My former pastor was shot and killed last Sunday during church.

Fred Winters was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Maryville (IL), where I went to youth group in high school. And he was gunned down by one of my high school classmates.

I haven’t been to FBC Maryville for years now, but the first text message from my sister last Sunday morning hit way too close to home – literally, about 5 miles from the house where I lived. The shooter was in the hospital (not mine) this week about 5 miles from where I live right now. And now he’s in jail, about 5 miles from our old high school.

It’s freaking SICK.

My sister was in the church she attends with my parents when the news broke. The mayor of the town is a member of her church and the head of the volunteer fire/EMS crew that was first to respond, so he was keeping all of the churches in town updated as they prayed in their Sunday services. We were texting back and forth all morning – her with news from the town and me with whatever I could find on CNN and other news sites. At first the news was just that there had been a shooting and people were hurt. Then it was that one person had died, but they got the bad guy. Then it was all over CNN that Pastor Fred was shot in the chest and killed in his own sanctuary while finishing up a sermon about finding happiness in the workplace.

Two members of the congregation attacked the shooter, who had stabbed himself with a knife after his gun jammed only four bullets into his 30 rounds. They were wounded by the knife but are both all right now.

I only knew him for a little while, but Pastor Fred made a big impression on me in the short time I went to his church. He told our youth group that it was okay to have questions about God. That it was okay to not have answers to those questions. Pastor Fred was always firm in his own convictions but they weren’t closed convictions. He had an open mind and an open heart. He didn’t just want to share his knowledge, he wanted to take in what other people knew and thought and felt. He was young and energetic and got excited about everything. I bet that even the most convinced atheist out there couldn’t know Fred as a man – not as a pastor – and not think he was a wonderful human being.

Why why why WHY?

Now that he’s out of the coma, out of the hospital and in jail, everyone wants Terry Joe Sedlacek, the shooter, to start talking. When I first heard what happened, I thought I just wanted that scumbag to die on the spot. But now I want to know why he targeted Fred Winters, of all people. I want to know what drove him to plan this crime so callously that he marked last Sunday as “Death Day” in his planner.

Not that it’s going to make any difference though. A good man is dead and he left behind a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters. But we all want to know, as if it will make sense from the senseless.

Cindy Winters, Fred’s widow, gave her husband’s eulogy (click for link to video) yesterday and said “I’m not going to hate.” Can you even imagine saying that about the person who killed the father of your children? Can you imagine what it took for her to stand up there less than a week after her husband of over twenty years died so close to where she was standing yesterday?

I wish I had that sort of strength and faith. I believe in God and in being good and living a good life, but I don’t know if I could ever have what Cindy Winters has in her heart. Maybe that would make a difference, more than any story Terry Joe Sedlacek can tell us. Because no matter what he says, we won’t say “Oh, well THAT explains it perfectly.”

I work at a hospital and people die there all the time. Two of my favorite early blog posts (“Thoughts on a Sheeted Stretcher” and “Um, There’s a Body by the Elevator”) are about death and dying in the hospital. It happens in ambulances, in the ER, on our operating room tables, in the inpatient ICUs, on the regular units. It’s not just sick or old people. Some come in as victims of traumas and they die senseless deaths, like Pastor Fred with a bullet right through his heart. And in a professional way, we get used to it. We have to.

But it doesn’t make it any easier.