As I was going to prepare a blog for this week, the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut unfolded. My response to that event is expressed in the sermon I will preach to my Episcopal congregation tomorrow morning. While I usually reserve this blog for "interfaith" oriented conversations, I offer it here as the reflection of one Episcopal priest on the tragedy that has beset us all this week. Many of the sentiments I express here were part of my August blog about gun control, an issue around which I believe the interfaith community can and should rally.
“The Chaff is Burning – Quench the
Fire!”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday,
December 16, 2012 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Bloomfield, NY
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee
from the wrath to come? 8Bear 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.” (Luke 3: 7-8)
So here we are on the third Sunday in Advent, listening to John
the Baptist deliver an impassioned sermon to crowds on the banks of the River
Jordan, just two days after yet another horrific mass shooting took the lives
of 28 people, 20 of them elementary school children who had done nothing more
than show up for school on an ordinary Friday in December. This tragedy comes just one week after
another deranged shooter opened fire in a crowded mall full of holiday shoppers
in Portland Oregon, killing two shoppers and the shooter himself. We who live in what many want to call
the greatest country on earth are yet again enduring scenes of grief and
lamentation as families and friends of the latest round of victims absorb the
shock and horror of their loved ones’ violent deaths. Does John the Baptist have anything to say to us as we
grapple with these horrific tragedies?
I think he does. And
I think we have to take very seriously what he has to tell us about
“repentance.” “Repent” is one of those churchy words that has been so
overused through the years that it has lost any real meaning for 21st
century Christians. We tend to
think of repentance as some kind of pious feeling of remorse for our minor
peccadilloes and misdeeds, quiet words of apology uttered under our breath to a
God we’re not entirely sure is really listening. But the kind of repentance that John the Baptist was looking
for was something entirely different.
He wanted to see a complete change of direction, a radical shift in
priorities. Moreover, his idea of
repentance (the Greek word is metanoia
which means to turn around, to go a different direction) is directed at an
entire society, not just individuals.
In the passage from Luke appointed for this Sunday, he is talking to a
crowd of people, calling them a brood of vipers, and exhorting them not to rest
on their laurels as “children of Abraham” but rather to do deeds worthy of that
name and lineage. I think its time
we 21st century American people of faith listen up to this sharp
tongued, fire and brimstone preacher because our very lives are at stake, never
mind whatever eternal salvation we hope our religious faith will bring us.
One thing John
the Baptist appears to be very clear about is that the repentance he’s looking
for has a lot to do with social responsibility and looking after the
neighbor. Those who have two
coats, share with those who have none. Those who have food, share with those
who have none. And tax collectors
be fair in business dealings and soldiers do not extort from others and be
satisfied with the wages you’ve got.
And American citizens, stand up to the powerful gun lobbies in your
midst and demand that assault weapons and the ammunition that goes with them be
banned completely and access to them be absolutely unavailable to any civilian
ever. No one, least of all ordinary
citizens, needs such weapons for protection. The statistics are incontrovertible that countries that do
not allow civilian access to guns have dramatically lower numbers of deaths by
gun violence than we have in these United States. The so-called “right to bear arms” enshrined in the Second Amendment
to the Constitution cannot possibly have been intended to protect mentally
unstable young men who decide to obtain assault weapons for the purposes of
massacring large numbers of completely innocent people, including women and
small children. To quote from the
folk song of the 60s, “Blowin in the Wind”, “How many deaths will it take till
he knows, that too many people have died?” Well, my friends, too many people have died and we all know
it. And the only way to stop it is
for every citizen of this country demand that our elected representatives stand
up to the gun lobby and ban assault weapons immediately. I am well aware of the arguments about protecting
the purchase of hunting rifles, but we all know that it is not hunting rifles
that are being used to gun down innocent people in these mass shootings. It is quite possible to regulate
assault weapons while protecting a hunter’s right to shoot a buck in the woods.
And to those who
might say to me that this is a political issue and not a religious one, I would
respectfully beg to differ. Every
religion in the world forbids murder.
So long as we sit idly by and allow these lethal weapons to be bought
and sold as easily as we buy products on Amazon.com, we are aiding and abetting
mass murder. At some point, these
deaths become everyone’s responsibility.
