Synod of the Trinity - Another Way

A response to Saturday's events in Butler County, PA, by Synod of the Trinity Executive the Rev. Forrest Claassen:

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:41-42).
 
What meaning are we to make of the assassination attempt on former President Trump on Saturday night?
 
And perhaps more to the point, who gets to define that meaning?
 
How meaning is made
 
Does the shooter, whose intent we can now only imagine? Does Mr. Trump, who now knows what it feels like to escape death by inches? Does the family of Corey Comperatore — the family of a man who by the same inches did not escape?
 
Does the Secret Service, as it reviews how someone got such a vantage point? Or the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has declared the moment a reflection of the failure of American democracy?
 
You may anticipate where I’m headed: the shooting has multiple meanings. For that matter, any event has multiple meanings. Some of them deserve more credibility than others. And some of them depend on who we are and where we sit.
 
How I think on Saturday night
 
So what sense do I make of what happened last Saturday night? I don’t have anything carefully developed. But I do have a few thoughts that guide me when something like this happens.

1. An event like this is nothing new, even for the United States.

Forty years or more have passed since an assassination attempt on a sitting or former president. But other national leaders, or their families, have been attacked — Gabby Giffords, 2011; Steve Scalise, 2017; Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul, 2022. And, as we know from our high school history texts, assassination attempts on presidents and presidential candidates are hardly unprecedented. Too many of them have succeeded.

2. Despite our cries to the contrary, this country is violent.

We have claimed our identity, established our boundaries, and protected our interests at the expense of others. Violence is embedded in our DNA. Our national leaders may insist that there is no place for violence in the political process of the United States. I would love for them to be right. But until our social messaging stops opening the door to violent solutions, their words are aspirational at best.

3. God in Christ has shown another way.

The Bible rarely shows God acting with direct power. We do not believe in a God who overwhelms our hate by magic or “divine fiat” as we commonly mean it. We proclaim a God who — in Christ on the Cross — takes our hatred and wrath into his person and patiently, graciously replaces it with his righteousness until we are the very righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

4. This way is meant to be our way.

If God does not respond with divine fiat, then the human problem will not be solved by force of will. Only a Cross-shaped response can answer our deepest need.
 
I believe God intends that response to be ours as well. I believe every real solution to human sin, including violence, will take the shape of the Cross. And I believe God calls us to that different way.
 
What I don’t mean
 
Now by “us” I do not mean humanity, or the people of the United States. Perhaps a world that lived by the Christ-ethic would know a peace we cannot presently imagine. And perhaps a nation that laid down its life as Christ did would save not only itself but the whole world (after all, wasn’t that what Jesus meant when he wept over Jerusalem?). But I have never seen a single nation, let alone the whole world, lift up its cross and follow Christ. Nor do I expect to, this side of the Second Coming.
 
No, by “us” I mean the Church — the “holy nation” whom God has “called…out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We — the Church — are the ones called to follow a different way. The way of Christ is to be the way of Christ’s Body in the world—starting now.
 
Conclusion
 
I have no idea what it feels like to have a bullet clip my ear. I have no idea what it means to lose a loved one in one unanticipated second. And I certainly cannot say what it feels like to be an ordinary Russian.
 
So there are many meanings to the shooting on Saturday that I will never know.
 
But I do know a little about violence as the solution to the human condition. And this much I believe: if the Savior of the world has nail-pierced hands and a wound in his side, then our best hope — as his followers and for the world — lies in taking the same path.

Somewhere Along the Way —
 
Forrest