Remembering is a Fight

A Sermon delivered at the annual Memorial to Murdered Victims, Parents of Murdered Children, Northern Kentucky Chapter, New Beginnings Celebration Center, Grayson KY.

May 7, 2007



On May 22, 2005, Donte Ward, Eddrick Clark, Michael Dillon and Megan Posten were gunned down by an unknown person or persons in an act of wanton violence that shocked the community of Huntington. My wife and I happened to be away from town that night, but when we returned the next day, we were horrified to learn from our daughters that this terrible thing had occurred right around the corner from our home. I didn’t know any of the kids, but our neighbor, Molly did. In a town the size of Huntington, there are only about 2 degrees of separation from anyone else in the area.

A few days after the murders, we attended a prayer service at 1410 Charleston Avenue. There were some 200 people there, as well as many of the media outlets. It was a sad and heartbreaking event; bittersweet because of the large turnout of support from the community, but support that was noticed across the nations for something tragic.

Over the next few months, people in the area generously gave to set up a reward fund for information leading to the successful prosecution of the crime’s perpetrators. A memorial service for the Victims of Crime was held later that year, and in 2006, a second annual memorial service took place – and all the while, the murders of these four teens remained unsolved, an open, unhealed wound for the families and the community at large.

The days rolled on and with their successive passage, time threatened to erase the memory of four lives, full of youthful potential. Even living around the corner, my own awareness of the event began to fade in the midst of the day-in, day-out busy-ness of life. That is, until one morning, driving to work, I noticed a For Sale sign in the front yard. I saw the sign out of the corner of my eye and did a double-take. I slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road – and in that moment, it was as if an arrow pierced my heart with a sudden conviction that it would be a tragedy indeed if the deaths of these four teems were forgotten, snuffed out by means of a callous real-estate transaction. What a shame and reproach to the whole community it would be if the site of bloody death were to be given a once-over and rented out to indifferent parties unmoved by our pain.

At that moment, I believe God planted a vision within me to see the house at 1410 Charleston Avenue transformed into a place of hope and healing. Really, it was more than a vision; it was more like an order: “Do this!” So, with a sense of dazed astonishment, I pondered this mandate, and wondered how in the world such a vision could come to pass.

I began asking questions, and soon learned that the house was listed for $38,900. The zoning was such that it could be used as a multi-family dwelling, personal care home, group home or religious facility. I learned that the City had a crying need for a crisis center for teens and that a local pastors group was interested in supporting a Mentoring program being promoted by Rev. Matthew Watts from Charleston.
The city of Huntington also had a ‘YouthBuild” program that trained young people in construction trades and might be available to help with renovations.

On September 18, 2006, I wrote to Rev. Watts, suggesting that the house on Charleston Avenue, could be turned into a memorial to the victims of this and other violent crimes, and that a center for teen mentoring could be established – ‘that they shall not have died in vain.” Matthew responded that this was a good idea, but that he was consumed with getting his mentoring program up and running. He didn’t have much time to devote to this project. Nor did I!

On October 1st, another very different series of events culminated in me becoming the pastor of a newly forming church – All Saints Anglican. If a memorial were going to come into existence, it was going to be a fight to find the time and the resources to do it. And this is the main idea I want to impart to you today: “Remembering is a fight!”

In the natural course of life, time erodes memory and inertia swallows up good intentions to act – that is to say, other peoples’ intention to act. Just like me, people get busy and their focus shifts to the pressing needs of their lives. Without an intentional fight to remind ourselves and our communities of horror, and our ongoing love for our fallen family members, other people forget.

So we are gathered here tonight to Remember. But this remembering is not just a simple recalling of person or events. It’s much more like what Jesus meant when he said, “do this in Remembrance of Me”. In Greek, the word Remembrance is ‘anamnesis’. It’s the special kind of memory that we have for our loved ones, in which you don’t just recall who they were – you feel them close by your side. They may not be bodily present, but sometimes you can almost touch them, they feel so close. That’s anamnesis – a kind of remembering in which the past actively lives in the present. That’s the kind of memory we have for our loved ones. But that’s precisely what other people don’t have. Without anamnesis, other people forget. And when communities forget, they allow injustice to go on and wrong to be unrighted. That’s why Remembering is a fight!

In Chronicles 14:11 we read ”Then Asa called to the LORD his God and said, "LORD, there is no one besides You to help in the battle between the powerful and those who have no strength; so help us, O LORD our God, for we trust in You, and in Your name have come against this multitude. O LORD, You are our God; let not man prevail against You.” The Battle belongs to the Lord! You’re not alone in your fight! In Genesis 4:10, the Lord say to Cain, “The blood of your brother Able cries out to me from the ground.”

God himself hears the witness of the blood crying out to him from the earth. He is the righteous judge who will one day bring complete and total justice to the world. And the very earth itself is witness against the wickedness of those who willfully take the life of another.

But this final reckoning is yet to come. In the meantime, we live with our pain and grief, and our challenge is to take up our mantle as agents of God on the earth and to work for justice and reconciliation here and now. The fight to remember is not just about families expressing their own pain, however. Rather there is a divine mandate to Do Justice (Malachi 6:8) as we attempt to walk humbly with our God. This is a good fight, and God is with us in it, empowering us for it !

In November of last year, after challenging my little church to give seed money for the purchase of 1410 Charleston avenue, I called the realtor to check on the status of the house. The price had dropped to $17,900, but now it was under contract to an investment firm from Oregon! All I knew to do at that time was to pray. And that’s what we did. We gathered on the lawn of the house on Fridays at 3:30 every week and cried out to God for Justice and Mercy. We never had more than 7 or 8 people present, sometimes just 3 or 4. But God regarded our prayers, and in January of this year, when I called the realtor again to check the status of the house, I learned that the pending deal had fallen through! I told him we were definitely interested in buying the property, and that we had the money for the down payment. He checked with Fannie Mae, which had repossessed the property, and amazingly the price had now dropped to $10,000!

We quickly organized ourselves and put down $1,000 earnest money. Over the next six weeks, we raised the remainder of the money from our own funds and others from the community – and on February 23, 2007, we signed the papers and the house was ours!

Imagine! - All Saints Anglican Church is a group of about 25 people! Somehow, God helped us to raise about $7,000 ourselves, $3500 from the community at large – and still pay our bills! Do you really think we did this on our own strength? No! God is with us in the fight! Perhaps we should really say God fights and we get to help. This battle belongs to the Lord!

But every time we gather to actively remember our loved ones, every time we use our pain to advocate for justice, every time we cry out to God for others because of our own suffering, we are fighting the good fight! We’re not using the weapons of the world, but the divine weapons of love and faith and prayer.

What we do in remembering family is an active prayer to our God for the redress of wrongs, the punishment of the guilty and the comfort of the sorrowing. Our God hears this prayer and He does answer –primarily with His own dear Presence, but also through people we don’t even know advocating on our behalf.

The crime scene at 1410 Charleston Avenue will be transformed into Hope House – a place of remembering and of Life. In the near future, teens will come to this house to receive mentoring and instruction in life skills. The deaths of four teens will not be in vain, but will buy life for countless others of their peers.

I invite you to come and join us Saturday, May 19 @ 1pm to dedicate Hope House to this mission. The fight to restore the house has just begun – and it will take months to finish. But we know it will come to pass with God’s help.

Friends, tonight as you remember your fallen loved ones; know that we are with you practicing their Anamnesis. We’re in the fight together, and with God’s help we will triumph. Amen.