Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Sermon of comfort poured over a church in pain

At Faith Baptist Church, Sunday's message was as much about Jessica as it was about Jesus.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published March 21, 2005

[Times photo: Stephen J. Coddington]

Sharon Armstrong, Jessica Lunsford's Sunday school teacher, sits in the pew at Faith Baptist Church on Palm Sunday morning as Christina Lizine comforts her. Rather than the scheduled guest speaker, senior pastor William LaVerle Coats gave the message. "This morning," he said, "Jessica Lunsford is in the presence of her maker."

HOMOSASSA - He knew he had to throw a comforting blanket around his congregation and try to put out the smoldering anger burning in the pews.

A traveling speaker had been scheduled at Faith Baptist Church in Homosassa. But pastor William LaVerle Coats took the pulpit on Palm Sunday.

This was, after all, Jessica Lunsford's church. It was the longtime church of her grandparents, Archie and Ruth Lunsford. Church vans had been filled here to search for the missing 9-year-old. It is near where her body was found.

The Rev. Coats made a grim announcement to the roughly 175 congregants: An autopsy was delaying funeral plans.

His sermon began with the Last Supper. Jesus told disciples he was going to die.

"Here is a group of men with troubled hearts and troubled minds," Coats said, "just like our community today."

Jesus comforted his disciples by saying God would be with them once he left, Coats said. God's with the church now that Jessica's gone, he added.

Jesus told the disciples that he left them to prepare heaven, Coats said. "This morning," he said, "Jessica Lunsford is in the presence of her maker."

Coats threw his arms open wide like he said the prodigal son's father would. He bear-hugged air.

"That's a picture of what God's like," Coats said.

He tilted from right to the left. He pointed to the sky. He asked the big question: Why?

"God's ways are not our ways," Coats answered.

He said someone recently told him "wouldn't it be something" if John Couey accepted Christ, got his life right, and ended up in heaven.

"That's the grace of God," Coats said.

"Amens," which came every so often ceased.

Coats pressed on. He closed with an altar call. Room at the Cross For You, was the hymn of invitation. He prayed one last time.

"Oh, I look forward to that day, the day we see Jessie," Coats said. "Give us the comfort that's needed. In Jesus' name, amen."

Tissues wiped many eyes.

Some said they felt differently afterward.

"I pity Couey," said Lucinda Smedeker, her 7-year-old daughter Jazmine standing on her mother's toes in a pink Sunday dress and hat. "He took something precious and destroyed it."

Others said they felt the same.

"I just have an empty heart," said Sharon Armstrong, Jessica's tutor.

Shepherding this flock has never been so hard, Coats said.

"I've been a pastor for more than 30 years, and I've never experienced anything like this in a congregation," said Coats, 62.

The first day Jessica disappeared, Coats said, he stood outside her home for eight hours. Sheriff's deputies wouldn't let him in while the home was sifted for clues. Coats has since spoken to Archie Lunsford nearly every day.

Being so close, he said, he also feels like many. Couey should die, he said.

"The fact that someone like that could be so close to our church and in our community?" he said. "That's what angers ... I mean, troubles me."

But Coats said his job is to comfort.

He said he has watched tragedies on TV before, and wondered at how community leaders said profound things when faced with adversity.

He thought he wouldn't be able to. But he said he thinks he said what needed to be said Sunday.

"You don't minister in your own strength," Coats said. "You minister in the strength of the Lord."

--Justin George can be reached at 352 860-7309 or jgeorge@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 21, 2005, 01:50:19]