Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
This…may seem a bit disjointed. Sometimes, even after you’ve got your sermon virtually finished and it flows nicely, it’s logical, all it needs is last-minute tweaking…something happens and you have to start all over, and you may not have the time to make it as smooth as you’d like. I can’t preach the sermon I was going to preach, because something happened. I was rewriting this at 7:30 last night, and continued at 5:30 this morning.
This has happened to me a few times. The last time was when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. And the previous time was when 50 people in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, were gunned down while they were worshipping.
Yesterday, at a political rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, someone shot at ex-President and Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. They apparently grazed his ear, but at least one person in the crowd was killed and one other person was injured.
This not the way things are supposed to work. People are not supposed to die because they went to a political rally. Candidates are not supposed to be targets of violence. This is not what Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, wants for us.
Now, let me be clear and honest. I don’t like the ex-President, and I won’t vote for him. But that is a side issue. It’s not the point. I make my preferences known at the ballot box, not with violence.
We are so very good at dividing people into them and us. Into those who are in and those who are out. Into those who are with us and those who are against us. Whether our “enemies” be Muslims, or Chinese, or Mexican, or Republicans, or Democrats, whatever, we have to have walls to keep us apart. And let’s be clear: we are the ones that erect those walls.
And, it seems, there are some who are ever ready to take the next step, to use violence to take care of “those people.” Yesterday, in our already polarized political environment, someone did just that.
And I am very afraid it won’t stop there. Someone somewhere will be blaming the other side for this. Someone could else retaliate. The situation could very easily get completely out of hand. I am already hearing conspiracy theories from both sides of our political divide.
What can we do?
We can remember who we are. From the Epistle today:
“In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”
We are God’s own people. We must behave like it.
One thing we must not do is speculate. We must not be quick to place blame — on anyone. The blame for this is not on our current President, or his party, or the ex-President, or his party, or the media. The blame is on the person who decided to use a gun to kill someone. We must not jump to conclusions. We must not turn up the heat on an already volatile situation.
We must not be divided this way.
We must love one another, no matter what our respective politics. I don’t have to agree with you to love you. I know it’s weird, but there it is.
We must still be the children of the kingdom of God.
And we must pray. Right now.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us Pray.
Heavenly Father, we come to you in horror at the heinous act perpetrated at yesterday’s shooting. We acknowledge that we are a race that is and always has been prone to violence. We can only reject it with your help.
We pray your mercy on ex-President Trump, on the traumatized people at the rally in Butler, on the families of the dead. We pray that you would be with the injured as they heal. And we pray for the soul of the shooter and for his family.
We pray that you would be with the police, with the Secret Service, and the FBI as they investigate, both to determine the motive of the shooter and to determine how to prevent such a thing from happening again.
We pray for our country, with our terribly divided politics. We pray that you would help us reject violence as a tool of political discourse. We pray that we can convince our leaders to enact common-sense gun control, that weapons of death can be kept out of the hands of those disposed to violence for any reason.
We pray for peace.
Grant us Lord, that we can rise above our petty differences and come together in peace. Heal our divisions. Grant that we can see that we are ALL God’s children.
We pray this in the name of he who is our Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Becoming Dominican 