I've just read on the internet that churches prayed today for the victims of the school shooting in Illinois. And, of course, it's fitting that they do so.I wonder, though, how often churches remember the victims of incidents such as the one that took Lawrence King's life this week. Have churches prayed today for those who lose their life in hate crimes against LGBT people? Did they pray for Lawrence King's grieving family? Did they pray for the young man who took his classmate's life?
Do churches pray to be cleansed of prejudice against LGBT people? Do they pray that God will move the hearts and souls of church members to combat this form of social violence? Do churches pray to be forgiven of the violence they incite when they misuse the Bible as a weapon of hate against LGBT people, or when they speak of gay persons as intrinsically disordered? Do churches pray for the gift of repentance when they drive LGBT people out of their midst?
Remembering is at the very core of the church's calling in the world: Do this in remembrance of me.
Forgetting is all too easy. We inhabit a throwaway culture, which treats some of its citizens as throwaway people. Out of sight, out of mind. . . . Remembrance is a daring act, an act of rebellion against the status quo, one that commits us not merely to hold a person or event in memory, but to do something that commemorates the one we remember.
Do this in remembrance of me. Lawrence King deserves to be remembered. Matthew Shepard deserves to be remembered. These and so many other young lives obliterated or malformed by homophobia deserve the attention of a Christian community called to combat violence and hate, as it remembers a founder executed for his willingness to sit at table with the outcasts of his culture.
In fighting to remember, when so much tempts us to forget (out of sight, out of mind), we fight to construct more humane societies that will eventually make the kind of violence we witness in gay-bashing unthinkable.
In memory of Lawrence King, I'd like to share the following poem that I wrote after the sudden death of a young Dominican priest I hired to teach theology at Xavier University in New Orleans when I chaired that school's theology department two decades ago:
I try to keep you in my memory,
Old friend,
But each day your photo fades
One color more,
A picture in the lake,
Fraught to pieces by the rising of the wind.
In my heart I've carved a shrine,
Where red carnations vie with daffodils
To chant you to your rest.
But no one that we know
Comes now to worship there.
Pilgrim feet forsake the path
That leads to you.
The shade beside the road
Invites foot-weary travelers
Grown tired of sun and rain along the way.
And I, yes even I:
That shrine within my heart
Holds one blossom fewer every day.
