Jesus
says God’s children are peacemakers.
Peacemaking
starts with truth.
Without
truth, any peace is a superficial brittle thing.
The
consolations I hear about our tragedy
remind me of Jeremiah who said,
“They have healed my peoples’ wounds
lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there
is no peace.”
We
were relieved to hear Stephen Paddock was not part
of any ideological group.
He
was just a random nut.
But,
friends, random nuts grow on a tree.
You
take a bunch of nuts and put them together
into a cluster – call it ISIS or the
Alt Right –
and it’s still nuts.
They
grow on a tree.
Now
here’s the kicker.
It’s
the same tree.
The
violence of the fanatic, the nihilist, or the psycho
all grows on the same tree.
It’s
a religious tree.
It’s
a bad old religion.
It’s
a bad old religion that can wear different masks
and go by different names.
It
may call itself Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist,
or it may deny being religious at
all.
But
it’s a 12,000-year-old religion
that Biblical scholar Walter Wink
called “The Myth of Redemptive Violence.”
It
first showed up in a Sumerian text called The
Enuma Elish.
Its
sacred narrative gets retold endlessly, with different names,
but always the same plot line and theme.
It
goes like this:
The
innocent victim is oppressed by the villain.
Along
comes a hero strong enough to kill the villain.
We
watch the hero’s violence and get a huge vicarious rush.
Then
everyone lives happily ever after.
Movies, t v programs,
video games, comic books, and popular music
are the catechesis of this false religion.
Remember how great it was
in High Noon
when the pacifist Grace Kelly finally repented,
shot an unarmed villain in the back,
and we
all cheered.
History teaches us how
false that myth is.
Violence never solves
anything.
Remember the war to end
all wars.
That was 1918.
Talk about a faith at
odds with the facts!
Walter Wink said the
whole Bible starting with the creation story in Genesis
culminating
in the teachings of Jesus
repudiates The Myth of Redemptive Violence.
Yet, that myth is the our
de facto established religion.
If there is danger from
Korea, chaos in Venezuela, bullying in a school,
or discord
in a home, violence is the answer for the world today.
We respect people for
their ability to kill,
make
heroes of them.
Our capacity for violence
is the measure of our worth.
It’s what makes us
matter.
I can kill. Therefore I
am.
There is no separation of
the State from that religion.
We have no Constitutional
right to food.
We have no Constitutional
right to medical care.
But we are fanatically
jealous of our capacity to kill,
because that’s what make us heroes.
Violence is where we
place our faith,
our hope for deliverance.
The Myth of Redemptive
Violence shapes our public policy.
I am not talking about
hunting rifles.
I am not talking about
our frightened people
who feel
a need to carry hand guns to be safe.
But what is the purpose of
100 round magazine clips,
semi-automatic
weapons, and
bump
stocks that make a rifle shoot like a machine gun?
We saw the that purpose Saturday
night.
There are other things we
didn’t see this time.
What is the purpose of
dum dum bullets?
Hint: they are called cop
killers, and they’re legal.
Some armor piercing
bullets are legal.
Why? We enact into law
our veneration of violence.
Until our recent tragedy,
Congress was considering
legalizing
silencers on semi-automatic weapons.
Silencers would have
increase our casualties unimaginably.
I don’t mean we can
eliminate gun violence
with
legislation alone.
Jesus said it is from our
hearts that evil comes,
including
murder.
Hate will find a way.
So, we start with the
heart of society.
The first thing is to get
our religion right.
In the Garden of
Gethsemane, Jesus told Peter
to put
away his sword because
“whoever
lives by the sword dies by the sword.”
The non-violent faith of
Jesus is going head to head today
with The
Myth of Redemptive Violence
--the myth that breeds war,
terrorism, crime,
and mass murder with or without an ideological
costume.
If we want to change our
death-dealing landscape,
it’s up
to us to embrace and share with the world
some religion we can live with.
All the name brand
religions
have
that alternative at their hearts.
We just use different
languages.
Here’s how Christians say
it.
In the 14th Century,
as Julian of Norwich lay dying of the Plague,
a priest
held a crucifix before her eyes.
She had 16 visions, then
recovered, and recorded her visions
as the
first book ever written in English by a woman.
In one vision, she saw a
hazelnut.
She asked God what it
stood for.
God said it was the whole
world.
Julian then asked, “it is
so small, so fragile,
what
keeps it from falling into nothingness?”
God answered, “It exists
because I love it.”
The universe is born from
God’s overflowing
procreative
love.
We are sustained each
moment by God’s love.
Jesus shows us what God’s
love looks like.
God is willing to suffer
for us, even die for us.
Jesus shows us a God who will
submit to violence
rather
than use violence.
Peter and Paul didn’t
agree on much,
but they
both said, “Do not repay evil with evil.”
They agreed because Jesus
said,
“Do not resist evil with evil. . ..
Turn the other cheek . . ..
Love your enemies. Pray for those
who persecute you.”
Jesus lived, died, and
rose again in the faith
that the world floats in the ocean of God’s love.
We swim in that ocean
when we love as God loves.
Friends, God still loves
this old world.
God invites us to love it
too.
But that’s not just going
around smiling sweetly.
St. John said, “Dear
children, let us love not with words or speech,
but in action and in truth.”
To love this world means
to stand up for life
against the forces of death whether they are in the
government
or the entertainment industry.
It means to live
compassionately.
The ones who we might
want to destroy
are the very ones we strive to understand.
We conclude each
Eucharist with the words “Go in peace.”
We follow the cross and
not a sword.
There are two great
contenders for our faith,
two numbers on which we night place our existential
chips.
There’s our capacity to
dominate the world with our own violence
or there’s trusting in God’s love.
Love is the way of life.
Violence is the way of death.
God said to Israel, “I
set before you life and death. Choose life.”
