During the last week of classes at The School of Theology in Sewanee, TN, our preacher for one of the noonday Eucharists was a classmate, The Rt. Rev. Jim White from New Zealand. He spoke on the gospel for the day during which Jesus admonishes us to remove the log from our eyes before attempting to take a speck out of our neighbor’s eye. I was struck by the whole of +Jim’s sermon, but in particular by one line. He said, “God’s people make such a mess of being God’s people, don’t we?”Nail on the head for me, because it rings so true. I was deeply grieved to not be with all of you as the news broke on Sunday morning June 12 informing the world of the tragic murders that took place in Orlando, Florida. God’s people make such a mess of being God’s people, don’t we? Please note, that when +Jim uses the term “God’s people,” as when I use it, we’re talking about the vast diversity of humanity that belongs to God, not just good, Christian folk. The killer in Orlando was Muslim (although I would insist that he was not following the tenets of Islam).
I think back and realize that it was just about this time last year, almost to the day, when nine churchgoers were gunned down in Charleston, SC. The shooter then was a member of the ELCA (The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America). The shooter then was no more a representative of Christianity than Orlando’s murderer a representative of Islam. God’s people make such a mess of being God’s people, don’t we?
The problem, at least on one level, is our inability as human beings to embrace one another as people created in the image and likeness of God. We struggle, it seems, to tolerate. We wrestle, it seems, with including. Too often, we fall flat on our face with embracing. Embracing speaks volumes more than either tolerating (the least of the three) or including (the middle ground). We only have to look at the political machination on both the state and national levels to see how divisive – how restrictive – how intolerant – we as a nation have become in recent decades. It’s as if all the work of the 60s and 70s and the past decade is being slowly – or not so slowly – marched into the closet of history.
Orlando, as tragic as it was, was the seventh experience of mass shooting in the nation in one week. It was the last and the worst, and so it received the most press. We spent a lot of time talking about transformation in our Preaching class during my three weeks at Sewanee. Orlando should have become the crucible in which the pain and the suffering of years of increased gun-violence are burned in transformation. People are crying out in their pain for some change. Instead, the flames fed by the very real deaths of fellow human beings continually have sand and water thrown on them in an attempt to put out the fires of transformation.
In the days since I wrote the above we have seen more senseless violence and murders in places like Istanbul and Bangladesh. We can say to ourselves, "This is not Orlando or Sandy Hook," simply because they took place half a world away. But those who were murdered or injured are indeed our sisters and brothers - human beings created in the image and likeness of God - as are those who perpetrated the murders. Our sorrow and our anger are real - both are understandable reactions to the harsh realities of hate in this world - to the horrible mess of humanity. We, as people of faith, get to choose how we will react to violence and bloodshed - to the inhumanity of intolerance.
We are people of transformation. We are resurrection people. We are people of hope that through the living out of our Baptismal Covenant, we will find ways to respect the dignity of every human being, working for justice and peace for all. We are called to be a people who embrace one another in love rather than hate; a people who embrace one another in love rather than simply tolerate. My sisters and brothers in Christ, as the writer of 1 John admonishes us, “Let us love one another, for love is from God.”
Faithfully, Jim+
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