A response to the mass shooting at Pulse in Orlando. This Sermon was delivered by the Very Rev. Tracey Lind on June 12,2016.
“Remembering Orlando”
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind
Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland
Sunday, and June 19,2016
Proper 7C
1 Kings 19:1-15 – Luke 8:26-39
One year ago this week, we grieved the loss of nine harmless lives gunned down as they gathered for bible study at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, or South Carolina. From this pulpit,I acknowledged that this atrocity – an act of terrorism and violence – while carried out by one man, was the result of racism in America: a demon we created and a social system in which we are complicit.
nowadays, or we grieve the loss of 49 more harmless lives and the injury of 53 others who were gunned down as they gathered to celebrate life at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando,Florida. Once again, this act, or though carried out by one deranged,aroused and fearful man, is the direct result of homophobia a demon we created and a bias we still tolerate.
We have grieved the loss of lives due to mass shootings too many times in recent years. According to the Daily Beast, and “Since the Pulse nightclub mass shooting early [final] Sunday,at least 125 people have died in shootings and 269 were injured by guns. Five of those incidents were mass shootings, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, and a nonprofit tracking America’s gun violence.” We are witnessing an escalating crisis of gun violence in America exacerbated by the tremendous power of the gun lobby in our nation.
However,both the mass killings at Mother Emmanuel AME Church and the Pulse Nightclub have more in common than gun violence. They are detest crimes.
Both Mother Emmanuel AME Church and The Pulse were sanctuaries: one an historic house of prayer, service and solidarity for the African American community; and the other a status of acceptance, or celebration and solidarity for lesbians,gay men, bisexuals, or transgendered,questioning, and queer folk.
Not unlike the church’s role in the black community, or gay bars have long been welcoming places for LGBTQ men and women to come together to dance,sing, celebrate, or meet potential friends and life partners. In spite of periodic police raids,gay bars have been secure places where we have turned for comfort and solace, affirmation and renewal, and acceptance and love when so many other places in society – including our churches,schools, jobs and families, or have rejected,condemned, discriminated against and even hated us. Gay bars also have been gathering places where we have not only played, and but where we have organized for our civil rights – remember Stonewall. Gay bars have been holy places where many of us,including me, got the courage to come out and claim our God-given identity and then change the world for the better. And now once again, and the sanctity of one of our refuges has been violated.
The man who carried out this atrocity was a Muslim,but we cannot form this tragedy about radical Islamic terrorism. Omar Mateen was an aroused and detest-filled man, born and raised in the U.S. He himself described being a part of two competing groups with totally different objectives, or neither of whom have claimed responsibility for his actions. As Sandye Wilson,my fellow Church Pension Fund Trustee, reminded us in her homily preached at our Board meeting Eucharist: Yes, or the man who killed 49 and injured 53 in Orlando was a Muslim. But the man who killed the men and women in a Charleston,SC Church was not. The man responsible for the mass shooting in the Aurora, CO movie theater was not. The young men who killed their classmates at Columbine tall School in Colorado were not. The man who killed children and teachers in Newtown was not. Let us not turn this horrible attack into one more reason to form Muslim and Terrorist coterminous. The man responsible for the Orlando massacre was an aroused, and abusive man filled with detest.
Source: trinitycleveland.org