Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
December 16, 2012 Advent 3
Luke 3:7-14
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."
10 And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"
11 In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"
13 He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."
14 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."
We gather here together this morning, where else would we go? Something horrible has happened that demands to be undone but it cannot be undone. We demand answers to questions for which there are no answers. Yesterday, the famous poet and sometimes prophet, Maya Angelou, said, "Our country is grieving. Each child who has been slaughtered belongs to each of us and each slain adult is a member of our family. It is impossible to explain the horror to ourselves and to our survivors. We need to hold each other's hands and look into each other's eyes and say, 'I am sorry.'"
I think that she is right. We must start with sympathy for parents and grandparents of children, 20 elementary school aged children, senselessly and violently murdered for no reason and with no warning. Sympathy for the spouses and family members and co-workers of six, no seven adults because even the shooter leaves behind family and friends, neighbors and a brother who carry a burden of both grief and guilt.
We say, "I'm sorry" and try to move towards empathy, towards sharing their pain and helping to lift the burden. We say "I'm sorry," to begin to find our compassionate legs to know how we can personally respond in a way that brings both healing and a determination that this must not happen again.
I am not sure what all Maya Angelou meant, but I believe that saying "I'm sorry" needs to have a larger meaning this time. There is a part of it in which we need to say "I'm sorry" to take personal responsibility for this happening. To own the fact that we are a part of a society that has now, in 2012, set a record for these kinds of mass murders. And to say, "I'm sorry" because those 27 deaths were only unique in that they came all in one place but there are more than 30 gunshot homicides in America every day and I can tell you, spreading them out across 50 states doesn't really change much.
Something is wrong in America. Somehow we have a violence sickness, a gun addiction. We murder one another at a rate unprecedented in any other nation in any other century. If you look at it per capita, there a very few nations of the world where you might be more likely to be murdered than in the USA such as Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama and El Salvador. But to be completely honest, most of those nations have homicide rates directly related to the American gun industry and money from our drug trade. So, even there, we have reason to say, "I'm sorry."
I suspect that Maya Angelou was inviting us to mourn rather than to blame....to feel grief rather than anger. I hear that but with all due respect to Ms. Angelou, I can do more than one thing at once. I am grieving and I am angry.
The gun lobbyists hypocritically always insist that we not discuss gun laws in the aftermath of an incident such as this one. They insist that we must respect the victims and not politicize a tragedy. That is just a bunch of bull. They know that the public's stomach for thinking about these things makes us turn our attention quickly away. The shooting in the movie theater in Colorado this summer where 12 people were killed and 58 were wounded did not receive as much press coverage as when Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" or when, to the surprise of no one, Anderson Cooper told us that he is gay.
Tragedy happens but the gun industry has learned that if they can just cap the debate for a couple of weeks, nothing will come of it. All of us who let these events pass onto the back burner can say "I'm sorry" to all of the victims. We need to put this issue on the front burner and make it all we talk about and all we do until meaningful reform is in place, even if we have to gag every journalist who says the words, "fiscal cliff."
Early in 2007, Molly Ivans made a pledge that she would devote every column she wrote to ending the war in Iraq until the war was ended. She did not know that her own death would come right on the heels of having made that pledge and I am forced to wonder if newspapers would have continued to run a steady drum beat of anti-war columns for five years but I think that it is time for those of us who know that our nation's gun safety laws must be changed to make a similar pledge. We cannot let go of this issue without substantive change.
And, in fact, even the majority of NRA members agree. A big part of the problem is that most of the huge financial resources of the NRA does not come from its members. If you are not aware of this already, then I beg you to pay close attention to what I am saying right now: the majority of the money the NRA has to bribe politicians and prevent sane gun legislation from being passed does not come from citizen members but from the deep pockets of gun manufacturers.
The money made on the sale of semi-automatic and assault/military style rifles is what is driving this insanity. Only so many guns will be sold for hunting or home protection and many of those will last within families for more than a hundred years. The only way to make increased profits is to manufacture demand for a product that is not only not at all necessary but is entirely dangerous. These weapons are slipping across our border to arm drug cartels in Central and South America. They end up in the hands of terrorists, white supremacists, anarchists and people with serious mental illnesses.
