I live on the north side of Chicago in the Andersonville neighborhood. When family members ask
us how things are going in the city, the conversation usually turns towards the violence that this
it has become notorious for. They always say things like they hope I get home safe if they know
I’m coming home from work at night, to take a taxi if I’m going to be out too late with friends,
and to be aware of my surroundings at all times. And God love my family and their concern for
my well-being – those constant questions help me remember how much they care about me from
afar. But in response to those questions, I usually end up trying to quiet their fears with responses
like “Well, you know, the city is a city …” “but, most of those murders are on the south or the
west sides of Chicago.” “That’s not really in my neighborhood.” “Well I work near Austin but
Oak Park is a completely different world, it’s much safer there.”
Unfortunately, my responses have pretty accurately reflected my feelings about the city since we
moved here 5 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a person who has a passion for justice, who has
committed myself to the ongoing work of recognizing my racial privilege with a long way to go,
and as a clergy person, I even make a point to show up to protests for peace in this city and larger
world. But when it came to issues like gun violence, or violence in communities predominantly
not in my own racial or ethnic group, I’ve been pretty quiet and half-hearted. It really didn’t affect
me and my everyday life. Sure, the murder rates really are too high, and the mayor’s office should
really do something, maybe the national guard could be the ones to step in, but gun violence had
never really been one of MY issues. In my head now I think about the possible reasons for that:
maybe I can’t make sense of the facts through the sensationalizing of the media, maybe my lack
of knowledge about the root causes and underlying issues, maybe it’s because I have a lack of
faith that I could actually make a difference. Or please God, don’t let it be, that I could have
somehow accepted that all of this is just a part of life for some and not for me.
In both scriptures this morning we are presented with a very clear path to life. In the Psalms,
there is a path for the happy and a path for the wicked. In Deuteronomy, there is a path of life
and a path of death. A path for the righteous and a path for the sinner. A path for the fortunate
and a path for those who could have chosen differently. Those who are happy and righteous will
be like a tree planted by streams of water, abundant with resources to show for it. Those who are
wicked and sinful will be like chaff from wheat, dried up and blown by the wind to perish. The
steps to get on that path of life are clear, just do everything right and no one gets hurt. Attend to
God’s law, the torah, and everything will work out. Choose life and you’ll be rewarded with
abundant life.
Is it really that easy? Just make good choices? Is it even really a choice for everyone? Is it really as
clear of a path to the promised land for all? Is it that easy to have a life that reflects all of your
greatest hopes and dreams? Is it really that easy to choose life?
Earlier this week, I was asked to pray at the memorial vigil for Elijah Sims, a 16-year-old student
at Oak Park River Forest High school. If circumstances would have been different, Elijah would
have been seventeen years old on Wednesday, his memorial vigil would instead have been a
birthday party. But on Monday evening while in the Austin neighborhood hanging out with
friends he was shot and died hours later. When they had Elijah, his parents who had lived in
Austin as children, made a choice that they felt like was a matter of life and death. Taking on
extra jobs and moving into a community that didn’t feel as familiar, they moved across that
notorious imaginary line of Austin Boulevard that separates Oak Park from the Austin
neighborhood. They did so because they believed that by making this choice they would ensure
their children with a safe and life giving place to grow up.
At the vigil, Elijah’s mother Shanita Galloway spoke with bravery and grief. When she spoke of
him her face lit up with life. She spoke what a hard worker he was, how he had developed his
own business fixing cars, how he had a love of music and had a dream of becoming a nurse one
day. And then she said this: “We called him baby. Baby boy. I am his mother. I felt his first little
heartbeat on my chest, his first signs of life. And the morning that my son passed away I felt my
baby’s last heartbeat. I felt his last heart beat because somebody chose to get a gun and shoot. I
miss my baby boy so much. Put the guns down. Put the guns down.”
And how many mothers in the city of Chicago have stood in the same place as Shanita in this last
month alone and talked about their babies’ lives in the past tense? What does Moses’ words,
“Choose life” mean for them? How can life be a choice in the midst of rising gun violence in our
city? When 90 people are killed in a matter of 31 days, when 2300 shootings have happened this
year alone, when there have been more than 470 deaths due to gun violence—where do we even
begin to proclaim life when there is so much death?i For those of us who live in this community
of Oak Park, on the “other side” of Austin Boulevard, the “safe side” what do those words of
“choose life” challenge us with?
While both communities came together on Wednesday evening to celebrate Elijah, choosing life
looks very different in both: While Oak Park is undergoing a boom in housing and economic
development, the west side neighborhoods of Chicago like the Austin neighborhood have seen
jobs vacate their communities. While Oak Park is relatively low in violent crime, a half mile from
this church in Austin lies one of the highest homicide rates in the city. While families tend to
move to Oak Park because of its’ available resources, opportunities for families to learn and grow
together are fewer and fewer in Austin.
