For one SC church, message of forgiveness takes on new meaning
Easter is a time for grace and forgiveness.
Since the events of June 17, 2015, at a Charleston church, that message has taken on new meaning.
On that day, Dylann Roof killed nine African-Americans during an evening Bible study at Emanuel AME Church.
Soon after Roof’s arrest, law enforcement discovered a handwritten list in Roof’s car – a list containing the names of more than a dozen other churches, most of them African-American congregations – that he was considering. Four of those churches are in the Columbia area.
Among them is New Light Beulah Baptist. And that news perhaps will make Easter Sunday look a little different at the Hopkins church.
New Light’s senior pastor, the Rev. Malcolm Taylor Jr., has put into place a security team at the church. It’s a move many other churches have made since the shooting. On Easter Sunday, when churches typically receive record visitor numbers, that security team will walk the New Light perimeter and monitor the congregation inside.
Yet while that aspect of church life is different, Taylor’s message of Easter Sunday – grace and forgiveness – is timeless.
“I love Dylann Roof and today, if I saw him, I would hug him and say ‘You know what? I forgive you.’ Because guess what? I have to forgive him if I want God to forgive me,” said Taylor, who became New Light’s pastor just months before the Charleston events.
“I preach love regardless. I don’t care what a man does to me. I still have to love him regardless. I may not like his ways but I still love Dylann Roof because he is still a human being and the Bible says we wrestle not against flesh but against principalities. We don’t wrestle against people.”
It’s a message Taylor shares with his congregation every week – not just on Easter Sunday.
Shortly after the shooting at Emanuel, Taylor reached out to his neighboring predominantly white churches – including Lebanon United Methodist Church, home church of Roof’s family – and invited them to New Light. There, in the packed sanctuary, Taylor and his neighboring ministers discussed how to come together to move forward as “one body of Christ.”
“I reached out to them so that we could show the community that we don’t have any racial issues, that we worship together, we serve together, we do things together and that’s the common seed,” Taylor said. “As a matter of fact, I believe that what Dylann Roof did was brought the community closer together. I believe his intention was to divide it but people have a connection that’s called a heart – we are connected through our hearts. And so when the hearts came together, we didn’t see each other as black/white, man/woman, man/child. We saw each other as people of God. We saw the people of the Lower Richland community and we saw the need to bond together.”
Still, the moment he learned his church could have been Mother Emanuel is one Taylor will never forget.
“I teared. I teared tremendously. In that moment, I realized it could have been me. I could have been Brother Pinckney,” Taylor said. “And then I think, ‘Why not me? If I’m doing what the Bible requires me to do then we are all like sheep waiting to be slaughtered any moment, because we are Christians and I have to accept that.”
The news affected the entire church, Taylor said, and continues to do so.
“It impacts us. It impacts us psychologically. It has brought an awareness. We still very much welcome visitors but when people come in now that we don’t know you see everyone looking around like, ‘Who is this person?’” Taylor said. “We have a few members who are Caucasian who have joined under my ministry and they had some thoughts themselves that something could happen to them because they are of a different race, but I assured them that our church is their church and their church is our church.
“A membership is not defined by the color of your skin, it’s defined by your heart, your connection. Christ connects all of us whether white, black, green, yellow or purple.”
On this Easter morning, Taylor and his congregation undoubtedly will welcome some unfamiliar faces to worship alongside them in the pews and hear Taylor’s message that will focus on starting afresh and anew and finishing strong through faith in Christ.
“My mother always said you can make lemonade out of lemons,” Taylor said. “Everything that the enemy does to try to sew discord, we turn it around as Christians and make it work for good. That’s what the Bible says – that all things work together for those who honor the Lord. Even something as horrible as what happened at Mother Emanuel can be used by the Lord to work for the good of his kingdom, and we want to be a part of that.”
Easter sermons
Here is a sampling of sermons that will be preached by three Columbia-area ministers this Easter weekend.
