Today is the five year anniversary of the martyrdom of the Emanuel AME nine. They opened their doors and hearts to everyone as witnesses to good news of Jesus and they paid the ultimate price. But today, I wonder about the survivors. Welcome all to the June 17, 2020 post of Peachtree Baptist Church, my name is Paul Capps, pastor.

This post today may cause considerable discomfort for those who have lost loved ones through violence. This challenge is for those of us who haven’t experienced such loss. We must learn to grieve and mourn with survivors is such a way that we live further into the justice God calls us to through Christ. As those nine took up their crosses, we must do the same.

My family and I were living in Beaufort, South Carolina when this tragedy occurred just north of us in Charleston. As the details unfolded, it became more clear that these people were simply being obedient to the call they had to express the harmony of Christ as they knew it. They were having a Wednesday night Bible Study. I think back to the studies we’ve had at PBC recently and there were at least two separate occasions when visitors came and sat in on the study. That’s what we are supposed to do. It’s on our sign.

And so I can’t imagine the horror and the terror those congregants experienced as the self proclaimed white supremacist who had sat with them in Bible Study for over an hour stood and shot the gun he had chosen and shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase 77 times. And I can’t imagine surviving. But amazingly, five did survive, including a five-year old girl whose grandmother shielded her and told her to play dead. And that grandmother, Felecia Sanders, was also a mother to Tywanza Sanders, whom she couldn’t shield, and who died near her calling her name.

Felecia Sanders speaks often about the trauma she continues to experience, how her church didn’t know how to deal with her post-traumatic stress and how she is learning how to express hope despite the pain.

There were other survivors as well and their stories are important. While we remember the nine that died, we must also remember those left behind. We must ask ourselves serious questions about our faith and whether we are willing to face the evil of this world with the hope of resurrection found in Jesus Christ. If we claim that faith, if we say we want to follow Jesus, we are saying that we want to not only welcome the stranger, but we also want to walk with the grieving.

If we believe that God desires well-being for all creation, then we, as people of that harmony, must be the kind of family that is willing to reflect Jesus, regardless of the risks. Even today, Felecia Sanders receives threats on her life by people trapped in hatred. It doesn’t always take a shooting to realize that being a witness to the gospel of Jesus stirs up the hearts of those that hate the idea of equity, justice, harmony and goodness for all. All you have to do is go on Facebook to see the vitriol spewing from those that hate God’s plans of restoration. But by faith we believe that this world will be transformed into a place where the Emanuel nine and all the survivors are restored and hatred will be no more. 

I think the real challenge for me today is whether I’m willing to risk working for that reality now. Yesterday I shared a short piece that to Howard Thurman seemed to really express a real sense of harmony. I think, however, that unless we are actually using our full selves to express God’s peace and well-being, we are on the outside of God’s plans. As we remember the tragedy that happened five years ago today, my prayer is that we will not only remember, but carry their witness forward so that we can be on the inside of God’s plans.

Nine palmetto roses in remembrance of the lives lost