Rev. Marshall Hatch, a pastor colleague of mine in Austin said on Wednesday night that he
believes this: “If Sims had been standing four blocks West from where he was, he would probably
be alive. And that is what's so alarming about what geography means. Here you see the stark
difference and contrast between a resourced community and a non-resourced community. And
Elijah has become a tragic, tragic illustration on how simple geography tells this story," Hatch
said. "Four blocks from here, he's safe at Oak Park-River Forest High School. He's educated. Four
blocks into the city today, he's dead. Resources matter."ii
Resources matter. In the Psalm, resources are a sign of God’s abundance, they are a sign of making
the right choices, a sign of a happy life. At least on the surface level. While the word appears more
than two dozen times in the Psalms, many biblical scholars believe that happy is really a poor
choice of translation. Our contemporary culture encourages us to earn happiness by pursuing
what we think we can work towards, that we are in competition with others for, and what we
inevitably deserve through our actions and hard work. However, Psalm 1 claims that the truly
happy person is not defined by any of this, but is instead focused on God’s will and vision. Not
just any vision, but in the Psalms God’s vision is always directed towards justice, towards
restoration, towards wholeness. While justice is often understood in our own terms as rewarding
good behavior and punishing bad, who is playing the good guy and who is playing the bad,
God’s justice does something different. It means not giving people what they simply can expect
to earn by working hard or “making good choices,” but rather giving what is needed to all people.
It means setting the world right so that all people may have life, especially those persons whose
lives are most threatened and vulnerable.” It means seeing each other as the sources of life that
God created us to be.
The tree in Psalm 1 is planted by streams of water that gives it life. But some translations like the
Common English Bible use the word transplanted instead of planted. The tree has moved to find
a more life giving source, not to be so alone, to choose life. The scripture doesn’t say that it has
moved from a desert to a river, from a place with less resources, or from Austin to Oak Park. In
Ancient Israel where there was water it was rare to find just only one tree. But where there was
water, there were multiple trees wrapping their roots around one another, providing shade, and
safety, and a life source for other creatures. The tree is transplanted to b in community with
others. To see a picture of this in our own community, I’d like for you to take a look at the photo
on the cover of your bulletin of the vigil.
The vigil on Wednesday went into the dark hours of the night. I was last on the program after an
evening of numerous people getting up to the mic. Each person shared in their own way and own
voice not only their memories of Elijah, but their hopes for both the Austin and Oak Park
communities. Some were voiced through poetry, through memories, others through song, and
some through calls to action and partnership. The stage at Scoville park is at the bottom of this
hill enveloped by trees. Trees of all kinds and sizes. As I walked up on the stage to give the final
prayer it was hard for me to see what I wrote, so the person who spoke before me asked for people
there to light their candles or hold up their phones one last time, to bring in as much light into
the darkness as possible. When I looked up to where the shadows of the trees met the hill line,
there were these pathways of light, streaming down the hill and growing in intensity, ebbing and
flowing like a river as we reached out to hold each other and pray together. Each person holding
not only light, but a hope for our communities to know each other. There were arms wrapped
around one another, even if they didn’t know the person next to them at the beginning of the
night. Where there had been the tragedy of death, there we were gathered together to proclaim
life and hope. There we were a river of shared tears, shared grief, shared hope, shared life. While
it’s a beautiful picture, it is definitely not complete; because, when we left each other that evening
there were two more teenagers shot in Austin, within minutes of the vigil ending. We have more
work to do together friends.
What a beautiful vision for us as a community of faith to work to sustain. Even in the tears, in the
shaking our heads in disbelief, in even in our inability to fully understand the realities of gun
violence, Gods call to us, to choose life is ongoing, ever pushing, ever challenging to find that life
in each other. Not the kind of life the requires some to have and others to not, not the kind of life
that allows for the names of those lost to violence to disappear into the overwhelming numbers
of those murdered, not the kind of life that believes we are the ones with all of the answers. No,
when we choose life, we choose each other. We choose the spark of light that each person holds,
that spark of our Creator that makes a home in each and every one of us, and we transplant
ourselves there because that life is worthy in every single person.
We are a people that come into this space and proclaim life over death every single Sunday. It is
fundamentally who we are as a people of God. We choose life in this place, in these seats, in these
walls every single week. What would it look like for us to plant ourselves in new places, to
transplant that message of hope into our communities, into our cities, into our world in tangible
ways? Your faith in action committee has identified preventing gun violence as a social justice
commitment this church is ready to visit together. Your adult education committee will have a
five-week series about gun violence in the Fall. There is an opportunity to be in conversation with
other faith leaders at the God and Guns conference in New York which you will find more
information about in your bulletin. I’m looking forward to how we each hear God’s voice calling
us to end gun violence in our city.
This is the work of God. To refuse to be separated from one another and to bring us together to
find that river of light and life in each other. Reminding us that choosing life in each other is
where we are to simply begin.
Amen.
i
ii
http://homicides.suntimes.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/oak-park/news/ct-oak-austin-elijah-tl-0908-20160901-story.html