When Our Confidence is Shaken
Read more about these paintings: Meet the Descendants of the Founding Fathers and In Honor of Fourth of July, Ancestry Honors the Past and Celebrates the Future
Please read Amos 5:1-27. When Our Confidence is Shaken is a hymn text written by British Methodist minister Fred Pratt Green. In the text he explores what to do and how to be when all around us is unsettled – even when it is us.
Unsettled is a description for our times. Since I went on renewal leave, we have been shaken by a number of mass shootings – Milwaukee (May 13), Buffalo (May 14), Laguna Woods (May 15), Uvalde (May 24), Tulsa (June 1). In all there have been roughly 250 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year.
These tragedies are compounded by our nation's inability to deal with several related issues – mental health, the ease at which one can avoid a background check if such exists in your state, the proliferation of both legal and illegal firearms, an armaments industry that is unregulated, corrupt politics with gun lobbyists lavishing richly in the campaign coffers of politicians along with fear-mongering regarding the perceived elimination of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.
People are often fond of boasting about our sports teams when successful, chanting “We’re Number 1! We’re Number 1!”
Dear friends, the United States ranks Number 1 in the world in gun violence! “We’re Number 1!”
Let that sink in.
Despite the rhetoric, people are speaking up. Bishop Palmer has made gun violence one of the top priorities of his Episcopal ministry. In his Episcopal Address at the recent session of the Annual Conference held June 3 and 4, Bishop Palmer discussed the impact of the TOPS Grocery store shooting as an attack on the neighborhood, making it difficult for locals to get quality food. The store is still shuttered as a crime scene and memorial. It was an attack on the whole community. Civic, religious, some political, law enforcement and many prosecutorial leaders vision sensible legislation to curb violence to enhance the lives of people without the fear of injury, disfigurement or death. The violence and trauma has ripple effects on all of us.
Trauma has an effect on the whole of society. Personal trauma becomes a communities trauma. It them becomes a regions trauma. While it may become diffused on the national stage, these events and the sensible notions of how we might deal with them become obscured in the rush for the microphone on a stage so overcrowded by special interests pretending to speak for the “common citizens of this country” that the pain and the cry of the common citizen cannot be heard.
Special interests are not dying in our schools, grocery stores or houses of worship. Special interests are not afraid, because they have the power. Ordinary people are being wounded and dying. Why do we trust only in those who have no skin in the game? Where is the validity of the impact of the still small voice in this country?
The text before us presents a word from Amos. Amos is interested in the still small voice. For he knows that voice is the voice of Yahweh!
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
... for the marginalized and forgotten in the crosshairs of gun violence in our culture. Amos, like the other prophets of Israel: Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zachariah, and Malachi point in one unified direction. “God expects God’s people to care for those who are weak and powerless.” There are frequent boasts about our exceptionalism as a Christian nation, but can this really be true? We should expect the powerful to turn their backs on the powerless. This is what powerful people do. This is the human condition.
However, while this is the status quo for “the world” we have a vision given by God and proclaimed through the prophets and the teaching of Jesus.
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
If this is true, and I believe it is, one day we will figure out the terrible personal and cultural costs of gun violence. A closer look at the links in this message will offer other world examples of nations that acted decisively, changing the conversation and helping people flourish without undue infringement. We need to do some soul searching, an important part of the process. Here is a partial list of things to consider-
What things we have done that have influenced our present state:
Created violent video games
Provided an open border to the proliferation of guns
Ignored victims’ rights, which revictimizes the victims
Silenced the cry of citizens affected by gun violence
What things we have not done that have influenced our present state:
Passed sensible gun laws that restrict military grade weapons to the military
Addressed mental health, especially with young men under the age of 30
Listened to law enforcement who prefer fewer guns
Engaged in cultural conversations regarding bullying and the emotional and physical trauma that is raging in segments of our society
Addressed cultural, socio-economic, racial and regional differences in understanding the impact and importance of historic and contemporary trauma
These are just a few things, but in the context of what has happened and what God calls us to do, we can choose to work towards the arc of moral history or not. What is being suggested is not for you to change any belief or conviction that you might have around guns, but rather consider a change in your priorities, so that people can live and flourish. Students and teachers are afraid to go to school. No one arrives at a public place without looking for the safest way out. Workplaces feel unsafe. We are falling into fear!
These fears must be placed in the historical context, the notion that the framers, who owned people as property and were Deists and not Evangelical Christians, have impacted our national traumas around race, gender and culture. The Framers, as flawed as they were and as great as they were, had no notion that the 2nd Amendment was intended to be an infringement. For almost 250 years we have held a nearly sacred belief, branded as a “self-evident truth”, “that life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as endowed by our Creator, are unalienable rights”.
The painting above produced by Ancestry.com in 2017 shows a legacy of difference and multiculturalism. The families changed. Some were created by force in transactional ways, others by personal transformation. It is a symbol for us to consider as multidimensional a way for us tell and experience history in the midst of our own contemporary lives. In other words, the painting above is a symbol of looking at 29 families, where they were and where they are now. Could we not do the same with our penchant for violence? Could we not vision a world that is different than the world on our hands?
Amos had a word from the Lord. He proclaimed care for the weak and the powerless. He tried. The people didn’t listen to him. But if you, we, I might change priorities, the arc would change its dimension. Justice would flow down!
A Hymn: When our Confidence is Shaken
When our confidence is shaken
In beliefs we thought secure;
When the spirit in its sickness
Seeks but cannot find a cure:
God is active in the tensions
Of a faith not yet mature.
Solar systems, void of meaning,
Freeze the spirit into stone;
Always our researches lead us
To the ultimate Unknown:
Faith must die, or come full circle
To its source in God alone.
In the discipline of praying,
When it's hardest to believe;
In the drudgery of caring,
When it's not enough to grieve:
Faith maturing, learns acceptance
Of the insights we receive.
God is love; and he redeems us
In the Christ we crucify:
This is God's eternal answer
To the world's eternal why;
May we in this faith maturing
Be content to live and die.
O Lord our God, you are completely righteous and good. In Christ, you call us to worship you in Spirit and truth. Help us to connect our faith with our daily actions. Thank you for the freedom to gather and worship you. Please protect our Christian brothers and sisters in every land. May our church contribute to an unending flow of justice for those in need. Let our lives and offerings be pleasing in your sight. We pray through Christ your Son. Amen. (Amos 5:18-24)