Pastor's Corner: Thoughts, prayers must become action

Thoughts and prayers have abounded in recent weeks as shootings and a car attack have made headlines across this country.

I try to include the names of victims of such tragic acts at the following Sunday's worship  services. As the latest stream of violence began, I could keep up with the lists from Georgia and Colorado.

But then I became too occupied with other things to capture and write down the names of the U.S. Capitol Police officer intentionally rammed and killed, the half dozen gunned down by a former player for my favorite NFL team before he turned the gun on himself the next day in South Carolina, or the four slain in an office complex in Orange, California.

As I sat down to write this column earlier this week, the shooting death of a Black man by a police officer struck a Minneapolis suburb already tense with the trial underway for an officer accused of murdering George Floyd almost a year ago.

Romans 8:26 tells us that "the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."

In that case, as we often say before we share in holy communion, come, Holy Spirit. Come.

Truly, there are not sufficient words that we can offer to speak truth to the reality of this type of violence repeating itself again and again in the United States. A visiting relative reminded me of the observation made years ago that ours is the only nation in which reference to a mass shooting routinely prompts the question, "Which one?"

Though it's become a cliché or trope, we do think and pray about these preventable tragedies as people of faith. Yet it is not enough.

The press gave a fair amount of attention to Pope Francis' message in July 2013 from St. Peter's Square that "prayer that doesn't lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer ... prayer and action must always be profoundly united."

Eight years later, what action are we taking as followers of Jesus Christ to prevent this kind of thing from happening? It is true that there is no way to ensure no one can ever cause this kind of pain again. Though perfection cannot be permitted to be the enemy of the good. We inevitably end up in black-and-white, zero-sum game kinds of discussions about guns, mental health care, race, media, etc. again and again without changing a thing about our society and ourselves.

It seems the best we often manage is to agree to disagree. That seems like the polite, "peaceful" thing to do. However, Jeremiah 6:14 speaks to us thusly: "They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace."

People of God are hurting. Just as we are beginning to emerge from the stresses and strains of the pandemic and "return to normal," we are reminded that "normal" in this country means this kind of violence.

A common defense mechanism is to tell ourselves this is a "big city problem," far away from here and we do not have to worry ourselves with such things. We are only immune until we aren't. Our schools have seen threats along these lines, thankfully taken seriously and stopped before they could be carried out. It is foolhardy to think we have racial harmony when indigenous people are overrepresented in poverty statistics and, on a daily basis, the arrests in "For the Record" in this newspaper. Mental health resources are scarce in rural areas and suicide is an often-overlooked aspect of gun violence that hits close to home.

There are opportunities for us to put our thoughts and prayers into action. Thoughts and prayers are not bad. They just need to be a place where we start, not the place where we stop and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

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The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Havre and Christ Lutheran Church in Big Sandy.