Just as we all join in the prayers and candlelight vigils when these
tragedies occur, so too must we join together to take action to mitigate the likelihood
that they will continue to occur.
We have a collective responsibility to create a society that is safe for
all citizens. Right now we are
living under siege. We can’t go to the mall, a school (elementary, high school
or college), a movie theater, a place of worship, a political rally, a tourist
site, or an airport without fear of violence at the hands of socio-pathic young
men who’ve acquired assault weapons. This is home grown terrorism. So long as
we sit back and allow the situation to continue we are complicit in the deaths
that take place. It is not enough
to pray for the victims. We must
act to be sure there are no more victims next week, or next month, or tomorrow.
That’s the kind of repentance that
John the Baptist was looking for as he shouted at the people and called them a
“brood of vipers” and called them to bear fruits worthy of repentance.
Many in the
popular media comment on how particularly heartbreaking this tragedy is, coming
as it does during the “holiday season” a time of family togetherness and songs
about peace on earth and goodwill among people. Here our liturgical season of Advent helps us to deal with
the grief and lamentation that this tragedy brings with it. In Advent we reflect on endings and
beginnings, on our longing, our hope, our expectation that God will break into
our dark world and bring light and redemption to places of darkness and
pain. We hear the voices of the
prophets crying out in the wilderness, the voices of John the Baptist and
Isaiah and Zephaniah. These
prophetic voices call us to take a hard look at where we are and where we are
going. They also promise hope for
a future where joy will abound, the joy that comes from a life lived with
God.
The mood in Advent is watchful, hopeful,
and so very much aware of the brokenness in our world that only God can
mend. Advent reminds us of God’s
promises of redemption and of the reality that we live in an “already but not
yet” world where the fulfillment of God’s promises is not always readily
apparent to us. We sing “O Come O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…that
mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.” We live these last days of Advent 2012
in lonely exile as we grapple with the reality of a society in which the
slaughter of the innocents has become all too routine.
John the Baptist
was a prophet calling God’s people to turn around and re-orient their lives
toward caring for their neighbors and creating a just and moral society. He warned them not to rest on their
lineage but rather to live up to it, to remember the values and ideals that
come with being children of Abraham. In our 21st century context, we
are called to remember and live into the value and ideals of the founding
ancestors of these United States and I’m guessing mass murder of innocent
children and their teachers, or of shoppers in a mall buying gifts for their
families for Christmas, or people worshipping in their holy place on a Sunday
morning or attending a late night movie isn’t what the framers of the
Constitution nor the authors of the Second Amendment had in mind.
In just nine
days we Christians will celebrate Christmas. In that nine days, 20 small
coffins will be laid into the ground taking with them the hopes and dreams of
their parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and neighbors. Every death by
gun violence in this country affects every one of us. These are our neighbors, our colleagues, our children, our
future. Bear fruit worthy of
repentance, shouts John the Baptist.
I pray that we will come together to pray for these victims and their
families and to bear the sweet fruit of repentance in the form of a popular uprising that demands
more stringent gun control laws that just might reduce the frequency, if not
eliminate completely, any more tragedies such as this one. And while we’re at it, we might
also demand that mental health care be readily available and affordable to
everyone who needs it. These
shootings by mentally deranged young men suggest that something in our mental
health care system needs attention sooner than later.
On this third
Sunday in Advent 2012, there is much weeping and lamentation, grieving and
sorrow in our land. John the
Baptist use the vivid image of wheat and chaff being separated out by God’s
promised Messiah, with the chaff burning in unquenchable fire. A world where six year old children are
shot dead in their classrooms is a world where the flames of that burning chaff
are burning brighter and hotter already. It is time for us to listen to John the Baptist, who
preached “good news” to those crowds by the Jordan, the good news of God’s
promised redemption and of our freedom to choose to walk with God into that
promised future. Bear fruit
worthy of repentance, he cries out to us.
And Paul reminds us “we can do all things through him who strengthens
us.” May this latest tragedy serve as the wake up call as strident
as John the Baptist’s exhortations to move us from passivity to principled
action so that those young children’s deaths will not have been in vain. And may the God of peace be with us and
have mercy on us. Amen.
