Poolesville Presbyterian Church
12.16.12; Rev. David Williams
On Tuesday, I had a sermon, or I thought I did. It was called Bugs and Honey. It was a little jokey, a little festive, a little challenging.
But what seemed like a perfectly good message on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday when that bulletin got printed needed to be abandoned on Friday afternoon, as my social media feeds suddenly filled with grief and confusion. It was so damn familiar, and I use that word advisedly. That first breaking news headline felt just like the radio cutting in during the shootings at Tech. But I was online, so I got to see the familiar aerial shots from the news choppers, the sea of first responder vehicles and the terrible beautiful Christmas tree flashing of their lightbars.
And there were the pictures, pictures of parents and relatives, at that place of loss where all they can see and feel is fear and panic and grief. Those are hard, because although we know the feeling, we do not know that person, not really. It feels like we are intruding, stepping into a moment of the most deep anguish a soul can feel. It’s so intimate. What right to I have to share this with you, I find myself thinking. I don't even know your name. And yet it would be more horrible still if we did not look, if we chose to turn away and close our eyes.
How do you process such a thing? The word “litany of violence” kept leaping out at me, used to describe the repetition of these events in the life of our nation. But a litany is a form of sacred language, recited or chanted. It is a holy rhythm, a sacred restating. But the staccato litany of children’s names from Sandy Hook is of a different sort. Charlotte, 6; Daniel, 7; Olivia, 6; Josephine, 7; Ana, 6; Dylan, 6; Madeleine, 6; Catherine, 6; Chase, 7; Jesse, 6; James, 6; Grace, 7; Emilie, 6; Jack, 6; Noah, 6; Caroline, 6; Jessica, 6; Avielle, 6; Benjamin, 6; Allison, 6. Names and numbers? This is not about data. I see a room full of little faces. I see my own sons in their kindergarten classes, so small, so full of bright child magic, so very fragile.
And still we try to come to terms with this pattern of horror. We struggle to understand, because we are creatures that like answers. We want clear and clean explanations. We want to know. But in the fog of terror and the conflicting stories, we do not have that clarity we desire, or the answers we seek. The more you focus on it, the less sense it makes. That goes beyond just the facts of it, which are obscured as the chaos of war obscures. Some names are familiar. Bushmaster. Glock. Sig Sauer. But it is still so messy. The rifle was left in the car, we hear. The rifle was used to kill the children, we hear. Where is reality in all of this? But deeper still, where is the reality we want to see, but that seems hidden from us?
We want to hear that things are fine. It’s Christmas-time, and we may be stressed, but the world around us is bright and lit and celebratory. That’s the truth we want to know.
But we cannot tell ourselves that everything is just fine when the fruits of the culture we have made are so obvious. It’s such a consistent harvest, producing this bitter fruit every four to six months, that we cannot honestly look at ourselves and say that this is a random event. It is too consistent, too predictable, this litany of ours. That peculiar admixture of weaponry and isolation breeds it, encourages it. It makes a way straight for it, as John the Baptist might say. It reminds us, though we do not want to be reminded, that there is something very wrong with a world in which these things happen, and happen so often that when we hear of such a horror, it no longer surprises us. When my boys came home, and I thanked God for that, their response to hearing of this event was a simple, "Again?" So young, they are. And they already know that's the way of this world.
That sort of world is not a world that requires our complacency. It aches and groans for change, but where is that change? Where is that Christmas hope? But it is not yet Christmas. It is still Advent.
So here, this week, we have John the Baptist speaking. Last week, we got the context and the runup to what he had to say. John spread his message in a Judah that was a broken, corrupt ruin. The sense of hope that but no amount of preparation can adequately set the stage for the intensity of John’s reaction to those who have come to hear him.
Generally, when people come to listen to what it is you have to say, you don’t immediately attack them. John calls them vipers, which is not a great start, but his attack goes deeper. Those who’ve gathered to listen to his words are Jews, and they understand themselves as part of a long spiritual lineage, a covenant of law and relationship that goes back thousands of years to Abraham.
Even this defining aspect of their identity is called into question. What does that matter to God? As far as God was concerned, even rocks and inanimate objects had as much standing. What matters, as John proclaims it, is that they live their lives in such a way that they are clearly manifesting the form of life God has demanded of all of them.
