“Let them alone,” Jesus told his disciples, speaking of the religious leaders of his day. “They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall in the ditch.”
That scripture came to mind Saturday as, on the evening news, while the blood of some 16 young people mingled with the soil of northeast Rochester, one preacher said it was racism and the other said it was lax gun laws.
Blind leaders of the blind.
While a city’s heart needed to be bound up, and a season of chaos needed a voice of leadership and gathering, the pastors on the news were spewing politics. Nothing about God, nothing about love, nothing about peace, just more of the agenda. Not a tragedy risen to, but a tragedy exploited.
Which is how we got here in the first place.
Rochester is a city in chaos. All of its significant community structures and institutions are choked in controversy and dysfunction. It has no clear leader. It has no clear direction. Its people have no hope. And it is melting down.
And Saturday morning early on Pennsylvania Avenue was a heartbreaking illustration of that.
As two midnight house parties converged on a third, and hundreds of young people gathered into one yard, tempers flared and guns rang out and for about a minute, three or four fired some 40 rounds, and people fell left and right. There was running and screaming and bleeding.
The cops came sirens blaring from all corners of the city, hurriedly carrying bleeding young people to their blue and whites, and racing to the hospitals, as there was no time to wait for an ambulance.
This in a city where the graffiti shouts “F-12” and claims all cops are bastards, where hating the police is a political club swung freely by woke people on the evening news, where they scrawl MURDERERS in red paint on the street in front of the public safety building.
Where some of the same cops who saved lives on Pennsylvania Avenue have been showered with rocks and bottles and spat upon by protesters in the streets.
It was 16 people shot and two of them, young college students of genuine promise and goodness, killed, collateral damage in a gun fight at a party and a collapse of a city.
Hours later an angry police captain talked about people raised without consequences and values.
While the pastors said it was racism and not enough gun laws.
But the cop was closer to it than the preachers were.
Because Rochester – like America – is beset by spiritual problems. It is reaping a harvest of woe because it is walking a godless path. Those who turn from God are their own cursing. That is true for all of us, and it roils our society, diminishes our lives, and endangers our safety. The truth makes us free – of the consequences of error. And when a society asserts that there is no truth – that there are no absolutes – that right is wrong and wrong is right, it buries itself in the consequences of error. It pollutes itself with evil.
And wickedness never was happiness.
Politics and protest are not the cures for this ill – faith and repentance are. It is not Karl Marx that we need, it is Jesus Christ. It is not the attorney general or the National Guard to whom we should turn, it is God Almighty. Rochester has trusted in men – and women – and it has been failed by them. It must now, with renewed vigor and faith, trust in God – for comfort in today’s sorrows and trials, and guidance in tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities.
That is what the pastors should be saying, that is what all of us should be working harder to believe. The more complex the world’s problems become, the more we should remind ourselves of the simplicity of their solutions. Have faith in God, love your neighbor, do what is right. Do that today, and try to do it better tomorrow. Do not be discouraged when we sometimes trip and fail.
That is the answer to the problems of our city and country, our world and our lives.
Rochester is in crisis, but it should not be without hope.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” the Lord said. “If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.”