ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
September 2, 2025
On many occasions, I have been told that I might be overly sensitive or my reaction a bit over the top. I am willing to hear that critique, and the following might fall into one of those categories. With that said, I was a bit troubled by a press release the day after the shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A religious organization invited people to pray for the head priest at the church, Father Zehren. I read those words, and I was immediately called into a time of prayer. When you are the spiritual voice for a community, and you find yourself trying to navigate the chaos and provide comfort in a moment like that, you will find your faith being challenged, yet I am sure his training and his own relationship with God provided him with what was needed. Yet in that press release, after inviting us to pray, it went on to say that the priest “will be tested by God in the coming days.”
In the Book of James, it talks about being tested, but then the author states clearly that God is not behind it. There are other passages that imply that God is testing someone or a community, but I find the ministry of Jesus and the ongoing teaching of the early church to push some of those old assumptions. I have often said that God does not need to test us because the world does more than enough. And the events in Minneapolis were not God testing us, and even the challenges the priest faced in the aftermath of the shooting were not God. God does not test, but does what God has always done and will always do. God walks with us, providing us immeasurable strength when we cannot imagine moving forward. This tragedy and ones like it challenge us all, and it might feel to some like a test, but there is no one grading us. And I cannot fathom how the God I meet in Jesus is behind any tragedy. Just the opposite—that God is helping make a way forward when pain and grief appear to be too much.
Just imagine you are a family member of one of the children killed, and then imagine someone suggesting that somehow your pain was all part of some divine test. If it is, I don’t want to be enrolled in that class. I think people say things like that without really processing the implications, yet the words we use to describe God and how God works in the world are extraordinarily important. I don’t imagine anyone trying to be intentionally malicious or mean, but the last thing we want to do in a time of grief is to drive a deeper wedge between the individual hurting and God.
You are love, O Lord! Love does not seek injury and it surely does not want to bring more pain into this world. Sadly, there is currently enough. Allow our faith to give witness to you, the One who never tests us. Instead, you are the One who comes alongside us in those moments when life itself and the sinfulness of others are testing us to our core. Thanks for being the Source of Love and Hope and Strength. Amen.
