Thought and Prayers
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
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It was a little over twenty years ago, on a Monday morning, that our oldest child was born. The long night of labor gave way to our newborn baby girl bathed in the first light of that day’s sunrise. We were practically giddy at the hope and promise of that day. A day or two later, we snapped her carrier into the car seat and brought her home. I had taken that week off to settle our new family of three in at home. The next Monday I was back at work. On Tuesday of that week a cryptic message went out over the company’s email to all employees, “if you have a child who is a student at Columbine High School, please contact Human Resources immediately.” Over the course of that afternoon the news would report that two boys had opened fire on their classmates at Columbine High School in suburban Denver, killing 13 before turning their weapons on themselves. I was serving as an Elder on the Session of Central Presbyterian Church in Denver at the time, and we had a session meeting called for that same evening. The meeting wasn’t cancelled, but we tabled all business and simply talked about the tragedy of that day and how we were feeling. I can still remember shaking as I talked about my eight-day-old baby girl and the fear I felt about the dangers she was facing. And then we prayed. We prayed for the families of those who were killed. We prayed for the students who had been injured. We prayed for the students and teachers who had to run for their lives and the parents who spent excruciating hours waiting to find out if their children had made it out, if they were the lucky ones. We prayed for our community and the shock we were feeling about such an extraordinary act of violence in a place where we believed our children to be safe. And we prayed for the wisdom and courage to make the changes necessary to prevent something like this from ever happening again.
Over the course of the next twenty years, until Ash Wednesday of 2018 when 17 people were shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there were 49 more mass shootings, defined as a gun-related homicide with at least 5 victims. Church shootings, mall shootings, workplace shootings. 9 dead at Red Lake High School in Minnesota. 32 dead at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. 13 dead at Fort Hood in Texas- the most populous military installation in the world. 6 dead in the parking lot of a Safeway store in Tucson, that also left US Congresswoman Gabby Giffords with a permanent brain injury after being shot at near point-blank range. 12 dead at the Century 12 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. 27 dead, including 20 first grade children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 12 dead at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. 9 dead at the Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. 14 dead in San Bernardino. 49 dead in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 58 dead at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. The numbers are staggering, and only appear to be growing in frequency. So much so that when a shooter killed two students and himself in Aztec, New Mexico a couple of years ago, it barely registered on the national news. And now in the past two weeks in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio another 36 dead and several more injured. When someone asks if you’ve heard about the latest shooting, we have to ask, “which one?” And still we pray. Over the past twenty years, countless thoughts and prayers have been lifted up in the aftermath of horrific gun violence. But little is changed. Little has been attempted to make guns, and particular military-style assault weapons, less readily available and harder to get. As Yale theology professor Miroslav Volf has said, “there is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.”
It would appear that God, as represented through the words of the prophet Isaiah, has even stronger feelings about such thoughts and prayers. Straight out of the gate in our reading this morning the prophet puts the people on notice that God is unhappy with them by referring to them as Sodom and Gomorrah, those infamous cities from Genesis chapter 19. You may recall that they were utterly destroyed by God for their sins against hospitality by threatening sexual violence against God’s messengers. Likewise, the people of Judah and Jerusalem have been ignoring the violent injustices taking place in their own midst, even as they continue to offer sacrifices and worship God with elaborate shows of piety. And God is having none of it. God is not interested in their sacrifices (even though the offering of those sacrifices is meticulously dictated by God’s law). God cannot stand their gatherings of worship. In fact, through the words of the prophet, God goes so far as to say, “my soul hates [your religious festivals]” Instead of a delight, the people’s thoughts and prayers have become a burden that wears God out. And why is that? Why has God grown weary of the people’s worship? Why won’t God listen to their many thoughts and prayers? Because their hands are full of blood. Because they have not ceased to do evil by failing to attend to injustice and oppression. They have ignored children orphaned, like the two-month-old baby in El Paso last Saturday, and women left widowed by such violence. We don’t even have a word for the grievous loss experience by parents whose children have been gunned down at school.
It’s almost as though God is the first to raise a voice, like those people did in Ohio this week when their governor began to launch into another thoughts and prayers speech, to shout, “Do something.” That isn’t to dismiss the value of thinking of and praying for people who have experienced unimaginable loss, any more than God would suggest that people stop worshipping altogether. But when we go on piling up empty words about God, when we say our prayers and talk about God’s love while turning a blind eye to the epidemic that gun violence represents in our communities, the spiritual and physical health crisis created by a culture that is awash with guns as a tool for resolving grievances, all that piety is rendered meaningless. When our actions fail to reflect our words about who God is and the shalom God would have us know and advance in the world, we lose any and all credibility as witnesses to the good news.
But of course, it isn’t just these horrible shootings. Nearly two-thirds of the gun deaths in this country are death-by-suicide. The gun suicide rate in this country is ten times higher than it is in any other developed nation according to a paper in the journal Preventive Medicine. In another paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers found that access to a gun increased the risk of suicide by a factor of three. Unsurprisingly then, the rate of gun death by suicide is highest in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Furthermore, the death rate of suicide attempts that do not involve a firearm is less than 5%. Whereas attempts that include a firearm have an 85% death rate.
As a culture we have argued this issue with one another to no avail. The interests and arguments have calcified. But the Word of the Lord that comes to us from Isaiah invites us to argue it out with God. What might that sound like? I suspect that God would be unimpressed and unmoved by arguments that originate from a bill of rights in a human constitution written a scant 230 years ago. Lest we forget, there is nothing about the right to bear arms in the Ten Commandments. But we are commanded by God, “You shall not kill.” Perhaps God would be more inclined to listen to our thoughts and prayers if we were to take that one a bit more seriously.
Just a few chapters following the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction, God directs Abraham to bring Isaac, his only son whom he loves, to the mountain of God so he can sacrifice him. It’s a terrible story that raises all kinds of questions, starting with, “why would God ever ask someone to do such a thing?” One suggestion is that the story itself is meant as a counter-narrative to the religious practice of the surrounding tribes and nations. It wasn’t uncommon back then for people to offer child sacrifices to the ancient deity Moloch. So, the request might not have sounded as horrifying to Abraham as it does to us. Of course, in the end an angel of God stops the knife of Abraham before he can carry out this terrible act. And some Rabbis have suggested that the whole point of the story is that this god- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the one who led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt with a mighty hand and accompanied them across the wilderness to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey- this God does not require child sacrifice. In fact, this God cares for the most vulnerable children. It raises the question, what is the god that demands the sacrifice of children to satisfy its own end? As Jesus himself points out, no one can serve two masters. So, if we are willing to sacrifice the lives of the children who died at Sandy Hook. If we are willing to sacrifice the lives of those killed in all those places I listed a few minutes ago, we cannot and should not pretend to worship the God of Abraham. As Isaiah makes clear, God will have none of it.
It is past time to do something. Clearly there is more to it than simply restricting the means by which such hell is unleashed. There are underlying ideologies and hatreds, pathologies and patterns. Those too should be addressed. But this isn’t an either-or kind of issue, and we might make a good start by putting persistent pressure on those with the power to change how easily guns are obtained in this country. Ultimately, our thoughts and prayers are reflective of our understanding that this isn’t how things should be. But if they do not focus our efforts toward being part of what God wills on earth as in heaven, then we fail in our obedience to God. What God makes clear through the prophet is that refusing to obey God’s desire for justice is a form of rebellion, and we will be devoured by the very problem we refuse to confront.
In the end we are saved by faith, the faith we have in what God wants, and the courage to seek that out, no matter the cost.