I
did not grow up in the church, and up until my first year of college I only
went in to churches and synagogues for life events—weddings, bar mitzvahs,
funerals and the like. The first time I ever went to church on my own was
Easter Day, 1968—four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I
went for two reasons—first, because I was trying to make sense of Dr. King’s
murder, and second because I greatly admired the Yale Chaplain in those days,
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. Bill Coffin had been arrested on the steps of
the Pentagon months before—along with poet Robert Lowell and the famous baby
book writer Dr. Benjamin Spock—and I had heard Coffin speak on several
occasions about the intersection of social and religious issues. So on
Easter Day, 1968, I made my way across Yale’s Old Campus to Battell Chapel to
hear what Dr. Coffin might say on Easter that would help me understand the
death of Dr. King.
I
remember very little about that first church experience, except for two
things. First, they served sherry afterward—a powerful inducement for a
college freshman in those days. And second, Coffin’s sermon entirely
surprised me. He did, of course, use the sermon time to talk about the
King assassination, but he didn’t do so in any conventionally comforting
way. “What else,” Coffin asked, “did we think we had a right to
expect?” Comparing King’s murder to the events of Good Friday, Coffin
intoned, “We never had a right to think it would be any different” with figures
like Jesus and King.
Here
I was, an 18 year-old kid looking for consolation, and instead of giving me a
security blanket the preacher used the gospel to slap me in the face. It
was an unforgettable moment, and I owe my life in the church to the spiritual
wake up I received that morning. The sherry probably had a little
something to do with it, too.
I
think about Bill Coffin’s rhetorical question—“What else did we think we had a
right to expect?” every time I read or hear today’s gospel. John the
Baptist is in prison, and what he’s hearing about Jesus doesn’t exactly sound
like what he expected to hear. He sends words by his disciples to ask of Jesus,
"Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for
another?"
John
apparently thought that Jesus would be one kind of Messiah, and he is turning
out to be another. John predicted a fiery leader who would use his
winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff and then burn the chaff
with unquenchable fire. But Jesus didn’t behave the way John expected he
would. He didn’t scourge people—he healed them. He didn’t separate
people, he brought them together. He didn’t predict damnation so much as
universal peace and forgiveness. "Are you the one who is to come, or
are we to wait for another?" “What else did we think we had a right to
expect?”
It
has been a year since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut, and as we observe this anniversary, I find that these two questions
frame my perception of the year we have been through. A year ago, I stood
in the pulpit and declared my own and this cathedral’s resolve to stand with
and for the victims of gun violence and to use our energies to mobilize the
faith community to pressure our legislators for action to curb the epidemic of
deaths brought about by guns in America. In the phrase that will no doubt
be the opening line of my obituary, I said, “The gun lobby is no match for the
cross lobby.”
A
year later, pretty close to nothing has happened. And just last Friday, we
saw yet another school shooting, this time in Colorado—again. By the estimates
of the Centers for Disease Control, another 32,000 Americans have died by gun
violence since December 14, 2012. There have been mass shootings around
the country, even in our own Washington D.C. Navy Yard. There has been
almost no legislative action in response to these deaths. "Are you
the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" “What else did we
think we had a right to expect?”
Last
September, Bishop Budde and my wife Kathy and I were present at the memorial
service for those killed at the Navy Yard. As with Bill Coffin’s sermon
on Easter Day, 1968, I will always remember President Obama’s remarks in the
wake of the Navy Yard shooting. The president said, in part:
So
these families have endured a shattering tragedy. It ought to be a shock to us
all as a nation and as a people. It ought to obsess us. It ought to lead to
some sort of transformation. . . .
We
can’t accept this. As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here
today there is nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down
where they work. There is nothing normal about our children being gunned down
in their classrooms. There is nothing normal about children dying in our
streets from stray bullets. [“Remarks by the President at the Memorial Service
for the Victims of the Navy Yard Shooting” September 22, 2013]
Just
as I will never forget sitting in Battell Chapel on Easter Day in 1968, I will
never forget sitting outdoors on a beautiful September Sunday afternoon at the
Washington Marine Barracks listening to the president say those words as the
American flag fluttered in the breeze behind him. And I will never forget where
I was when I heard tell of the Navy Yard shootings, the Sandy Hook shootings,
the Aurora shootings, the Oak Creek Wisconsin shootings. These moments
are seared into my memory as I believe they are into yours because, as the
president says, “there is nothing normal” about them.
In
this morning’s gospel, Jesus responds to John the Baptist’s question with these
words:
"Go
and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor
have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at
me." [Matthew 11:2-11]
A
year after Sandy Hook, I still believe that the gun lobby is no match for the
cross lobby. I still believe that you and I people of faith should refuse
to tolerate the epidemic of gun violence that is killing our children, our
colleagues, our friends. As the church, as the community that gathers
around Jesus, we need to remember what we’re actually here for. We’re
here, with Jesus, to help the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the
lepers be cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead be raised, and the poor receive the
good news. "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for
another?" “What else did we think we had a right to expect?”
What
else did we think we had a right to expect? Nothing has happened in a
year partially because you and I have not cared enough to make something
happen. The passion is all on one side in the gun violence debate.
Oh, sure, we care every time there is a tragedy. But we quickly lose
interest and turn our attention to other things. We need, my friends, to
do better. We need, as the community that lives out the life and promise
of Jesus in the world, to be the people bringing good news to a nation and
world in the grips of a death-dealing addiction to violence and guns.
One
year after Newtown, I ask, as you do, “Why has nothing happened?” And in
response I hear not an answer but William Sloane Coffin’s question: “What else
did we think we had a right to expect?” If we don’t care at least as much as
the gun lobby, if we don’t become, in the president’s words, “obsessed” with
curbing gun violence, what right do we have to expect that things will be any
different, even after the next mass shooting or wave of urban gun deaths?
Christianity
is not only about loving Jesus and knowing God. It is about living out
the implications of that love and knowledge. Human beings are precious;
that is why we care when they die. And that is why Jesus responds to John’s
question not with a list of talking points but with the news of human lives
made better. And so for us. On this Third Sunday of Advent, as we
move ever closer to Christmas and its proclamation of good news and great joy
for all people, I repeat what I said a year ago: the gun lobby is no
match for the cross lobby. You and I who follow Jesus must continue to
stand with and for the victims of gun violence and we must redouble our efforts
to help our leaders do the right thing so that our schools, our workplaces, and
our streets will be safe places for precious human beings to live out their
lives in the fulfillment of Christmas peace and joy.
As
Paul said in 2 Corinthians, “We do not lose heart.” [2 Corinthians 4:1] We will prevail because the cross is finally
stronger than the forces set against it.
We will prevail because the love and justice and hope and peace at the
center of the universe are more powerful than hatred and fear and oppression
and violence. One year after Newtown, nothing has happened yet everything has
changed. Together let us walk with Jesus and become with him the ones the world
is waiting for. I am not giving up, and I ask that you not give up,
either. Amen.
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