DEATH IN NOTTINGHAM
A huge
crowd gathered in Nottingham city centre on Thursday, June 15. What was the
event? Had Forest won the cup? On a closer look, everyone was sombre, silent
and thoughtful. They had come to share the grief of three families who had each
lost a member in a seemingly senseless murder spree on Tuesday morning. Two
were students and the third was a retired caretaker.
Civic
representatives, spokespeople for the police, the students’ university and the
different faiths of the city were all given three minutes to express their
feelings and at the stroke of six there was a moment of silence. The camaras roved
over the people, each one lost in their own thoughts. The city was in shock.
As each
speaker delivered their brief message – the most powerful one came from the
Muslim Iman – it struck me how everyone had come together in shared grief. The
gathering went beyond party, faith, class; it was an event of humanity at one
for a moment. It was not a political event, a religious event or a sporting
celebration. All the barriers that divide us were down.
Watching
from 6,000 miles away, I was much moved by the different faces; young, middle
aged, old. All were looking straight ahead, nominally at the speaker, but
actually probing deep inside, wondering how this was possible. Were there any
answers? The absolute stillness when the clock struck six was like the bending
of the knee at the moment on Good Friday when Jesus dies.
But let me
not reduce it to a religious event as though I want to claim it as an anonymous
expression of my own beliefs. Rather it was like a post-religious visceral
experience of numbness. Our society has come to this: where a man can wantonly
stab three people, steal a car and run into three more. How is this possible?
As the
pictures died on the screen, I found myself encouraged by the unity shown by
the people of Nottingham; by their generous attendance to the grief of the
families, by their silent witness to the fact that when one is hurt, all are
hurt and by the kindness that welled up in their hearts setting off ripples in
the community and around the world in all those who shared their sorrow.
The deaths
in Nottingham, for all their bitter grief, brought us all together a little for
a while. Do they also sow seeds for a
new, more compassionate, world, coming to birth?
18 June
2023 Sunday 11A Ex 19:2-6
Rom 5:6-11 Mt 9:36-10:8
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