson
Emilio Alvarado
Reid Beck
Miriam Beck
Keishla Arroyo
Sean Robbins
Willie Peterson
James Hunt
Harvey Harris
Chrisian Chambers
Ruben Simon
Steve Green
Simon Jacob
Angel Vazquez
Nahmer Baird
Stephan Bates
Irving Harris
Armand Hayes
Donald Forsythe
Aaron Richardson
William Edney
Dakari Rome
Skyler Fox
Jami Lee
Brandon Bacote-Byer
Tyrek Bpgle
Trey Bartholomew
Frank Wade
Jasiyah Vasquez
Junior Pinnock
Henry Palmen
Layth Evans
Michael Paone
Barry Fields
Carla Forde
Chediaz Thomas
Darrius Waller
Adrionne Reaves
Robert Pollock
Wendell Allison-Haucey
Jonathan Adams
Mekenda Saunders
Latiya Clea
Nadege St. Preux
Nahray Crisden
Rebecca Evans
Jerry White
Ebony Pack
Rasheed Bundy
Jeanne Edwards
Otis Harris
Sun Won
Joshua Smith
James Madison
Alonzo Anthony
Keith Robinson
Ralph Williams