Even the Clergy Are Tired of Thoughts and Prayers: Turning Weapons into Farming Implements

Memorial Day invites us to remember and the folks starting it on what was called “Decoration Day”, choose a month when flowers would be as available and the palpable grief created by the violent terror of the Civil War (or the War Between the States if you teach Social Studies in Texas). As people of the Christian tradition, this is our wheel house. It’s what we do. Each week we gather at the table to remember; we break the bread and remember we do not take it in alone but rather with everyone who has before us. Our central practice is remembering, hearing the stories, breaking the bread, sharing the cup - but all of this remembering holds a central intention, imagining. That is what we do we remember and we imagine. We remember Moses and Miriam and the liberation of an enslaved people, so we can imagine our own work of liberation. We remember Mary Magdalene proclaim resurrection in a world of crucifixion so we can see it, name it and work for it ourselves. We remember Christ preaching and praying, healing and loving and even dying so we can imagine how we serve as his hands and his feet.

So this Memorial Day, we remember and we imagine. We remember every life lost and every name carved in granite, we remember the terror that still lives in the minds of our veterans and we remember Gold Star families who will never hold their beloved one again. And we remember because we are called to imagine a day when not one more gold star is given, not one more memorial is made, not one more wall of names is erected. We remember and we imagine a world where we don’t lead with violence, but hold fast to peace.

And this Memorial Day, as we remember those who sacrificed their lives for the vision and values of our community we remember so many more. It is the anniversary of the White Nationalist massacre on the prosperous and peaceful black folks in Tulsa. It is the anniversary of witch trials in Salem, when fear raged and ended the lives of women. So many lives have been lost that ask us to be more and they didn’t always where a US military issued uniforms. And they all ask us to imagine as much as we remember.

And this Memorial Day, we reel from the recent violence of a young man shooting down teachers and students in a Texas elementary school. These children will have memorials when they deserved graduations, weddings, adventures, and life. Can we imagine something new? Can we? We watch the news with tears and deep grief and even imagining what the parents asked to share their DNA must feel is overwhelming. We watch and then we hear the old echos, we can’t really do anything to change it. We hear leaders sending thoughts and prayers but shrug at task of making change.

They are echos, reverberating from the past because we have had this conversation before. This is a script we have lived already. We are the authors of our own heartbreak.  This is a trauma we have yet to heal.

Young lives lost once again, shot down in school and this time the “Good Guys” with the guns stood outside, each passing minute mattering to someone but they tick by, minute after minute after minute. A child calls 911, just like we taught her, urging them to come help, urging them to do what they are supposed to do and the minutes keep on passing. They wait. They too are afraid of such a big gun.

We in our shock and loss begin to hear the rest of the script. The old echos of nothing can be done. “This is an act of evil and you can’t regulate evil.” You can make enough rules to stop evil, you can’t fund enough programs to stop evil. You can’t stop evil.

But I’m not sure this young man was EVIL. I think he was failed by us. Every one was failed - the survivors, the victims and the perpetrator. He acted out of hurt and pain, with no hope and hurt he poured out of him for everyone to feel. It is terrible, it is heartbreaking and it is woven though with the toxins of evil. But I would guess he is not truly evil.

What I do think might actually be evil, is the adults, with fully formed brains and the ability to read pretty much any peer-reviewed journal article about the impact of firearms who persistently creating a system where they are so easy to access; that is evil.

And that is the Evil I believe we ought to be about stopping. It is evil that knowing better, but we do not have the courage to do better. We can expand background checks, eliminate assault weapons and certain types and volumes of ammunition and we can require training, insurance and registration for all weapons. WE can actually do these things, we do them with other things in our culture without much argument about rights. What is evil is the folks who choose profits through violence and then manipulate our political system. And that is the evil I believe we can and should do everything we can to stop.

Look around the world. This is an American problem and perhaps even an American Sin. Are we just worse than our global neighbors, are just bad people or do we lack the will the regulate fire arms and the investment in our community through healthcare, mental health care, public education and wages. Even our own history points to a time when this didn’t happen as it does now and the difference is the end of of our assault weapons ban. There is not one peer-reviewed article that will tell us to put more guns in more hands, there is only fear mongering leaders who will profit from it or pay for their campaign commercials with it.

What will it take? How many people have to go to movies, concerts, work, hospitals, schools and grocery stores and not come home? How many mass shootings have to break our hearts into making change? How many people have to be lost before someone like Greg Abbot tells the story of violence at a press conference and offers more than prayers? Because one should have been more than enough.

The prophet Isaiah sees trouble on the horizon and pleading with his people he paints this image of peace that I think we need to hear today.

Isaiah 2

Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord;

that God may teach us sacred ways

   and that we may walk in God's paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

God shall judge between the nations,

   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

   and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

   neither shall they learn war any more.

It is a day when the people gather for wisdom in the holy spaces, both the mountain and the temple, and wisdom flows out of their seeking. God arbitrates, not like a  judge-y clergy man but like a loving parent. God’s arbitration ends abuse and overstepping, ends oppression, and sets us on the right path together. And the people respond, all the tools for violence and domination they built and made in their fear are transformed into farm equipment. Swords melted down to turn the soil and spears help tend the orchards. What once dealt death now is a tool to give life!

Think about planting a garden. Every garden I know has too much food at harvest time. The tomatoes took over or the eggplant when wild or there are to many peppers or cucumbers or zucchinis for one house. So pretty soon you are taking them up and down the street, sharing the harvest with neighbors and bringing them to church or school or work or maybe even randomly meeting people and saying, “Hey umm do you need a tomato?”  When it is time the garden brings life and we share it and we can it and save some of that summer for the depth of winter. The tools of violence become tools of nurture and nourishment.

This is what God dreams for us. Abundance and sharing in place of fear and power and domination. God’s prophets point a picture where the tools of war and violence have no use. So we melt them all down, and while Isaiah didn’t say AR-15  specifically I think God would love to see one turned into a good, strong shovel for tending the soil and planting something new.

We are people of faith. Not the faith of white Christian Nationalism that loves violence and domination but the faith that is vulnerable and durable and seeds new hope, the faith that loves plowshares and pruning hooks and making earth as it is in heaven. We have work to do and a Goliath of a Violence Industrial Complex to disarm and transform into something new. So today and pretty much every day until we do it, we are going to be calling, marching, getting in the mix and saying, no we dream of something more.

May we have the courage.