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Tag Archives: gun violence
A sustaining hope
The interventions of God, strength for the journey, can come from humans sweating over laboratory test tubes as easily and as often as angels baking on hot stones. Continue reading
Posted in current events, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged 1 Kings 19, Bread of Life, COVID-19, Elijah, gun violence, Jesus, John 6:35
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Do not invite death
We are not made in anyone’s image but God’s. We are not made for the corruption of death but for the covenant of life. Jesus does not love death or bloodshed – but Jesus loves us. Knowing this, how can we not consider turning from death to life; to pour out healing without counting the cost; to withhold death and restore relationship wherever it is possible; to deny the devil’s envy and replace it with love? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged death, death penalty, gun violence, Jesus, life, Mark 5:21-43, Wisdom of Solomon
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Trinity Sunday: we who are many are one
It is the mutuality of the Trinity that we seek. We hear its echoes in our prayers: “though we are many, we are one body” (Romans 12:5). We come closest to it when we experience compassion. Continue reading
Posted in current events, Holy Days, sermon
Tagged Amos 5:8, COVID, crossroads, gun violence, John 12:32, John 3:17, John Donne, racism, Romans 12:5, Trinity Sunday
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Let justice roll like a river; still waters can wait
There is no way of praying Psalm 23 truthfully, honestly, lovingly, in this time and place that does not acknowledge that there are no still waters, there can be no resting in meadows, when violence threatens to break in at any moment. There is no peace while injustice holds sway anywhere among us. Continue reading
Are we there yet?
There is nothing in Christ’s story that would justify our sacrifice of children, women, grocery shoppers, police officers, and passers by to defend our right to reserve weapons of violence to ourselves. On the contrary, the resurrection is God’s ultimate judgement on the violence that nailed Jesus to the cross. The resurrection is God’s utter negation and reversal of all that would kill the beloved. Continue reading
#DoSomething
Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading
Posted in current events, Gun control, gun safety
Tagged #dosomething, #WearOrange, citizenship, gun violence, Ohio, orange stole movement
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The table
Ironically, while we are deciding where to seat him, Jesus is busy setting the table himself. And his invitation is clear:
Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.
Come to me, you who are thirsty, and I will give you living water to drink.
Come, eat of the bread of life, and I will raise you up. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged discipleship, gun violence, Hebrews 13:1-8&15-16, Jesus, Luke 14:1-4, parable, sabbath
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Gilroy, guns, and White anger
Red Letter Christians published a piece I wrote reflecting on the uncivil war simmering in the soul of America, one that breaks out all too often in acts of violence like last weekend’s tragedy in Gilroy, California. Continue reading
Posted in current events, Gun control, gun safety, lectionary reflection
Tagged #Gilroystrong, gun violence, Herod, Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18, racism, White supremacism
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who art in heaven
There is nothing wrong with our prayers, nor even with our orange stoles, unless they make no difference to the gaping wound that continues to haemorrhage life from this nation, that siphons off hope and replaces it with weaponry. Continue reading
Posted in current events, Gun control, gun safety, prayer
Tagged #OrangeStoleMovement, #WearOrange, gun violence, Lord's Prayer
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Mere mortals
Consider the vision of God’s kingdom that Jesus offers: a world in which the poor have power; where the bereft are comforted. Where profits are harvested as food for the hungry, with ploughshares beaten out of pistols. Where the name Pulse has not been perverted to echo with death and anger, but resumes its resonance of life, and love. Where Aurora means the halo of light around the moon, giving glory to God with all the heavenly bodies, and we no longer ask, do you mean the one in Colorado, or the one in Illinois? Where the south side of Chicago is simply the sunny side of the street. Where the Tree of Life grows green in the Garden of Eden. A kingdom where the name Parkland conjures up, not the valley of the shadow of death, but a quiet place, green pastures beside still waters. Continue reading
Posted in Gun control, gun safety, lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged #Parkland, a year C Epiphany 6, Aurora, gun violence, Jeremiah, Jesus, kingdom of God, Pulse, Tree of Life
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