Whenever community leader Jeff Fard was asked on Thursday about his thoughts on the tragic shooting at Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, he immediately thought of the Rev. Timothy Tyler.
“He’s hurting and in pain,” Fard said of Tyler, pastor of the Denver’s Shorter Community AME Church, a sister church to Emanuel. Tyler is also a friend of that church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine people killed.
“I wondered,” Fard said. “Who helps the helpers?”
The answer to that question came at about 9:30 Thursday night.
Tyler, who admitted that he had struggled to pray in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, found himself on his church’s pulpit, surrounded by about 50 faith leaders, men and women from different religions and congregations.
The group laid their hands on Tyler, the gesture a powerful symbol of the evening. As photos of the Charleston victims flashed on a screen and nine candles were lit, the crowd of about 200 found solace in each other.
“We’ve gathered together tonight to be together,” Tyler said.
“Our entire congregation is grieving, our entire community is grieving. … We need you, and, perhaps, you need us.”
Before the ceremony, Tyler said the gathering would attempt to help a community get a grasp on questions that don’t seem to have answers.
“Whether it’s this tragedy or events like Ferguson (Mo., which saw civil unrest in November following a grand jury decision to not indict former police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown), we have to keep seeking ways,” Tyler said. “We have to pray and see God during these times when we don’t know what’s going on in the world.”
Tyler admitted that maintaining faith in the face of tragedy can be difficult, “But what else should we do? What actions should we take? I just know that we have to keep seeking answers through prayer, or else we’ll be stuck in these quagmires forever.
“My mother worked for Medgar Evers; she’s been fighting civil rights battles for 60 years. Today she was crying because of Charleston. … That’s her frustration, but she knows we can’t give up the fight.”
