We
gather this morning in the aftermath of a national tragedy: the killing of 28 people—20 of them
children—at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Like you, I am still in the process of
sorting out all my emotional responses to this horrifying incident. In times like this, we all come together
seeking not so much answers as a community in which to make sense of the
questions.
The only reliable
way I know through something like this is to start with my own response,
trusting that in many ways it resembles yours, and then holding that response
up to the Gospel light, asking God what we should all do next.
It
appears that most of those who died on Friday were first graders. There is
nothing like a primary school classroom:
it’s not only the bright colors and the fun things that make it
special. It’s the sense that you’re in a
place where children are making an important transition, moving from innocence
to experience, engaging the world afresh and anew. So my first response to Friday’s shooting is
a kind of wounded horror at the thought that these emergent children were
killed so brutally and that the children around them were terrorized as
well. I grieve, of course, for the
adults too. But it is the loss of the
children—the lives not lived, the hopes extinguished—that touches me first.
My
thoughts move next to the parents. As I
remember my own days as the parent of a young child, I recall my own visceral
sense that my primary purpose in life was to protect and nurture the life of my
son. When you have a child you are emotionally exposed. Not only can I not fully take in the way the
children were traumatized; I cannot even begin to grasp the pain experienced by
their parents.
And
then from the parents my thoughts go to the shooter. While I resist the temptation to speculate
about his mental or emotional state, it’s hard to imagine someone carrying out
such an act who wasn’t in an awful lot of psychic pain themselves. We reflexively turn to calling such people
“evil”, as if in so doing we mark them as somehow different from us. Was the shooter “evil”? In the sense that he caused a lot of innocent
suffering, yes I suppose he was. But can
we call him “evil” as a way of excluding him or his actions from the realm of
humanity? No, I don’t believe we
can. We need to understand his
action—and the actions of all violent people—as a part of what it means to be
human. Like it or not, we are bound up
with each other in a complex matrix of motivations and actions. To understand is not to excuse. Let’s not apologize for the shooter, but
let’s not try to pretend that he’s someone other than us, either. If he was
mentally ill, he was also a member of a family, and we know that existing laws
make it very difficult for families to control or institutionalize their violent
members.
And
thinking about “us” makes me ask the last, the harder question. Why do we as a society tolerate these
massacres in increasing numbers? These
mass shootings are happening with increasing frequency, and they more and more
seem to be targeted directly against children.
What does it say about us as a society that we continue to tolerate so
much violence against children? What does it say about us, as a community of
human beings, that we are willing to put our children (not to mention their
teachers) in so much jeopardy? In every school I know they have lockdown
drills, and the threat of invasive gun violence is taken very seriously. What kind of a society would let itself get
to this point, to where teachers and students routinely have to practice what
they will do when a shooter comes on campus? If you stand back from it for a
minute, you realize that our continued shared tolerance of this violence
directed against our children is insane.
All
of which leads me, finally, to ask the Gospel question: what are we, as people of faith, to do? As a way into answering that question, I turn
to this morning’s Gospel passage, the account of John the Baptist addressing
the crowds who are coming to him out of some kind of personal and spiritual and
social desperation. What does he say to
them? “Bear fruits worthy of
repentance.” What he means is: stop
doing the crazy thing you’re doing and do a new thing, a new thing that will
bear fruit, that will bring about the change you seek.
The
crowd asks him, “What then should we do?” And John gives this direct and
plain-spoken answer:
"Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has
none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Even tax collectors came to
be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?" He
said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to
them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and
be satisfied with your wages." [Luke 3: 10-14]
Now you don’t have to be a New
Testament scholar or an ethicist or a moral philosopher to understand what John
is saying here. He’s saying: it’s not that complicated. You already knew the answer when you asked
the question. Share what you have, live
honorably, value the well-being of the other person as highly as your own. We make our ethical dilemmas seem more
complicated than they really are. In
today’s Gospel, we’re asked, simply, to repent, to turn around, and then to
bear fruits worthy of repentance. We’re
asked to live mutually and honorably and compassionately for the well-being of
all.
Which
leads me to say, on behalf of this faith community at least: enough is enough. As followers of Jesus, we have the moral
obligation to stand for and with the victims of gun violence and to work to end
it. We have tolerated school shootings, mall shootings, theater shootings,
sniper shootings, workplace shootings, temple and church shootings, urban
neighborhood shootings, for far too long.
The massacre of these 28 people in Connecticut is, for me at least, the
last straw. And I believe it is for you.
Enough is enough. The Christian
community—indeed the entire American faith community—can no longer tolerate
this persistent and escalating gun violence directed against our people. Enough is enough.
For
a variety of reasons our political culture has been unwilling and unable to
address the question of gun control, but now it is time that you and I, as
followers of Jesus, help them to do that.
In his emotional statement on Friday, President Obama called for
“meaningful action” in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre,
and I pledge my and this community’s help in crafting and taking that
action. Our political leaders need to
know that there is a group of people in America who will serve as a
counterweight to the gun lobby, who will stand together with our leaders and
support them as they act to take assault weapons off the streets. As followers of Jesus, we are led by one who
died at the hand of human violence on the cross. We know something about innocent
suffering. And we know our job is to
heal it and stop it wherever we can.
In
my statement on Friday, I said in part, “Washington National Cathedral pledges
to pray for the victims, their families, the assailant, and the survivors. And
we pledge to work with our national leaders to enact more effective gun control
measures.” To my way of thinking, the
best way for us to mourn the Sandy Hook shooting is to mobilize the faith
community for gun control.
In her statement
on Friday, Bishop Budde announced that she is
calling on our national leaders to
enact more effective gun control measures. We know from experience that such
calls go unheeded. But what if this time, you and I took up this issue and
wouldn’t put it down until something was done?
. . . Today we grieve, but soon we act.
“What if this time, you and I took up this issue and
wouldn’t put it down until something was done?” What would Jesus do? What would John the Baptist do? What should you and I do? You knew the answer even before you asked the
question. “Bear fruits worthy of
repentance.” “Today we grieve, but soon
we act.” As people of faith we can no
longer tolerate the epidemic of gun violence in America. If we are truly America’s “National”
Cathedral, as we say we are, then we must become the focal point of faithful
advocacy of gun control, calling our leaders to courageous action and
supporting them as they take it.
Everyone in this city seems to live
in terror of the gun lobby. But I
believe the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby. I don’t want to take away someone’s hunting
rifle, but I can no longer justify a society that allows concealed handguns in
schools and on the streets or that allows people other than military and police
to buy assault weapons or that lets people get around existing gun laws by
selling weapons to people without background checks at gun shows. As Christians, we are obligated to heal the
wounded, protect the vulnerable, and stand for peace. The cross is the sign and the seal of that
obligation. And we know both from faith
and experience that the cross is mightier than the gun. The gun lobby is no match for the cross
lobby.
On this Third Sunday of Advent, we
await the birth of the one who will die on that cross at the hands of sinful
and violent people. Let us rededicate ourselves as agents of Jesus’s love and
justice and healing in the world. Let us
pray for the children and adults who died on Friday. Let us pray for the parents and the surviving
children and the pain they continue to endure.
Let us pray for the shooter and the miasma of sickness and pain he
suffered. Let us pray for the mentally ill and their families, and let us help
those families more effectively cope with their sickest members. And let us pray for ourselves, that we may
have faithful courage to act, so that the murderous violence done on Friday may
never be repeated, and that all God’s children may live lives of wholeness and
blessing and peace. Amen.
