In the Long Shadow of Yet Another Death
A Note From Church Anew:
We at Church Anew are still reeling from yet another wound in the heart of our home city of Minneapolis – the public killing of a citizen, Renee Nicole Good, by an agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the face of online debates and federal declarations, we gathered public statements from pastoral leaders in our city as we begin to discern what this act of violence says and how we as a people of faith will respond.
Rev. Emmy Kegler, Blog Editor
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Creative Director, Church Anew
A story, for two days after Epiphany:
When king Herod didn't get what he wanted from the magi, he retaliated by killing children as a way to hold onto power and remind people who was in charge. We speak of this scripture story in words like "slaughter" and "massacre" because it was violent and horrific. We call the ones who were killed in this story "innocents" to remind us of who suffers the most when power feels threatened. Matthew's Gospel talks about the sound of mothers wailing for their children, because they are no more. Things in and around the city where Jesus was born got worse before they got better. I'm sure Herod tried to justify his actions, evil leaders always do, but there was no justification for this violence. There is never any justification for killing innocents.
You might wonder, while reading this scripture story, where is the good news here? How can a story with so much horror and grief and pain and fear also have any good news?
Despite all his truly evil efforts, Herod did not get what he wanted. He did not succeed. Love came into the world, and the world immediately tried to destroy it, but did not succeed.
Love won. Herod did not.
Herod did not change the world. He died a pathetic, scared little man, and he is remembered not for the way he enriched his cronies, or for the opulent palace he built, but for his cruelty and weakness in the face of love.
Rev. Dr. Kelly Sherman Conroy
Associate Pastor, All Nations Indian Church
A woman, a wife, a mother died today.
Her name was Renee Nicole Good.
She was 37 years old.
Say her name. Sit with it. Let it land.
What I witnessed today was not just grief for one person, but the resurfacing of deep and familiar wounds. People arrived carrying shock, anger, and fear that lives in the body long before it reaches words. Tears fell between strangers who recognized the same ache in one another. For many, today reopened the trauma, the uncertainty, the memory that life can be taken and the system will keep moving as if nothing sacred was broken.
This was not an abstract moment or a political talking point. This was a human life lost, and the community felt it immediately. Bodies reacted before minds could catch up. People were shaking. People were angry. People were trying to breathe through memories that came rushing back without warning.
I want to be very clear: what happened today in Minneapolis was the deadly reach of a system that has normalized harm in the name of enforcement. ICE does not operate in a vacuum. It moves through communities already carrying generational trauma, and when a life is taken, the wound spreads far beyond the moment itself.
I prayed today, not long prayers, not polished ones. Just enough to help people ground, to remind them they were not alone, to speak dignity back into a space that had just witnessed death. What people needed most was someone to listen. Someone to stand with them without rushing them through their grief or fear. We cannot sit and wait. We cannot tell people to calm down while their bodies are remembering past violence. We cannot treat this as something that will pass if we just keep our heads down. Silence, delay, and distance are not neutral. They are choices.
So I pray this out loud and without apology:
Creator God,
We come in rage and grief because another life has been taken by a system that chooses force over humanity. We name the truth plainly: what happened was violence. Not protection. Not justice. Violence.
Hold close the family of Renee Nicole Good. Wrap them in a love fierce enough to withstand this loss.
We condemn systems that criminalize survival and treat people as disposable. Trouble the conscience of those who design and defend this harm.
Give us courage that costs something. Courage to speak, to protect, to interrupt violence.
No more lives taken in the name of enforcement. No more families shattered. No more silence.
Renee Nicole Good, you mattered.
Your life mattered.
And we will not pretend otherwise. AMEN
If this makes you uncomfortable, good. Let that discomfort move you toward action, toward solidarity, toward truth. This is not a moment to look away.
Rev. Hierald Osorto
Pastor of Iglesia Luterana San Pablo - St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Minneapolis
Originally from a pastoral message to the congregation
For over a month ICE agents have abducted unknown numbers of people and today one such agent shot and killed our neighbor, Renee Good. These days demand that we confront evil with the conviction that it does not have the final word. We can rise to meet this moment because the first and final word comes from God, who said “Let my people go!” The God of liberation and love is our source and center.
Just before news of the shooting reached me I was spending time with a dear friend and colleague, dreaming together of ways to build community in the face of fear. Amidst our differences of religion, race, and background, we found common ground in the Holy One who sustains the oppressed. God has gifted our communities with strength, resilience, and the capacity to make the way by walking. The road to freedom is a long and hard journey, but let us remember all who have walked it before us. They call us to courage:
“Hold on. Keep going. You are not alone.”
Rev. Martha Schwehn Bardwell
Pastor, Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
I love this city. Tonight, at a scene of terror and grief - holy ground as neighbors came together.
Rep. Aisha Gomez spoke for us when she said, 'We will not be intimidated.' We will keep showing up with love to protect our neighbors.
Jaylani Hussein prayed for us when he said: May this be the moment that we turn away as a nation from this evil towards the good. May the death of Renee Good call this nation towards the good!
Indigenous songs. Immigrant voices. Commitment all around to one another. Neighbors helping neighbors up when they slipped in the slushy ice. People holding candles. Bumping into friends and neighbors and sharing hugs. Thousands standing together even when the sound system was only good enough for a few hundred to hear.
At one point before the vigil, clergy were huddled together. A neighbor started shouting with rage and was causing a stir. We started spontaneously singing "Dona Nobis Pacem." And kept singing it. People joined, people filmed, and a woman walked by me afterwards and said "Thank you for singing. I didn't know how much I needed that."
Grant us peace, God - peace that is the presence of justice, peace that is protection for all your beloveds, peace that is an end to this terror, peace that abides. Amen.
Rev. Craig Loya
Bishop, Episcopal Church in Minnesota
Beloved in Christ,
Matthew’s account of Epiphany, the feast we celebrated yesterday, shows that there are two responses to the manifestation of a poor, helpless, migrant child lying in a feeding trough as the the place where the God of the whole cosmos resides: fear and joy. King Herod meets the news of King Jesus with fear that quickly turns into a murderous rage as he slaughters an untold number of infants to eliminate the threat to his power. The wise men who had been watching the skies for a sign are overwhelmed with joy at the good news that Herod’s campaign of terror through violent force has met the unstoppable power of God’s love.
The Herods of the world, and their fear driven campaigns of terror, are ever with us. Today in Minneapolis, after deploying thousands of federal immigration agents in recent days, an individual was shot and killed by those agents. The news is crushing, to be sure, but we ought not be shocked. The federal government has been making good for a full year on its promise to enforce immigration policy through a racially narrow lens and with a cruel delight. An incident like the one today in Minneapolis was inevitable, and such violence is likely to remain a feature of our common life as long as federal agents are being deployed to cities seen to oppose the current administration for the sole purpose of provocation and intimidation.
As people of the Epiphany, our call is to stand in the midst of a world where Herod continues to flex and posture, not in outrage or with reciprocal violence, but gazing in wonder and expectation for the joyful manifestation of Jesus wherever the poor, the outsider, the weak, and the oppressed are to be found. As people of the Epiphany, in the midst of a world where cruelty tries to pose as power, we continue to rejoice in the assurance that absolute and final power resides in poor and crucified Jesus, who alone is the true king. Our Epiphany joy is not some naive and shallow notion that everything will be ok, when everything is so obviously not ok. Our Epiphany joy is the deep, defiant, revolutionary hope we have in the assurance that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Like the wise ones searching for Bethlehem, we wait, we watch, we follow where love leads, knowing that only God’s action in the world can finally and fully heal all that the lust for a false and hollow power had broken down, world without end.
