Video shows peace so savagely stolen
Church recorded fellowship from last Sunday before attack
We can’t watch the last morning at Sandy Hook Elementary or the last evening at Windows on the World. But online for all to see is the last Sunday service before calamity befell First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas.
The video, one of more than 160 the church recorded each Sunday and posted on its website over the past three years, shows a congregation like any other — delighting in fellowship, concerned about attendance, focused on such quotidian details as the Sunday breakfast hosts’ rotation and the Fall Festival Day celebration on Halloween.
Regarding the latter, Pastor Frank Pomeroy asks for prayers “for the safety of the folks on the hayride.”
The irony, as when the service turns later to faith, life and death, is in retrospect overwhelming.
The congregation on Oct. 29 consisted of about three dozen people. Since we know that a gunman killed 26 worshipers the following Sunday and wounded at least 20 others, we wonder what happened to those in the video, such as the woman signing for the hard of hearing, the two guitar players or the kid running around on the altar.
We hear good-natured lamentations about inconsistent attendance — up one week, down the next. We wonder who stayed away the following week and who came.
We know Bryan Holcombe came. His title was associate pastor, but he looked like anyone else in the informal congregation. We can see him in jeans and a colorful, open-necked floral print shirt. He grinned a lot. He always sat in the fifth pew from the front, on the left, in the seat closest to the wall.
When he came to the altar, he declaimed on Scripture as if he had all the time in the world. Yet we know that he and seven other members of his extended family are dead, including a pregnant woman.
On Oct. 8, Holcombe walked to the altar to read a scriptural passage and referred to the Las Vegas concert shooting a week earlier as evidence of the “wicked nature” of man.
He cited Genesis — “The Lord saw that man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth” — and added a personal note: “We might use diesel in fertilizer and blow up a building. We might commandeer an airplane and fly it into a building. Or we might take a gun to a crowd. It’s a problem of man’s heart.”
He moved on to Proverbs and its list of what the Lord hates, including “’hands that shed innocent blood.”
“That would cover the (Vegas) shooting,” he said.
That was an unusually somber Sunday.
Three weeks later, on Oct. 29, the day began off camera. Adult Sunday School was followed by breakfast, which featured an egg casserole prepared by a parishioner named Miran- da.
Before the service, Pomeroy parked his 747-pound Harley-Davidson in front of the altar. In his sermon, he compared religious faith to motorcycle riding.
Just as the motorcyclist has to learn to trust centrifugal force and lean into the turn, the Christian has to learn to trust God’s word, even though “there’s going to be some things in life we don’t understand. … How many times in life do we come to those bends we didn’t expect?” Pomeroy asked.
He said, “Sure, there are bumps in the road of life, but I get caught up in the exhilaration of riding in that life.’’
He could have no idea of the mountain ahead. That, however, is all we can think of when we hear him refer to his passenger on the Harley en route to church that chilly dawn — his daughter Annabelle, 14. She died in the same church the following Sunday, while both her parents were away.
In the church announcements, the eternal gave way to the particular. The congregation was short on 60-liter bot- tles of soda as prizes for the ring-toss game at the fall festival. “I’m gonna go and buy a mess,’’ the pastor assured his flock. He’s a burly, bald man who wore jeans, a dark workshirt and a loud tie.
The church, part of the Southern Baptist Convention, has a humble sanctuary. The altar is no more than a raised platform with a lectern. Against the wall is a simple wooden cross with nails in the place of Jesus’ hands and feet. A television monitor displays song lyrics and the occasional video to inform Pomeroy’s sermons.
Christian soft rock and earnest, if sometimes wobbly, singing is a major feature of every service. The passing of the peace, a perfunctory exercise in some churches, is a good three minutes of holy chaos here.
As the pastor said: “It’s OK to have fun in God’s house.’’ In the video, kids ran around, and adults hugged, chatted and laughed. They filled a center aisle that the gunman would march up and down, firing as he went.
Later, after the recording of the service is over, we can recall the faithful lyrics to one of the songs:
“On that day when my strength is failing/The end draws near and my time has come/Still my soul will sing your praise unending/Ten thousand years, then forever more.’’
We measure the words, and wonder if they’re adequate to the challenge ahead.
“We might use diesel in fertilizer and blow up a building. We might commandeer an airplane and fly it into a building. Or we might take a gun to a crowd. It’s a problem of man’s heart.”
Bryan Holcombe, associate pastor, in a sermon last month