Editor’s Note: This past Sunday, Harold Kim, senior pastor of Christ Central of Southern California and president of the SOLA Network, shared this lament concerning the violence and deaths in Atlanta and Boulder. We are reposting it here with permission, and we hope it will be edifying to the church. An edited transcript is below and you can listen to the audio here.
Thank you for joining us for worship today at Christ Central of Southern California. Normally, we would spend the next few moments in Confession of Sin, but I’d like to read a Statement of Grief for the massacres in Atlanta, Georgia, and Boulder, Colorado.
For the first half of this statement, I’m indebted to the amazing Asian American sisters at the SOLA who influenced this statement, as Asian American women’s experiences, trauma, and horror land in unique ways. I’ve added some additional thoughts in the second half for CCSC and for all those that are sitting in today’s service so that you can join me in an outpouring of grief.
It is vital to pour our grief and every other painful emotion before God in prayer. I also ask for prayer for those who were traumatized and those who are mourning for loved ones. Finally, I want to give a brief call for collective action.
For now, we keep the names of victims in Atlanta on March 16 private out of respect for their families’ wishes, as not all consent has been given. This does not mean they are nameless individuals without families, loved ones, or stories of their own.
We grieve and condemn this massacre in Atlanta, which happened amidst the rise of anti-Asian rhetoric and attacks across this country. From March 2020 to February 2021, almost 3800 hate crimes — that’s about more than 10 per day — against Asian Americans were committed, and these are just the ones that were reported.
We grieve the minimization, denial, fears and frustrations, injustices and pains that Asian Americans feel — being treated as the perpetual foreigner. So often they are asked, “Where are you really from?” while carrying on the model minority myth, which suggests you should just keep your head down and overcompensate until you make it in this land of promises and dreams. But we have found that [myth] brings neither justice nor peace for all.
The church, this church, the church I love, the church I belong to, grieves that someone raised and discipled in a church targeted and scapegoated women in Asian-run locations for his own temptations and demons. I particularly grieve how the name and the witness of Christianity has yet again been grossly misrepresented.
All my non-believing friends used to think that they were not good enough for the church. It seems to me now that non-believers feel the church is not good enough for them.
The church of Jesus Christ realizes and grieves multi-layered manifestations of sin exposed, including misogyny and racism. For those who continue to say, “I don’t see race. I don’t see color. I have friends of many different races,” I would like to suggest that you please consider that you can only say that because you probably haven’t suffered because of your color. And for those sick and tired of the topics of race, gender wars, or gender debates, I assure you there is nobody more sick and tired and exhausted and dying because of their gender and race.
We grieve and hate the tragic loss of all of life, God’s own masterpiece. And this week while we were reeling and beginning to process the massacre that happened in Atlanta, the community of Boulder, Colorado was struck by unspeakable violence, putting an end to 10 more innocent lives.
Please do honor, uphold, and pray for the mourning families of the first responders who lost an officer who ran into the line of fire at Boulder. Pour yourself with me into prayer to process every difficult and complicated emotion before God. These days, my emotion is, unusually, anger.
For Psalm 88 teaches us to do this: “Oh Lord God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before you, for my soul is full of troubles.”
On a practical note, I call us to collective action. Weep with those who weep. Join anti-hate campaigns. Give, serve, and protect the most vulnerable in our society. Pray for and pursue justice — that it would be done on earth as it is in heaven — and confess and pray with me this day for a church who can and must do better in following Jesus.
Because the Jesus who is revealed in this and the Jesus we are getting to know better, he listens and he laments. He takes the blame. His love bleeds out. He sacrifices himself in no-win situations.
Jesus laid down his life to fulfill John 12:24: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, he remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
I’m sorry, so so sorry for those who are suffering and mourning, over and over and over again. And I’m so sorry that I probably haven’t taught and modeled this well.
The way of Jesus — and there’s no better way out of this — is for Christians to die. Otherwise, other people are just going to keep dying.
For my Asian sisters, daughters, and mothers, the church cannot do better without you. Please don’t give up on the church. The church is a broken and poor reflection. We don’t play Mozart well, but never doubt Mozart was a beautiful genius. And we’re not gonna play it any better without you.
There are so many ways that I have received here at this church because of you. I don’t know where we could go from here without my fellow sisters. So please join me. Please help me. Please come alongside me. Please pour out your tears and your grief and anger with me, and let’s pray and let’s act. Let’s act in Jesus’ name. Would you pray with me?
Father God, we pray you will take these broken hearts and make them more like yours. Although we pray for comfort, we pray for hope, we pray for healing upon a most broken, hurting world in Atlanta, in Boulder, and right here in California. We confess and grieve and pray that we would follow you better. Make us more like you who lay down his life. So people could live. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.