A year ago today, we were stunned by the news of a school shooting in the sleepy town of Newtown, CT. Grief poured from news outlets and social media. President Obama choked up when he spoke.
But then there have been more than 16 mass shootings in the US in the past year and another attack at a school yesterday near Columbine nonetheless. And then there are the multitudes of children killed by gun violence day in and day out not to mention the adults murdered each and every day.
This morning, I heard an interview with a Newtown parent. She spoke of planning a vigil in the aftermath of the tragedy. They struggled over whether to light 26 candles for the children and staff that were murdered or 28 candles including the killer and his mother. They decided to light 28. After all, there were 28 deaths.
I think 28 candles was the right choice. Yes the children and staff were beloved by God, but so were Adam Lanza and his mother. There had to be grief in the heart of God for a precious creature gone so wrong as well as the death of the woman who gave him birth.
Actually, I think that God has still not stopped crying over the continuous murders of precious children by other precious children. Why don’t we get the sacredness, the divinity, at the heart of all of life? If we did, we would end not only gun violence and murder but global climate change, arguably the greatest threat to human life.
And, what must be the worst part of this for God, is that our country, perpetrator of such horrific violence, has so many Christians and people of faith. That’s the crowning irony. We’re supposedly not a “godless” country. And yet we are not allowing ourselves to be transformed by the horror of 20 children murdered at school. “When will they ever learn,” the song “Where have all the flowers gone” asks.
There is a quote attributed to Edmund Burke, statesman of the 1700‘s: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Since the evil of gun violence to continues its rampage in our country, it appears that good people are not doing their part. Violence is not the consequence of having a free society; it is the consequence of having a sick society. We have accepted the pandemic of violence; integrated it into our lives. We have accepted it as being as natural as the air we breathe. For people of God, this acquiescence to violence is delusion, denial, and flat out sin as grave as the apostasies of the Hebrew scriptures rife with the worship of foreign gods. We, too, are worshipping gods foreign to the God of Jesus Christ. We make gods of the Constitution, personal rights, profit, and individualism, at the expense of a peace-loving society.
How many candles will it take to illumine the truth?
They dress my people’s wound carelessly,
saying, “Peace, Peace,” knowing that there is no peace.
Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct?
No, they feel no shame; they don’t even know how to blush.
Jeremiah 8:11-12a
Prayer: Help us to see our complicity with the violence in our society and in our world. This Christmas season, may we receive the Prince of Peace and allow him full sway over our lives, our hearts, our values, and our behavior. May we be converted by the birth of Jesus so that we might be agents of transformation of the world around us. Amen.
Lakewood United Church of Christ 