Faithful unite against gun violence
Various Oak Lawn congregations to hold prayer vigil today
Three area United Church of Christ congregations will gather Tuesday for a vigil to pray for victims of gun violence, and are welcoming anyone looking for a time and place to help process recent tragedies.
“Most of it we’re designing it as a prayer service: a prayer for comfort, a prayer for peace, a prayer for justice and a prayer for action,” said the Rev. Daniel Sather of Pilgrim Faith United Church of Christ in Oak Lawn. “My hope is we gather and grieve and lament together as a community and that moves us as a sense of comfort and through prayers and music … and we respond.”
He will lead the vigil at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the sanctuary of Faith United, 9411 S. 51st Ave., with the Rev. Steve Horger of Salem United Church of Christ in Oak Lawn and the Rev. MaryBeth Ingberg of Emmanuel Church of Christ in Beverly. The event began as a response to the shootings May 24 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers; May 14 in a grocery in Buffalo, New York, that led to 10 people being killed and 3 others wounded; and May 15 in a church in Laguna Woods, California, that killed one person and wounded four others.
“I (came up with the idea) out of a need for the church to speak to gun violence,” Sather said. “When children are killed, it’s a whole different matter. … They know the other ones (in Buffalo and Laguna Woods) were racially driven, motivated. I think we need to speak, as a church, to that tragedy. That needs to be fixed.”
Sather said the goal of the vigil “is to address the grief and the suffering we’re all experiencing, keeping in mind that there are people who are much closer to the situation than we are. You can only imagine their grief. That brings us to some sense of releasing that guilt and anger and moves us toward comfort, moves us to peace, justice and action.”
And he wants to do more than just pray. “Worship is great — it ministers to us — but if we don’t do
something with it beyond just sitting around and praying about it, that’s not being faithful.”
He plans to have a list of agencies in Illinois and nationally that address gun violence and laws.
“Prayers and thoughts don’t seem to be enough,” Sather shared. “That’s partly because we’re grieving and hurting — we’re broken. We need some sense of wholeness of humanity that empowers us that allows us to respond with the Christian convictions of love and justice and to do the right thing. But doing the right thing is kind of ambiguous. I like actions of peace and justice and grace.”
This is the first time Sather has planned a community event with other United Church of Christ congregations or their pastors.
Ingberg hopes it allows people to really see each other, “to look around and see people from our own local community who have one thing in common and that is care and concern for the wider world and our community who have been affected by gun violence.”
“To have a bit of unity in our worship and prayers and music and singing that hopefully will be empowering and motivating,” she said. “From there with some of the practical aspects that people should be able to go away from this vigil with something in their mind, in their hand, that they can actually help affect change, make things better. Worship is important but actually doing something about it (is too). And as a community of faith, we have to do that.”
Ingberg hopes many people attend. “I know people are having feelings (about gun violence). This is a place to express that,” she said. “You can know you will be welcomed and included and not be judged for being a radical. Seeing who is there — it’s emboldening.”
She chose the music for the vigil,such as “All are Welcome,” “For the Healing of the Nations,” “Send Me, Lord (Thuma Mina)” and “We Shall Overcome.” There also will be readings and prayers and an opportunity to light candles for victims of gun violence.
The vigil will have a tone that’s “very meditative,” she said, calling it “a safe place where people can express their grief, their anger and their unity and ideas for action.”
Resources available at the event will include tips on how to write letters to officials and phone numbers to contact representatives and senators in Congress.
“One of the phrases that we used (in planning the vigil) was that we know what we need to do, and the Christian church really has to have something to say about this,” Ingberg said. “Even though it’s going to be an ecumenical thing, I think part of the problem has been some of the so-called Christian people who have not done anything to preserve life … so I think it’s purposeful.”
Sather emphasized that everyone is welcome.
“Anyone who needs some balm and comfort at a very tragic time. And it’s not going back — it keeps coming back,” he said. “To me, that’s the tragedy and sign of it all: We can’t seem to act as a nation in positive ways.
“We continue to kill people in shopping centers because they’re Black and children in a place that should be safe, and teachers. That’s not right,” Sather said.