Another week, another mass shooting in America. 

And again, we, who are called to preach, must do what we can to reach the people in our congregation with a message that not only stays with the Gospel, but takes the Gospel directly into relationship with what has been happening in the world around us. 

Last week's sermon which included the shooting at the Buffalo grocery store was tough enough to talk about. This week, with the senseless killing of Elementary School students and two teachers, was almost impossible. I thought, prayed, wrestled, conversed, read through our weekly lectionary and collect slowly several times. I finally forced myself to sit down and type out my sermon on Saturday morning...making a few revisions to the final product before leaving at 8:15am for Valdosta. 

I preached this message...not ending with the usual "In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Perhaps if I had said it, I would have heard at least an "Amen." Instead, my words this morning were met with a deafening silence. I am painfully aware that there are gun owners in my congregation, and that I am ministering at a church in a state where the Governor has not only posed with guns in his political ads; he's recently signed legislation allowing people to conceal carry without a permit. And my church is in a "red" county.

I'm not sure what to make of that silence today. Were they thinking? Were they praying? Were they closing their ears, stewing over what I'd said? 

No telling. May the Spirit do whatever work on those who heard my message. 

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Scriptures for the 7th Sunday of Easter: Acts 16:16-34; Rev.22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26.

Prayer: Grant us, O Lord, your wisdom as we face the questions of our day; reveal your faithful path and illumine our hearts and minds to your will; through Jesus Christ your son and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen. (riff off of Daily Prayers for All Seasons, 144)

Our opening Collect of the Day asks for God to not leave us “comfortless.” Seems a simple ask for this time in our liturgical calendar year. 

A much more complicated thought…given what has happened in the country in the past two weeks. 

Last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension, the day when Jesus…again…exits from the everyday existence of the disciples…this time to become reunited with God called “Father.” Once more, the friends of Jesus are left to continue on his mission without their beloved leader at their sides. Just as with his death on Good Friday…this absence plunges them into liminal space. 

Liminal space is that peculiar world of the grief-stricken. 

Everything is moving at warp speed, but grief has put those mourning a profound loss in some kind of weird box of neither here nor there. Sometimes, the only thing one can do when in that box is accept that’s where they are…this liminal space…and about the only thing to be done is slow down…way down…to stillness. And it is in stillness…that many of us…even the least religious of us… turn to Prayer. Prayer is the way we stretch our hearts and minds toward the Divine in the hope that we are being heard. We may not have words. Sometimes we only have deep sighs. Always we are expressing our lament in search of that balm for our aching soul.

“Prayer” is at the center of our readings this morning. 

And prayer has power when it is put into action. 

We see how prayers and songs shook the foundation of the prison, freeing Paul and Silas…not to mention others…including the jailer. No longer needing to occupy that space of keeping a watchful eye over these two rabble-rousers against the Roman Empire…the jailer sheds his own shackles to become free to follow Jesus. 

Our Revelation reading contains a most interesting prayer…with the repeated word: “Come.” 

A surface understanding of this passage might lead us to think that “Come” means John is calling down Jesus to us. But the theologian Abraham Heschel puts a different spin on what might be happening here. 

Rather than God being the object of our desire…we are the objects of God’s desire. Instead of Jesus coming to us…John is saying, “Come to Jesus.” Become enlightened when we’d previously been content to sit in darkness. Truly accept that we are creatures of God and become one with Jesus. 

That’s exactly what’s at the center of Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel. 

We’re at the conclusion of his extensive good-bye. And if we look closely we see that this prayer is meant not just for his disciples. It is meant for us, the ones who read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the words and stories of our biblical ancestors.  

Jesus offered this prayer, knowing full well that his own life was about to end in a brutal and horrible way. 

He knew that the glory he was about to experience on the cross was not as the world saw “glory.” 

This glory would bring him in closer contact with the suffering, the forgotten, and the oppressed. 

Jesus brings in love. Not an emotional feeling of love. 

This is the love of God…the experience of being in such a complete relationship with God that transcends all intellectual arguments, and can’t be measured through formulas or mathematical proofs. 

In the stillness of this moment, as Jesus works through his own anxiety about what is to come through his final will and testament, he is calling for future generations to live in unity and Godly love for one another.  

That is his prayer. 

I really do wonder if the disciples felt some pangs of dread listening to their leader pray? Did this prayer give them comfort in those days following the earth-shattering horror of Jesus’ death? 

What about after he returned and then left them again? Were they able to remember these words and to realize that their dread and sorrow at Good Friday turned to hope and joy at the resurrection? Could they hold onto that hope when he ascended for the final time?

Those are some of the same questions for us…especially as our country grapples again…for a second week…with what is nothing less than the evil of gun Violence. Last week, it was the terror of white supremacist hatred unleashed on Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo. This week…it was the unthinkable of yet another teenager with an AR-15 entering an elementary school and murdering two beloved teachers and 19 fourth graders in a Texas town the size of Moultrie. 

Just as Buffalo recalled the shocks of past acts of violence…what happened in Uvalde Texas was eerily similar to what happened in Newtown Connecticut almost ten years ago. 

They were two days away from school letting out for the summer. They’d had a celebration of those students who had made the honor roll at Robb Elementary. They’d just come in from recess where they’d been running around and playing with their friends. 

School was going to end in two days. It wasn’t supposed to end at that moment. And this became the 27^th school shooting in America this year alone. 

Like many of us, when I heard the news I sat motionless and numb. Tears would come later. I learned that the wife of one of my friends from seminary had grown up in Uvalde and had gone to Robb Elementary School. Then another Texas friend expressed her hurt and anger on social media because one of her friends had lost a grandchild in the shooting. 

The circles of how this violence touches people extend well beyond the borders of any town or city or state where this happens.  And the circles are getting larger and larger.

Wednesday I was meeting with a couple of different clergy and diocesan groups, and naturally, this subject of gun violence was first and foremost on our minds. And the question came up…as one might expect…about how this violence keeps happening? Is it guns? Is it mental illness? Is it both? And what about God and free will? 

As creatures of God we do have free will. We also have been blessed with reason. And the third leg of our three-legged stool is Scripture.  

If we look at the Book of Deuteronomy, there is a fairly clear directive for how we should exercise that free will: 

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God^* that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days…”(Deut. 30:15-20b)

If we apply reason to this…then it would seem that if we want to see to this cycle of violence end, then we need to choose life over death. 

We need to turn thoughts and prayers into actions and outcomes. 

We need to set aside whatever other gods we have come to worship…and set our hearts, our minds, and our strength back on the God of love.

Jesus prayed, “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.” May we be brave enough to show the love and light of Christ and stand for an end to this violence.

Come, Lord Jesus.