On Wednesday evening I sat at Countryside Community Church participating in an interdenominational panel discussion entitled “What brings you joy?” One of the panelists in this four-session series is Rev Victoria Parker the pastor of Bethel AME church here in Omaha. Just a few hours later when I found myself awake in the middle of the night, I checked my Facebook page and saw the news reports of the horrifying events at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal church (also called by some Mother Emmanuel AME Church) in Charleston, SC. I couldn’t believe what I read. Nine people left their homes for a weekly Bible study and would never return again. The events of that evening have left people reeling. How can something like this happen? How can people be shot in a church by someone they just spent time with in Bible study? How can innocent people learning about their loving God become victims of an unimaginable hate crime?

Like those disciples on the boat with Jesus it’s as if a great windstorm had arose. The waves of violence – waves of hatred and racism had swamped the sanctity and sanctuary of the church. This great windstorm has been brewing according to our presiding bishop, Elizabeth Eaton, as a she begins her response to the tragic violence in Charleston speaking of a long season of disquiet in our country and then goes on to say:

“From Ferguson to Baltimore, simmering racial tensions have boiled over into violence.

But this … the fatal shooting of nine African Americans in a church is a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism. The church was desecrated. The people of that congregation were desecrated. The aspiration voiced in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are “one nation under God” was desecrated.

Mother Emanuel AME’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, as was the Rev. Daniel Simmons, associate pastor at Mother Emanuel. The suspected shooter is a member of an ELCA congregation. All of a sudden and for all of us, this is an intensely personal tragedy. One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.

We might say this was an isolated act by a deeply disturbed man. But we know that is not the whole truth. It is not an isolated event. And even if the shooter was unstable, the framework upon which he built his vision of race is not. Racism is a fact in American culture.

Denial and avoidance of this fact are deadly. The Rev. Mr. Pinckney leaves a wife and children. The other eight victims leave grieving families. The family of the suspected killer and two congregations are broken. When will this end?”

When will this end?, says Bishop Eaton. How long, O Lord cried many others this week? How long, O Lord, the prophet Habakkuk says shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? These words for me are a plea to God not because we believe that God caused the events in Charleston, not because we believe that God allowed the events to happen, but because there is nowhere else to go with the pain and agony of the death of innocent people while they studied the Bible.  There is no place else to take the fears, frustrations and sadness of such horrific events except to the God of the universe. It is a plea to God for we trust that God accompanies us on this journey of life. We trust in the midst of the windstorm that God is in the boat with us.

And yet there is more. We can’t only cry out How Long, O Lord? … As Bishop Eaton says:

“I urge all of us to spend a day in repentance and mourning. And then we need to get to work. Each of us and all of us need to examine ourselves, our church and our communities. We need to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us. We need to talk and we need to listen, but we also need to act. No stereotype or racial slur is justified. Speak out against inequity. Look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth. Above all pray – for insight, for forgiveness, for courage.”

We can’t stop with our cries of lament: How long, O Lord?, for we must look in the mirror and honestly ask ourselves how we are involved in the reality of racism in our country.

We can’t just cry out to God as the disciples did saying: Don’t you care that our brothers and sisters are perishing?, without realizing there is work to be done on our parts. Almost fifty years ago Ray Christensen stood in the chapel right over there and expressed the urgency of dealing with racism in the city of Omaha. In response to a statement that “People aren’t going to get to the place he was overnight” he says: “There isn’t many more nights left the way I look at it.” It’s been almost fifty years—almost 18,000 nights have passed and still people are being shot for the color of their skin. Almost fifty years and still Omaha has one of the poorest black communities in the country. . Almost fifty years and still non-white people in the city of Omaha tell me they are faced with acts of racism nearly every day – both subtle and overt.

It’s appropriate to lift our pleas to God, the Bible is full of laments to God but we can’t stop there. We must in the words of Pastor Victoria from Bethel AME here in Omaha in the previous week’s panel discussion  “put feet to our prayers.” As you reflect on what it means to “put feet to our prayers” I invite you to watch this video and listen to the words of Matthew West’s song: Do Something….