In this video, General Minister and President Rev. Terri Hord Owens addresses the violence we are seeing across the country and offers a word of hope as the church heads towards Holy Week.
Hello Disciples, this is your General Minister and President Terri Hord Owens. In this Lenten season violence is continuing to wreak havoc upon our society. Violence is eviscerating our bodies, violence is eviscerating our souls, violence is diminishing our individual and collective humanity from the use once again of AR style assault weapons to conduct a mass shooting at a school in Nashville resulting in the loss of three nine-year-old children, loss of three adults. One of those three children a member of Woodmont Christian Church right across the street from that school.
From the continued threat and actual attack upon the bodies of our trans siblings, from the continued destruction of black lives at the hands of law enforcement, to the continued traumatic violence of poverty, homelessness and lack of health care, to the continued legislative violence now on the uptick—banning books, limiting our access to a free ballot, circumscribing a woman’s right to govern the use of her own body and continuing to ban the very presence of the bodies of many of our siblings in the public square.
This violence in all its forms in any way in which it diminishes our collective humanity must stop and our silence must end. Your disagreement with me or about me cannot sanction my destruction. God’s Limitless love is revealed in the life, death, suffering and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and as we enter into this Holy Week let us cling to that Resurrection hope. Let us remember the teachings of Jesus who in the Gospel of John reminds us that we must love one another as he has loved us. He who bore witness to that limitless love Jesus, who established the covenant, the new covenant at the Lord’s table welcoming all. And we who are bold enough to actually call ourselves Disciples of Jesus Christ we must remember that our collective humanity is only reflected inasmuch as we can bear witness to God’s limitless love. Let us work together for an end to violence in all its forms verbal physical, soul violence, let us remember that we must respect and protect each one of us as part of God’s creation. And that by doing so we will indeed bear witness to the world that Jesus came to bear Witness to the Limitless love of God that is the proclamation of the Gospel. We must make you know invite us to commit ourselves in this Lenten season to that life-saving life-changing witness. Remember God loves you and so do I. May you find great peace and may you re-discover hope during this holy season.