The Song That Answered Hatred with Grace

In June 2015, a young man walked into Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat with a Bible study group for nearly an hour, and then took nine lives. The world braced for rage. What it witnessed instead was something no headline could have predicted.

Within forty-eight hours, family members of the victims stood before the shooter at his bond hearing and, one by one, offered forgiveness. "I forgive you," said Nadine Collier, whose mother Ethel Lance had been killed. "You took something very precious from me, but I forgive you."

Days later, at the funeral of Pastor Clementa Pinckney, President Obama paused mid-eulogy, drew a breath, and began to sing — slowly, almost tentatively — "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..."

Consider what was unfolding in that sanctuary. A hymn written by John Newton, a former slave trader shattered by the mercy of the Almighty, was being sung over the casket of a Black pastor murdered by a white supremacist — by a congregation that had already chosen forgiveness over fury.

That is what grace sounds like when it costs something. Forgiveness is never cheap. It was not cheap at Calvary, and it was not cheap in Charleston. But as Paul writes, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32). The Most High does not ask us to forgive because it is easy. He asks because He forgave first — and sometimes that grace must be sung before it can be fully understood.