Truett’s Gregory comforts mourners remembering ‘Emanuel Nine’

CHARLESTON, S.C.—The two-year anniversary of a white supremacist’s killing of nine black people at a Bible study was a day when “pain and hope and treachery and triumph, awful and awesome, come together,” Joel Gregory told hundreds gathered for an ecumenical service of remembrance.

Gregory, holder of the George W. Truett Chair of Preaching and Evangelism at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, spoke at an anniversary memorial service for victims who were murdered at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., June 17, 2015.

Truett Seminary’s Joel Gregory (right) visits with a South Carolina pastor while in Charleston to observe the second anniversary of the murder of the “Emanuel Nine.” (Photo by Todd Still / Truett Seminary)Gregory urged victims’ families, survivors, community members and dignitaries to follow the biblical exhortation: “Abhor that which is evil and cling to that which is good.”

“I know that there are nine families where every Christmas witnesses an empty chair, every Easter listens for a voice that will never be heard, and hands will reach out to grasp a hand that will never be held again,” Gregory said.

“Yet for the rest of us who do not have such intimate, daily recurring reminders, we must join in solidarity to stop and remember. If we do not, we rob the departed of their dignity and minimize the magnitude of the malicious and malignant act that took them.”

The person who only hates evil degenerates into “a cynical, negative, sour, embittered shell who finally sees evil only,” Gregory said. “On the other hand, those persons whose naïve eyes only see the bright pastels of good deny the very reason for the gospel. We need redemption.”

Gregory reminded those at the service to remember the Passover meal embedded in Judaism, which looks back to the pain of slavery, but “it looks forward in its ringing climax, ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’ It is thus pain and hope together.”

“Even so also, the Lord’s Supper, the meal celebrated by millions weekly all over the planet,” Gregory said. “It looks back at pain, the very death on the Cross. But it looks forward in hope to the time we will eat it together with Jesus anew in the kingdom. In the heart of faith is a memory-keeping meal that joins together pain and hope, the awful of the past and the awesome of the promise.

“So also, this memorial is both pain and hope, and it must be that way.”

On June 17, 2015, “good people were gathered in God’s holy house to study God’s holy word,” Gregory said. “In all of Charleston, there was not more goodness than the goodness in that room. Into that room walked with forethought, intention and premeditation a perpetrator who joined in that righteous circle of biblical discussion. A different race, he was welcomed, seated, encouraged, and embraced.

“As painful as it is, we cannot honor and dignify the Emanuel Nine without recognizing that disturbing fact.”

But the perpetrator—Dylann Roof, now in prison after he was convicted of hate crimes—does not have the center stage he wanted, Gregory said.

“His very existence is a shadow that is cast by the light of the luminous goodness of the nine shining, lustrous, luminescent souls so quickly taken,” he said.

Forgiveness for that is not easy, he acknowledged

“This day, I cannot conceive of directing someone to forgive who has experienced a pain I have never experienced. For that matter, what I think I should do is far from what I would do,” he said.

But he implored listeners to hold onto what is good even as they despise the evil.

“The tragedy of 2015 did not close Mother Emanuel. The massacre in its hall did not silence the praise of God. The vileness of demonic hate did not shatter the beautiful windows of its storied sanctuary. The falling of the Emanuel Nine did not empty its pews,” he said. One day, “a child will look at the picture of the Emanuel Nine and will be reminded that the evil done there did not end the good that will be done there.”

For video of Mother Emanuel Unity walk, visit Unity; for coverage of the ecumenical service, visit Remembering. For coverage from WCSC-TV in Charleston, visit Second Anniversary .