A few excerpts from Ken Sehested’s recent Prayer and Politiks newsletter.

The concurrence of two calendars brings together two significant historical episodes.
 
The Sunday morning terrorist bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killed four children and injured or maimed many others, on 15 September 1963. Bombs targeting the Black community in that city were common, which gave rise to the nicknaming of the city as “Bombingham.” This one, however, was especially hideous.
 
Though the FBI concluded that known members of Ku Klux Klan were responsible, no one was brought to trial until 1977, when the ringleader, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in the murder of one of those children. Not until 2001 were the other culprits convicted.
 
Can you imagine the whipsaw emotions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Eighteen days before he had been the singular figure in the largest demonstration (to that date) in US history, the 28 August March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. His “I Have A Dream” speech is considered by many to be the most important speech of the 20th century.
 
And then he had to pivot to planning funeral services for these murdered children.
 
Sunset on Friday, 15 September, also happens to be the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the opening act of the 10-day High Holy Days of Judaism, ending with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish liturgical cycle.

….

One of the haunting portends of that church bombing was this visual tragedy: The blast obliterated a small portion of one the church’s stained glass windows, the one depicting Jesus. His face evaporated into countless shards of glass scattered throughout the sanctuary—almost as if the bombing spoke a prophetic judgment against the dominant witness of church history, of the actual life of Jesus being removed, replaced by a theological syllogism: birth, death, resurrection (crib-cross-crown of glory), eclipsing the actual stuff of his life that made him a target.

News about the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church so moved Welsh artist John Petts that he volunteered to create a replacement stained glass window for the one depicting Jesus that was destroyed. The editor of his hometown newspaper in Llansteffan, Wales, launched a front page appeal to cover the cost. Petts’ “Wales Window for Alabama” depicts a black Christ, chest thrust out and arms outstretched as though on a crucifix, the right one pushing away hatred and injustice, the left offering forgiveness. —for more info see BBC News.