This reflection was first published in the April edition of our monthly print newsletter, The Vine. I post it here to make it easier to share.
On Sunday, December 16 last year, we lit a candle in worship. Two days earlier, a young man had entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He was heavily armed with several guns and dozens of bullets. He killed twenty children and six teachers and staff. We know the story.
Two days later, we lit a candle in worship, in memory of one of the teachers, Victoria Soto, who was 27 when her life ended so violently. Since then, we have lit a candle every Sunday, lifting up one name each week, remembering one precious life at a time. Charlotte, Daniel, Rachel, Olivia, and Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Dawn, and Madeline, Catherine, Chase, and Jesse.
I’m writing on a sunny Thursday morning, knowing that this coming Sunday we will pray for the family and friends of James, and on Palm Sunday it will be Grace, and on Easter, Anne Marie. We speak their names in the name of Jesus, hoping and praying and affirming the resurrection: that violent death will not end the promise of life; that terror will not hold our hearts in its cold grip; that God knows and transforms our pain; that our anger and rage will become passion for healing; that the promise of life will be fulfilled in beloved community.
But what about Adam? You may pause here for a moment and consider that the young man who took so many lives on that Friday had been named with the first name given to humanity, Adam. And now I ask that you think and pray with me how we might speak Adam’s name in the name of Jesus. I have carried that thought and prayer with me for many weeks now. Just before Christmas, I made the list of names, and the last name I added was that of Adam’s mother, Nancy Lanza. And then I wrote myself a note on a short list that I look at and read through daily, “What about Adam?” At the time I knew nothing about him other than that he had shot and killed twenty-seven people, including his own mother, before taking his own life. I was hoping that with time I would get closer to an answer and be able to add this name to our prayer concerns.
Can we imagine a memorial where the twenty-eight names are connected by something other than the violence of that Friday? I pray we can and will, in the name of Jesus.