Weeping

John 11:28-44

My heart has broken open this week for the 19 children (so far that we know) and 2 teachers who were brutally murdered by a lone 18 year old gunman who, earlier in the day, also shot his own grandmother.

Today, I am struggling to even know what I need. Do I need to process what I know? Do I need to write to an elected official? Do I need to cry? Do I need to attack a punching bag? Do I need hope? Do I need sleep? A few episodes of Friends?

Nineteen children. Two teachers. Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy!

This adds to the litany of mass shootings in 2022 that already outnumber the days that have passed this year. (145 days so far; 213 shootings)

But, friends, at this point I have not seen any significant way that handing out statistics and numbers has borne fruit. These numbers and this data seems to do little in moving the needle on all of the policy and social solutions that need to be engaged for shootings like the one at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX to become a rarity instead of a commonplace occurrence.

There is a mountain of dead bodies that we do not have the emotional or psychological capacity to even conceive in our minds being heaped on the altar of our nation's unique and perverse worship of the 2nd amendment.

But, friends, at this point I have seen nothing come from assigning blame when this happens either. One of our coping mechanisms in processing traumas as significant as this is to find someone or something to blame. And there is a chorus of blaming that is being shouted from social media accounts, media outlets, email newsletters, and so on.

Do I think there are people to blame? Oh yes. Do I think there are laws to blame? Sure. Do I think there are systems in our economy, government, justice system, healthcare system, all that I can point to and blame for this violence ocurring over and over? Absolutely.

But the blame game doesn't seem to be working. It hasn't worked for the 23 years since the shooting in Columbine (which was when my awareness of mass shootings was awakened as a fifth grader in 1999), so I don't know why yelling about insert-your-most-hated-politician's-name-here will suddenly start working this time around either.

It's almost as if we are living in a bespoke hell where where we are made to feel repeatedly that violence like this can never be stopped and all of the news we hear is of preventable violence after preventable violence. A hell with the same episode reruns: over and over; the same tired scripts: over and over.

And so, it is serendipitous that the sermon for this week, scheduled long ago, was the passage in John where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Serendipitous because it contains one of the smallest verses in scripture that says so much and is so full of meaning: "Jesus wept." This passage is, this week, a gift from the Holy Spirit.

I don't really have the imagination to predict what we might actually do that could change the status quo of gun violence in our country. But what I do know is the truth of that verse: Jesus wept.

I am sure Jesus, that the divine almighty God, has wept for every life ended abruptly by our gun violence. I am sure Jesus is weeping now. And that reminds me of the clear and concrete truth that God is with us. That God is especially with us when we weep. That God weeps with us.

God weeps with us.

Rev. Ryan Canaday is the pastor of Free, a United Methodist congregation focused solely on the addiction recovery community in Denver, and his words also bring me a measure of hope today: "God is always with the broken." He should know, he has fought and struggled to be liberated from the bondage of alcholism.

Minister Daryl Walker, a music minister I used to work with at Park Hill UMC also gave me hope. Hope because he spoke with a voice that echoes with generational traumas long weathered by black people that "we have weathered incredible evils and we have come this far--we have farther yet to go." He should know, as he suffers intersectional oppressions beyond just being a black man in America and yet still brings joy and buoyancy wherever he goes.

I don't know what to do today. But I think I am going to start focusing on where I can find hope.

Whether it is in scripture, or in the work we are starting at LUMC to help people experience homelessness, or in the ways our church partners with JeffcoEats to keep children fed, or in our community garden that is brimming with promise and potential, or in the words of people who have known despair and anguish and trauma and have forged paths through it toward redemption, or in the stories I know of people who found housing and escaped the traumas of homelessness, or in the divine and unassailable truth that God weeps and mourns and rages with us.

Today, my dear family, I hope you will make room to rage and to weep.

But I also hope you will not forget to seek out wherever you can find hope.

Because without hope, nothing will change.