It's been said so often this last week, "There are no words........." The gun murder of 20 young children and some very wonderful school staff so beggars our little minds' ability to cope with the unspeakable that words can seem futile and intrusive. But we're human, and we need words to cope and connect with each other. Breaking the sacred silence of our grieving and our horror is imperative, it seems to me, if we are to draw something decent out of something so indecent.
The president and many other citizens, famous and not so famous, have said it would dishonor those beautiful lives that were lost if we didn't do something to stem the tide of gun violence that keeps covering our shores. No citizen needs the weapons and specialized ammunition that only a soldier or a police officer should legally employ. No hunter needs to shoot thirty or fifty or a hundred hollow point bullets in a few seconds at a deer or a duck. Does a homeowner truly need an assault or semi-automatic weapon to protect his family? We've made mass killing too easy and also made it too easy for the deranged and evil among us to access these weapons of overkill. We'll never stop all of it, but can make a big dent in slowing much of it.
In the time of Jesus' birth, which we celebrate at Christmastime, a tradition grew up that King Herod was so threatened by the prospect of a baby born who was destined to be the "king of the Jews" that he ordered his temple police and soldiers to kill all the recently born boy children around Bethlehem. Such casual brutality was not uncommon in Roman society, especially in the occupied lands of the Empire to keep the local population docile and properly afraid of the state. In the midrash-like (embellished for teaching purposes) story recounted in Matthew 2:1-23, Jesus escapes to Egypt in the arms of his mother and father and later returns to the land of Israel much like Moses in the days of old. God's power is greater than any human atrocity seems to be a clear teaching point of the story. The blood of those innnocents in the ancient story was not shed in vain -- one would come after who would comfort the sorrowful and call out the wicked, turning his voluntary endurance of violence into a great sign of love... "a man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends [John 15:13]"
One ray of hope I took from this terrible week past was the great role the First Responders played in saving numerous kids and adults, and in caring for the families of the fallen afterwards. The assigned family liaison for the Pozner family was state trooper Sean Hickey, a beautiful bit of interreligious and culturally diverse mixing -- this is us as Americans at our best. I'm sure Trooper Hickey's good service was repeated over and over by by his fellow First Responders and so many other good people.
Shame on us if we let this moment pass without attempting some meaningful change. Shame on us, too, if we take this spirit of this season and limit it to our own family's experience of peace and closeness. Yes, "we need a little Christmas, right this very minute, we need a little Christmas now." And we need it to be the Christmas where we not only vowed, but acted on our pledge to stop enabling the slaughter of our children all over this country and this world. It's way past time for that.
Merciful God, give us the strength to turn things around this time.