Lead Pastor Jason Autry
City Church, West Columbia
At the nondenominational City Church in West Columbia, Lead Pastor Jason Autry’s Easter message will come from John 13:18-38 and John 18:1-11 and focus on God’s sovereign plan, his salvation and his forgiveness.
“We’ll be looking a little bit at Judas Iscariot and his betrayal of Jesus after he made a series of bad choices that revealed he was unconvinced that Jesus was the son of God or the savior,” Autry said.
Autry said Jesus was raised from the dead and ultimately victorious despite Judas’ betrayal, by trusting in and fulfilling God’s redemptive plan for the world.
“This shows us that God’s sovereign plan can’t be denied by man’s schemes or attempts to stop him and also demonstrates that our faith and trust in God can survive deep pain or betrayal,” Autry said.
It’s a message Autry hopes will serve as a reminder of God’s constant security and steadfastness.
“I felt led to share this because it is a message of the hope of Christ amid the uncertainty and instability that seems to be permeating every aspect of our world right now,” Autry said. “I want people to know there is forgiveness in Christ and because of his resurrection, they can trust him even as they struggle to make sense of what is going on around them.”
Senior Pastor Jeff Kersey
Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church, Lexington
Senior Pastor Jeff Kersey has preached the Easter Sunday message at Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church in Lexington – the state’s largest and fastest-growing Methodist church and former church home to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley – for 22 years.
He said his Kersey’s Easter message is not on the actual event of the resurrection of Christ.
“No matter what you preach on Easter you cannot preach the event,” Kersey said. “The event, the resurrection, stands on its own.
Instead, this year, Kersey’s sermon will include a discussion of false news, a seemingly recent phenomenon that isn’t new at all, he said.
“In Matthew 28 when the women come to the tomb and discover the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty and the body is resurrected, a conspiracy begins to develop that someone came and stole his body and that the resurrection never happened,” Kersey said. “That was, of course, false news. We’d like to think that false news is something new but it really began in the Garden of Eden. It’s been going on since the beginning of time. People not believing in the resurrection is the result of false news.”
Kersey’s message also will include how to refute false news with good news and how “the resurrection changes everything.”
“It gives us the victory over sin and evil and freedom from fear and death,” Kersey said. “It frees us for a new purpose and offers to us the promise of eternal life. ... I feel confident that there is good evidence that Jesus was resurrected. But even if we can’t establish the physical evidence, the real evidence is in changed lives we see as a result of it. Only a resurrected Jesus could change people’s lives as he changes them.”
Senior Pastor Beth McConnell
Kathwood Baptist Church, Columbia
Since the beginning of the year, parishioners at Kathwood Baptist Church on Trenholm Road, a member of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, has been focused on the life and ministry of Jesus as it is described in the Gospel of John.
For the past few weeks, Senior Pastor Beth McConnell has focused on chapter 19 and the passion of Christ. McConnell’s Easter message will focus on John 20:1-18.
“Easter Sunday is an opportunity to begin our celebration of God’s gift of radical love – a love that is greater than the short-sightedness of legalism, the fear-based nature of fundamentalism, the oppression of selfish rulers and greedy officials, and the despair of human dreams gone awry,” McConnell said.
Each of those choices, McConnell said, were present at the trial and crucifixion of Jesus and are still present today.
“Every day we see love sacrificed in the name of legalism, fundamentalism, government policy, or blinding despair,” McConnell said. “Such lack of faith and understanding fueled the crucifixion and still lingered in the Garden on Easter morning--until Jesus called Mary’s name and resurrection was realized.”
Billions of people have had the resurrection faith and understanding that Mary experienced that morning, McConnell said, and discovered that “the radical love of Jesus had moved beyond suffering and death into newness of life and hope.”
“On Easter 2017, it is my prayer that we can see beyond the suffering and death in our lives and our world, to glimpse the newness of life that God gifts to each of us and all of us every day,” McConnell said. “To that end we shall celebrate ‘Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!’”
Janet Jones Kendall, jjkendall@thestate.com
This story was originally published April 15, 2017 at 2:51 PM with the headline "For one SC church, message of forgiveness takes on new meaning."