Last weekend, in an opening video during worship, I mentioned that moment in Luke’s gospel when Jesus tells his disciples, “With desire I have desired” to eat this meal with you. I felt the depth of that redundancy all last week, as I was so anxious to be in worship with you again and to participate in all the weekend activities that we had planned. With desire I had desired to be with you again! Alas, a better quote might have been the old Yiddish phrase drawn from the 2ndPsalm, Mann tracht, un Gott lacht, meaning, “Humans plan and God laughs.” With all the tragedy in the world God could use a good laugh, so I’m okay with being the butt of that one. However, I am ready to return this week and be with you physically, not virtually. According to the protocols that we follow for our staff, Tuesday was the end of my 5 day isolation period, which is followed by a 5 day time of extra caution – wearing a mask and keeping social distance. That means I will be in person for Julie Hume’s memorial service on Saturday morning, as well as for worship on Saturday evening and Sunday morning. And, except for those moments when I am actively speaking to the group, I will be wearing my surgical mask and careful about distance. And, once again, thanks all around to our excellent staff and volunteers for stepping up and making all things smooth. Okay, enough about that. Now, for the bitter and the better.
The Bitter: It is astounding how commonplace mass murder has become in the United States. During my sabbatical there were three such events that particularly caught our attention – A racially motivated shooting that killed ten persons and wounded three more at a supermarket in Buffalo, NY; a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing nineteen students and two teachers, wounding seventeen other people; and a Fourth of July parade shooting in Highland Park, IL, that killed seven people and wounded 46 more either directly or as a result of panicked fleeing. Each of the shooters was a male between the ages of 18-21.
We don’t know if each of these young men had the same politics, if they played the same video games, listened to the same music, or watched the same violent movies. We don’t know if they have similar religious feelings or any such feelings at all. But something enabled three young men to conclude that, whatever itch or grievance they felt that they had, their course of action was to use weapons to murder children and adults, most of whom - if not all of whom - were strangers to them. There is something about our culture – that’s the catch-all term for speaking about all three of these events collectively – that made the action of ‘callously taking the lives of others’ an option. Ours is not a culture that instills such a deep sense of respect for human life that such an act would go unthought. While we might say it is “unthinkable,” it is not. They thought it, they planned it, and they did it. And the worst part of this cultural misanthropy may be that during that same period we hardly noticed other atrocious acts of violence because the numbers weren’t quite as large.
During that same time, the Supreme Court made any governmental action toward regulating the sale and possession of such deadly firearms even more difficult with a ruling that seems incredibly myopic. I’m not a “strict constitutionalist” for the same reasons that I’m not a biblical fundamentalist. As such I don’t see where 1st century mores regarding marriage should be binding on 21st century relationships, and I don’t see why late 18th century dispositions toward firearms should be binding on 21st century armaments. These opinions, of course, are my own. I am not speaking on behalf of St. Mark or the Presbyterian Church USA, and these are matters on which persons of faith and good will can disagree. My only purpose in mentioning them as forcefully as I am is to recognize the added layer of anger or frustration that many of us have felt on top of the horror of the mass shootings themselves.
All of that is to say that, while I was on sabbatical, I was commiserating with you, experiencing the horror and the frustration of things that lie beyond our immediate control. At the same time, we feel some measure of responsibility. So, we pray. And we educate. And we advocate. And we keep going, using the power of persuasion and good will to work toward justice.
The Better: While we cannot repair the state of our shared culture magically, quickly, or easily, we can provide a better way. One way of doing that is through our youth ministry. This weekend we have four adults and seven youth attending the Youth Conference at the Montreat Presbyterian Conference Center nestled among the Black Mountains of North Carolina. Pastor Hayes will tell you that anyone in the southeastern portion of the Presbyterian Church knows about the beautiful setting of Montreat and the energetic Youth Conferences that they host every summer. If their week goes as we anticipate (see the Yiddish phrase above), we can expect our seven youth and four chaperones to return with energizers and energy, along with a lot of new friends and Instagram followers. While this week should be fun and enjoyable, it is also one way that we cultivate a different way of being in the world, based on compassion, hope, and justice. This week we will lift up our Montreat attendees in prayer as part of our radical hope that our world can be a place of joy and justice.
See you in worship,
Mark of St. Mark
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