AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Two children died in Wednesday's shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis. Fifteen more children were injured, along with three adults in their 80s. Annunciation is located in a community filled with churches, and we sent NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose to some of them to ask pastors what words they're offering this weekend in the midst of trauma and sorrow.
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: The nearest Catholic Church to Annunciation is St. Joan of Arc, where Father Jim DeBruycher has been pastor for 20 years.
JIM DEBRUYCHER: We had a whole program scheduled around Labor Day, but now I think that what we need is a chance for people to say what they're feeling.
DEROSE: Loss, anger, despair - DeBruycher's congregation includes several families whose children and grandchildren attend Annunciation School. So he's starting the Mass with a time of silence.
DEBRUYCHER: And then we'll have open mics for people to come up and express what they want to say, and our parish is not afraid to express what they want to say.
DEROSE: Because hearing from each other reminds people they're not alone in their grief. To close the service, DeBruycher is using a litany of remembrance he borrowed from a nearby synagogue years ago and usually reserves for funerals.
DEBRUYCHER: In the blue sky, in the warmth of summer, we remember them. In the rusting leaves and the beauty of autumn, we remember them. When we are weary in need of strength, we remember them. When we are lost and sick at heart, we remember them. When we have joys we yearn to share, we remember them.
SUSAN DAUGHTRY: There's nothing that I can say in my sermon on Sunday that's going to make people feel better about what has happened.
DEROSE: Susan Daughtry serves as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in South Minneapolis.
DAUGHTRY: Just about every Sunday, I preach about the way of Jesus. Practicing the way of Jesus looks like the way of defiant, embodied, joyful love.
DEROSE: Daughtry's message focuses on the words of a Hebrew prophet.
DAUGHTRY: The reading from Jeremiah this Sunday speaks about God's grief that God's people have given up seeking after the true God, the living God, and have built for themselves cracked cisterns that hold no water.
DEROSE: Weapons of war, she says, that allow obsession with violence to turn deadly.
DAUGHTRY: It makes me think about the ways we trade God's wild and unmanageable love for every single human being, for these small, broken, stale, little gods, these godlets.
DEROSE: False gods, these guns, that neither bear love nor render justice.
NATE MELCHER: I believe that God weeps with us in the midst of these kind of things, that God weeps with us in any of our tragedies, the same way that God laughs and dances with us when we celebrate, as well.
DEROSE: Nate Melcher is pastor at Richfield United Methodist Church, just four blocks south of Annunciation. The focus of this Sunday's service, he says, is Psalm 13.
MELCHER: How long, oh Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
DEROSE: Ancient questions many in the neighborhood are asking today, with sighs too deep for words.
MELCHER: But I trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.
DEROSE: Melcher says his hope is that this tragedy will transform this community.
MELCHER: People have a lot of compassion right now, but what we also need with that is that justice, that action. It's both and.
DEROSE: Both care for the grieving and work toward a world in which no one believes violence is their only resort. After inexplicable loss, Pastor Sara Jensen, of Lutheran Church of Christ Redeemer, says she often hears people say, God doesn't give us anything we can't handle.
SARA JENSEN: I don't believe that God gives us things one way or the other. The world gives us things, and often the world gives us things we can't handle.
DEROSE: But that doesn't mean, Jensen says, abandonment.
JENSEN: God gives us each other because we can't handle everything on our own. We weren't created for that. We were created to lean on each other.
DEROSE: Neighbors, friends, congregations, to buoy each other.
JENSEN: It's really scary to live in a world that doesn't make sense to us. It's scary to live in a world where we can't predict what's going to happen.
DEROSE: The deaths of two children and the wounding of many others at nearby Annunciation raises all sorts of profound questions, says Jensen. Where was God? Why evil?
JENSEN: God is good, and yet evil still happens. I mean, it's because we live in a broken world.
DEROSE: Broken, Jensen says, but also beautiful and beloved. Jason DeRose, NPR News, Minneapolis.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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