It’s not an amorphous faith that John is demanding of them. It’s a specific, concrete, manifested faith, one that articulates itself through action.
“Produce fruits worthy of repentance,” John says. And in reply, the people ask, “What then should we do?” That depended who they were.
So he tells them, but what he tells them is not what they wish to hear. Allow no-one to go without, he says, demanding that those who have more than they need give up the comfort of excess. But that was for everyone. Then the tax collectors ask. “What should we do?”
Who were they? These weren’t Roman tax collectors, but were instead Judeans under contract with the Roman government. Having paid for the privilege of collecting taxes, these contractors were then empowered to make profits from the fees and taxes and tolls they collected from the Judeans around them. It was the nature of the business. For them, the demand was simple. Do not seek to profit from your position.
Then it’s soldiers who ask. “What should we do?”
Who were they? These would not have been Romans, but Judeans working for the Herodians. They would basically have been mercenaries, and as such would have been paid practically nothing. Like so many soldiers and police in the developing world today, they would have expected to supplement their income by extorting it from those around them.
To them, John says, simply, stop doing what you have been doing. Stop taking advantage of your position, and realize that your actions make the lives of everyone around you more negative.
What John is telling those who have come to listen is that there is no magical, simple, easy fix for what ailed Judah. That they had come hoping to be changed, hoping that the ritual of baptism would transform them and restore their broken nation, that was all well and good. But what he told them, rather simply, was that if they wanted to change then they would have to actually change. Each would have to set down something precious to them. It would not be easy, but it would mean effort and sacrifice.
And with that, John lays out what it means to lean into any future hope. The possibility of the messianic age that he declared, that reality of the Holy Spirit that Jesus would bring, that would come no matter what. But in order to participate in it, people would have to turn away from their prior ways of acting and being.
How should we act? I’m not going to lay out a five point policy agenda for reducing gun violence, or present draft legislation for making mental health care more accessible. I’ll leave that for others.
I can only act, myself, because I bear personal responsibility for shaping the world around me. As we all do. In the face of the social isolation we inflict on the different and the isolated and the mentally ill, I press out against my preference not to deal with those around me who might not mesh with the world around them. Like the neighbor whose life is a struggle, both physical and mental. More mornings than not, he comes out of his house as I pass with my dog, filled with need and anger. Some mornings, I don’t want to walk by that house. I just don’t want to deal with it, with the anger, with the delusion, with the fruits of isolation. But I know that that part of me must change. So I linger by his house, in case he comes out. Some days, I go down and knock on that door, because as tormented as his soul might be, he deserves to be heard.
And in the face of violence, I also need to act. And act I did, years ago, when I set my gun aside. It wasn’t much of one, just a Mossberg 20 gauge that I kept around because blasting targets was fun. The boy in me liked the soft kick of it, the thunder of it, the chack-CHACK of the action, the splatter of exploding paint cans, the crash of shattering bottles. It was also, or so I told myself, a way that I could defend myself and my home. What if something happened? It’s better to have a gun and not need it, than need a gun and not have it, or so the saying went. I liked having a gun. But then, well, Columbine happened.
I found that I could no longer justify having it around. I did not hunt. Birdshot ruins the texture of the tofu. I was also not a citizen soldier, not a cop, not one of those whose sworn duty it is to protect and serve. I did not want to move through the world full of fear, viewing every stranger as a possible enemy.
My reasons for having it melted away with the litany of those kids who had died. Sure, the gun was fun, and it made me feel powerful and dangerous. But I couldn’t reconcile it with my place in reality, nor could I reconcile it with my faith. Stop doing what you are doing, said John. Live by the sword, die by the sword, said Jesus.
So I disassembled it, broke the action, and plugged the barrel. And then, because it felt like the thing to do, I threw it on the back of my motorcycle and took it to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association. I left it there on their doorstep along with a polite note, which said I did not want it any more.
It’s been a while. I miss it sometimes. I sometimes dabble with the idea of getting another one. But then the world keeps reminding me of why I set it aside in the first place. Lord, have mercy, I am so tired of those reminders.
What to do? Well, who are you? What defines you? What world are you a part of? Ask yourself, and then act.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
No comments:
Post a Comment