Bishop Easterling’s Statement on Continued Violence & Death
"How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me."
–Psalm 13: 1-2, 5-6
Beloved of God,
Once again our hearts are heavy with the reality of loss. The drumbeat of violence reverberates across nations, claiming lives, shattering families, and unsettling communities. We just laid our beloved Bishop Violet L. Fisher to rest. We are still grieving the shooting of National Guard members. We lament violence erupting on our college campuses. We mourn the tragic loss of beloved lives whose absence leaves a silence that words cannot fill. The geography changes, the headlines shift, but the tragedy feels achingly familiar.
With the news cycle constantly reporting stories of heinous acts, the danger is not only the violence itself, but what it can do to our very souls. We risk growing numb, mistaking emotional distance for survival. We risk cynicism, convincing ourselves that nothing can change. We risk surrendering hope, quietly accepting cruelty as the permanent condition of the world. Scripture names this temptation and refuses to bless it as it teaches that weeping may endure for a night, but joy always comes. The Word of God does not invite us to harden our hearts. It calls us to keep them open, even when they are breaking.
The psalmist asks with unflinching honesty, “How long, O Lord?” That question is not a failure of faith. It is an act of faith. It assumes God is proximate. It assumes God is listening. It assumes the story is not finished. Lament, in the biblical sense, is not resignation; it is protest rooted in trust. We cry out in our pain and distress because God affirms our humanity and hears our need for shalom.
As followers of Jesus, we are living in the season of Advent, a season uniquely suited for a world such as ours. Advent does not rush us past grief into cheap celebration. It teaches us how to wait without giving up, how to hope without denying reality. Advent names the darkness honestly. Isiah 9:2 tells us, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Notice the tense. The darkness is real, but it does not get the final word.
Advent reminds us that God’s response to a violent world was not distance, but incarnation as Christ took on flesh and walked with us. In Jesus Christ, God chose vulnerability over vengeance, presence over power, compassion over condemnation. From the cradle to the cross, God chose love. And resurrection is God’s refusal to let violence have the last word.
So beloved, we process the violence swirling around us not by looking away, but by looking toward God and toward one another. We address it by praying with honesty, by grieving with those who grieve, by continuing our work for justice, and by loving without condition. We need the disciplines of our faith now more than ever.
Beloved, Advent assures us that God is with us, Christ is among us, and the Spirit is still at work through us. The world does not need our numbness or our cynicism. It needs our witness. It needs a people who dare to believe that light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Even now, especially now, let us bear hope. Let us be love.
Blessings and peace,
Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling
Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Episcopal Area
The United Methodist Church