NB: This video by Amaryllis Fox was shown before the start of the sermon, and is referred-to during the course of it.
You know – with regards to the recent events in Orlando, we have once again resorted to the same old game of accusation and counter-accusation: “Who’s fault is it?”
Is it the Muslims? ISIS? Gays? The NRA? (Well …) Maybe Mr. Trump?
Blaming assumes we can have winners and losers; but nobody ever wins. How long will we continue this mindless charade?
Look: 50 people died, and another 53 were hospitalized. Uncounted others lost loved ones, many more will be dealing for the rest of their lives with the physical and emotional trauma they experienced that night, or caring for others forever scarred by that attack.
We see pain erupting from within the LGBTQ community because of this. You can understand why: places like Pulse are a refuge from the painful judgmental world they deal with every other moment of every day. Such refuges are now no longer safe. LGBTQ people have become a new target of domestic terrorism just when we finally seemed to be on the verge of forever setting aside homophobia.
For an LGBTQ person, this attack was very personal, and very scary: a very real threat to their own individual and communal existence, carried out against them purely because of who they are. I can’t imagine feeling like I’m living with a target painted on my back, but I’m sure many of our kindred within the LGBTQ community feel exactly that way right now.
50 people died. Thousands more will never escape the pain and fear planted within their souls that night.
Let’s focus on that.
The Here and the Hereafter 