A Teacher of Mercy

At 10:56 on the morning of June 19, 1991, on a Jackson, Mississippi, street, 33-year-old Matt Devenney was gunned down. Moments before, Devenney, who was executive director of The Community Stewpot, had confronted John D. Smith, a patron at the soup kitchen, about having a gun. According to a witness, Smith responded by telling Devenney he was the governor of Mississippi, then walked across the street, turned, and fired. Devenney was hit twice in the chest.

"I told Matt to run with me, but he wouldn't run," said Fred Logan, who was standing beside Devenney just before the shooting. "I believe he got scared."

But other friends of Matt Devenney have a different understanding. They say Matt knew that behind him were men from the streets waiting to eat lunch, take showers, and visit the clinic connected to Stewpot. Concerned for their safety, Matt had walked toward Smith in an effort to talk him out of shooting into the crowd. He paid for his courage with his life, taking one of the bullets at point-blank range.

Men at the soup kitchen wept openly. News of the tremendous loss spread quickly through Jackson's streets. Kathy Devenney was teaching Bible school for a group of young neighborhood children when she got word that her husband had been shot.

The phone rang at Sojourners around one o'clock with the tragic news. Julie Propst, our receptionist, took the call. Julie had been director of Stewpot before coming to Washington, and Matt Devenney was a very close friend.

At about the same time, John D. Smith was arrested. He was carrying a .32-caliber revolver. Police charged him with murder.

Smith had a history of mental illness, according to Jackson's chief of police. He had been discharged from the Army with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and had received treatment in both a state hospital and a veterans' medical center. At the time of his arrest, he had a trial date pending on six criminal charges, including three counts of carrying a concealed weapon.

But on May 3, 1991, Smith had walked into Pawns Plus in Jackson and bought two handguns for $175. The .25-caliber pistol he bought was apparently used the day before Devenney's murder in an assault at Jackson's Gateway Rescue Mission. The other weapon was the .32-caliber revolver used to kill Devenney.

Mike Hatcher, owner of Pawns Plus, claims that Smith fulfilled the legal requirements for purchasing a handgun: "He was local, he was above 21, and he had the proper ID." When police questioned his judgment in making the sale, Hatcher answered, "How's a guy with a bachelor's degree in business administration supposed to know he's a nut case when a guy with a Ph.D. in psychiatry let him out on the street?"

JUST DAYS BEFORE Matt Devenney lost his life, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill requiring a seven-day waiting period for the purchase of a handgun. Passage of the "Brady bill," named after James S. Brady, the press secretary to Ronald Reagan who was wounded during the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, was seen as a victory for gun control advocates. It was also a stunning defeat for the National Rifle Association (NRA), which had lobbied at considerable expense to block its passage and had backed what critics decried as an unenforceable, alternative "sham bill" designed solely to kill the Brady bill.

On July 11 the Senate overwhelmingly passed a comprehensive "anti-crime bill." Among the provisions of the bill are a five-day waiting period for a handgun purchase, mandatory background checks on potential buyers, and the establishment of a computerized network for such checks, as well as a ban on the manufacture and sale of nine types of semiautomatic assault weapons.

A recent weapons census by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 200 million guns are in circulation in the United States. The number of firearms produced in this country grew by 42 percent between 1985 and 1989, and more guns were imported during that time than children were born in our nation.

"The more guns you have out there, the more violence you're going to have," says Barbara Lautman, director of education for the Center for the Study of Handgun Violence. The point seems obvious, and it is borne out by the vastly decreased numbers of homicides and other weapons-related crimes in nations with strict gun control. Yet the NRA and others who stand to profit from an armed populace continue to ignore the obvious, glossing over the tragic truth -- and the mounting deaths -- couching the issue in the language of freedom and individual rights.

Congress has taken some steps in the right direction. Those steps came too late for Matt Devenney. But perhaps other lives will be saved. We can believe that Matt, who was strongly committed to nonviolence, would have applauded such measures.

But, ironically, he would have been disturbed by some of the anti-crime bill's other provisions. The bill empowers federal courts to impose the death penalty for 51 crimes and drastically curtails death-row appeals. It came in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that severely limits appeals in capital cases and a congressional report documenting racial bias in the imposition of the death sentence.

One patron of Stewpot, on hearing about Matt Devenney's death, vowed to take revenge against John Smith, but caught himself, saying that Matt would not have wanted that. Kathy Devenney echoed that sentiment. Matt had worked vigorously against the death penalty.

Matt Devenney was buried with a white rose and a crucifix that belonged to his 20-month-old son, David, who will grow up not knowing his father. Around Matt's neck was a medallion, a gift from his sister. The front bears an image of Jesus and the back is inscribed with "Matthew 9:13." According to his friends, Matt had spent his life trying to understand the words of the scripture, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

"Matt came to teach us mercy," said a friend in tribute. He would have extended that mercy even to his killer. And he knew that getting rid of the guns is only part of the solution. The hard work of mercy and justice is at the heart of the matter.

At the funeral Mass, politicians and homeless people, activists and priests mingled with members of Matt's family. Five hundred mourners came, and many in this Baptist belt experienced their first Mass.

Much to the surprise of the priests, several of Matt's friends from the streets took the wafer offered to them and put it into their pocket. "It was a way to hold on to Jesus -- and to Matt," said Julie Propst as she described the poignant scene.

As one man eating lunch at Stewpot put it, "Matt's not gone, he's right up there making sure we're all acting right." In that church, where all types of God's children came together to honor a life, people were acting right. And they were offering the world a glimpse of the gospel. That is what Matt Devenney died for. And what we have to live for.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.