I used to take my daughter to the Bass Pro shops when she was little to see the turtles, the fish tanks, the ducks and the big stuffed bear but hunting and fishing is not going to move the sports goods business along fast enough so they are remodeling to offer weapons for people with paranoid personality disorders and Jason Bourn fantasies. They now have a "tactical weapon" shopping area replete with dummies armed with hand guns..... the double entendre in that sentence was intended. Soon they will open an entire NRA museum intended to spark the yearning for more and bigger weapons.
They will try to tell you that it is a second amendment right, even though shooting up elementary schools has nothing to do with a well regulated militia and semi-automatic assault rifles with 100 round clips is not what the framers of the constitution had in mind in any event. All I want to hear from the gun lobby is what Maya Angelou said that we should all say, I want to hear them say...... "I'm sorry."
And the gun fanatics will trot out their absurd false equivalencies, saying that more people die from auto accidents than from gun shots as if we could ride a hand gun to school or work, or transport their wounded to the hospital on the rifle that wounded thousands or dig a grave for their victims with their banana ammo clips. I don't want to hear any more of their dodges and stupid defenses. What I want to hear them say is.... "I'm sorry."
And the lobbyists will cry out that if only we would repeal the existing gun restrictions, if only everyone in that Colorado theater had been armed and, I suppose the kindergarteners and first graders in Connecticut had been armed, they could have stopped this shooter sooner..... without any logical appreciation for the fact that it is the proliferation of guns that has driven up the number of fatalities in our nation, not the absence of guns. No, all I want to hear from the lobbyists right now is..... "I'm sorry."
And to Republicans who have held onto office by catering to the absurd whims of the gun manufacturers and the Democrats who decided to have campaign photos taken holding a hunting rifle in your hands to curry the dumb down vote, I don't want to hear any more false pretense out of you when you know that all you are doing is clutching onto power with any kind of deal you can make with the devil in spite of more than 30,000 gun deaths every year in the nation you have sworn to serve. All I want to hear out of you is..... "I'm sorry."
On this third Sunday of Advent when we traditionally give John the Baptist a moment to speak, we desperately need the practical theology of the guy who says that if you have extra food to share it with the hungry and if you have two coats to give one to someone who doesn't have a coat. We need the practical wisdom of a truth telling prophet who can say, "In the choice between your hobby and 30 deaths a day of my brothers and sisters, my children and grandchildren, don't you dare tell me about how much you enjoy your hobby. All I want to hear out of you is..... "I'm sorry."
I have no instant solutions to offer. Guns, once manufactured and sold remain in use for generations and there is no effective way of calling them back. We can, however, make a meaningful start by both addressing the immoral culture that turns so easily to violence, that so quickly denies mental health treatment to troubled young men while offering them weapons next to the toy department of Walmart. We can eliminate sales of guns without background checks. We can put a stop to gun shows. We can take semi-automatic and hand guns off the market and we can outlaw high round count ammo clips.... And make bullets very very expensive. Even in small ways, as the song, Lovers in a Dangerous Time, says: we must kick against the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This sermon is a call to action in honor of the twenty children murdered on Friday and in honor of a few special people whom I feel compelled to name:
The school's principal, Dawn Hochsprung, and school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, who, though unarmed, when other adults were hiding under tables, ran out into the hall and threw themselves at the assailant to try to stop him and lost their lives in the process.
And 27-year-old Victoria Soto, a first grade teacher, who used her own body to shield a child, saving the child's life while losing her own. Tell me again, Gov. Scott Walker, what a bunch of freeloaders that public teachers are in your twisted little mind!
These women make me want to be a better man.
To all of my friends who tell themselves that your guns will never be used in a mass murder and that you need your guns for your own protection... I encourage you to man up and be as brave as Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach and Victoria Soto. Destroy your weapons and live with courage for a better and more sane world.
My literature friends often cringe at rhyming poetry but I must close today with Edna St Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music"
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
