At about 10:40 this morning, an argument broke out on the sidewalk across 13th street from Christ Church Cathedral. Our canon precentor, Pat Partridge, was walking in our parking lot when he heard the argument ... and the scream ... and when he turned he saw in a blur one man stabbing another.
Pat ran and got one of our security ministers, Ezra, who sprinted to the scene and helped the people who had already gathered around the injured man give comfort while they waited for ambulance and police to arrive.
The man died, stabbed through the neck. His murderer ran off. Both are people familiar to us. Occasional guests at our Saturday morning breakfast. Sometime visitors to our Cathedral Nave.
It's been more than a decade since Cathedral secretary Carol Bledsoe was also stabbed in the neck and died, a senseless murder at the hands of a severely mentally ill man also struggling with homelessness. There have been so many changes in our neighborhood since then. Central Library is gorgeously renovated. So is the Park Pacific ... with CBS radio broadcasting in three stations from the third floor. Lucas Park has a beautiful facelift, and businesses and loft apartments are thriving on Washington Avenue and throughout the area.
And in our own building, Lafayette Preparatory Academy, a wonderful charter elementary school, is taking flight.
Downtown is on the rise. And it is an exciting thing to be a part of. There is no other place in the nation than I would rather be right now than at the corner of 13th and Locust in downtown St. Louis. We get to be the Cathedral at the epicenter of a community renaissance, our majestic structure exceeded only in beauty by our neighbor Central Library, our partner in the ministries of enlightenment and welcome. Ensconced in a community that is notable in our region for its diversity and creativity and civic-mindedness.
And yet here we stood again. The police tape. The blood. The fear. And the blame.
The murder in front of our Cathedral today is a reminder and a call to action. It is a reminder that we have much work to do making sure that the benefits of civil society -- food, housing, health, safety, employment -- are shared by everyone. It is a call to recommit ourselves to the work of making our city a place where all have the ability to live a safe, healthy and dignified life.
There are no easy answers. But we do know we cannot continue on the path that has led us, 11 years later, back to the same place. We cannot continue to have residents, business owners, the city, and service providers pointing fingers at one another, spending our energy battling one another instead of creating a city worthy of our great history and people.
My friend Clye calls poverty ... and I would add crime and hunger and homelessness ... dysfunction in community. I could not agree more. It is dysfunction in community that allows people to sleep on our streets. It is dysfunction in community that has children shooting children and adults stabbing adults.
It is our brokenness that allows days like this to happen. It is our brokenness that allows evil to thrive.
It began with a fight and a scream. But it did not end there.
At 5 pm this evening, 20 of us stood at the spot where just hours before one man had taken another's life. We shared our names and what drew us there. We prayed for the man who died. We prayed for the man who took his life. We prayed for our city. We prayed for ourselves.
We asked God's forgiveness and mercy for our part in this dysfunctional community. We reclaimed this profaned piece of real estate between these two great institutions of enlightenment by pouring blessed oil on it and massaging it into the stone.
We anointed our hands and asked God to make us agents of God's grace. And then we joined those hands and sang Amazing Grace.
And as we sang, I looked around that circle. I looked at who had taken the time to stand in the rain at 5 in the afternoon and pray for our city, for two men with nowhere to live, and for peace.
We were black and white. We were old and young. We were residents and workers.
There were Cathedral parishioners -- Jim McGregor, Carlyn Katz, Miriam Jenkins and Paul Anderson. There were downtown residents like Howard Wynder and Dana Kay Goddard and a friend she brought along. Waller McGuire, Executive Director of St. Louis Public Library was there with two library employees. So was Doug Woodruff, the new president of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis and Missy Kelly, the Partnership COO. Chris Rice of NLEC was there, and so was Keith Raske, a retired Episcopal priest. Cathy Rodgers-Edmonds, the head of operations for Lafayette Preparatory Academy was there with her young son, and Amanda Andrus, co-owner of Gelateria Tavolini was there, carrying her unborn child within her. Wiley Price of the St. Louis American took pictures and Denise Hollinshed of the Post-Dispatch scribbled on her notepad.
None of them had to be there. None of them had gotten a phone call from me saying "please come." Or, "would you do me a favor." I didn't have to ask. They all care about this city. They all care enough to stand in the rain and pray for peace and mercy. They are what makes this city great. And they are not alone.
This day that had begun with a fight and a scream ended with a prayer and a song. And as I looked around that circle, I knew without a doubt that we have what it takes to make this a city that makes glad God's heart. That if we work together, with God's help, we can move from constituencies looking after self-interest to neighbors looking after the common interest. We can come together to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable of our citizens, to make sure the benefits of the renaissance downtown are shared by all, and together to uphold a standard of dignity and quality of life for all God's children.
We call Christ Church Cathedral "sacred public space." I tell everyone who will listen that this is a place where all are welcome, where everyone is held to a standard of treating each other with love and respect, and where we come together to ask the questions we believe Jesus would ask and to work together for the common good.
There has never been a more important time for us to claim this mission. There has never been a more important time for us to show downtown the reconciling power of Jesus. And looking around that circle, I can't imagine we have ever had a better group of committed people to gather and get to work.
This day that had begun with a fight and a scream ended with a prayer and a song. But that prayer and song were not an ending but a beginning. Our goals are lofty. But downtown is a great neighborhood and St. Louis is a great region. And I believe we are more than equal to the task.
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