You may have already heard that our Bishop Kym Lucas herself was present at East High School in Denver this past spring during a mass shooting. She had gone to deliver her son’s forgotten textbook, as moms do. She found herself cowering under a table in a locked, darkened office, along with other teachers and staff, frantically texting her son. After this terrifying experience, our Bishop challenged parishes here in Colorado to do something about “this senseless, awful violence” that’s afflicting our society. She asked us to respond through prayer and liturgy, through community awareness actions, and through legislative advocacy. I just learned this weekend at Convention that our diocese now has a “Gun Violence Prevention Group,” and will soon name gun violence prevention as one of our major areas of focus in the diocese—along with creation care, building beloved community, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and suicide prevention. Indeed, this country’s gun culture has become a life-or-death concern for everyone living in this land, including all of us gathered here today.
Now I know that there are Christians out there who think that guns and Jesus go together. I recently saw a Facebook post showing an ad for Vacation Bible School at a Baptist church in Georgia. The poster shows two crossed rifles and invites children to come to VBS and “Join the Hunt for Jesus.” I checked out this ad online, and it’s a real thing, despite the snide comments in the chat that say, “Jesus had better run!” From what I gather, these church leaders actually took the kids out hunting. If you don’t believe that one, I know, too, that in Kentucky, there was a church not long ago that gave out free guns at a “Second Amendment Celebration” liturgy one Sunday morning.
To me, these efforts sound like publicity stunts, like ways to fit in with right-wing culture. They sound like Christian Nationalist ploys, pure and simple. I don’t want people to equate our theology with theirs, but I don’t want to be pulling thoughtless left-wing publicity stunts, either. We shouldn’t talk about a social issue here in church just because it looks cool, or because other people are doing it, or because it fits with some of our politics. Here in church, we need to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We need to “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the life-giving words found in holy scripture. We need to do things that uphold our Baptismal Covenant and spread God’s Love to all. The question for me, on the issue of gun violence, as on other social issues, is, “Where do I find God’s Love?” and “What does the Bible say?”
That’s why we need to think theologically about guns today.[1] We need to ask ourselves why a church should talk about guns, and what special role the church could play in solving the problem. When I saw that our first reading today is the Ten Commandments, I thought that it just might be a fitting day to have this discussion.
The Ten Commandments, or as our kids say in Godly Play, the “Ten Best Ways” to live, are all about living in relationship. The first four commandments center on our relationship with God, and the next six commandments focus on how to be in right relationship with other human beings. For people of faith, we all belong to a rich web of relationships with one another and with God. These relationships are inseparably intertwined. That’s why Jesus taught us “to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”
When it comes to our present obsession with guns in this country, we should take a look at the first and second commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me,” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” To be human, you see, means that we are aware of our finitude: unlike other animals, we know that we will die, that our days in the world are numbered. This awareness of our eventual death creates in us a sense of existential chaos. We feel threatened, and we respond to this threat by trying to secure ourselves in different ways. We might try to find security by gathering up loads of wealth, or fame, or even piety. Sometimes, we find security in the power of guns. Instead of turning to our Creator God, we turn to whatever demands our loyalty, to whatever looks as if it will free us from death-anxiety. We create an ultimate concern that is not God, and we set it before, over against, or alongside the Holy One. We fall into the temptation described in the first commandment. We replace the Cross of Christ with two crossed rifles.
People of faith, however, know that only God can ultimately secure each of us in God’s loving embrace. Only God can give us a deep sense of cosmic order that transforms finite into sacred. Anything or anyone else that promises to secure us is a pretender, an idol. St. Augustine, after years of spiritual struggle, finally confessed to God, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes that we humans “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”[2]
Sadly, our country’s current gun culture seduces far too many people to buy, carry, and pledge their allegiance to assault weapons, rather than to God. In itself, a gun is a tool. We can hunt for food with it. We can protect our livestock from predators with it. We can even enjoy shooting at a target with it. But many people have made an idol of it. Ever more powerful guns have come to signify that existential chaos can be met by arming ourselves and becoming an existential threat to others.
In recent times, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has been interpreted in ways that bring the presence of guns into almost every public sphere. At the University of Texas, where my son teaches, his students are now free to bring guns to class with them! And they do! Maintaining that these idols are practically a God-given right, the Supreme Court has overturned numerous gun safety laws that once protected us. The Gospel, by contrast, proclaims that idols can never promote freedom from death and chaos. Idols result in civic disorder. They set the stage for more death than life. Our God is a God of Life.
We also need to turn briefly today to the sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” Not only do human beings resist existential chaos. We are also fragile, vulnerable creatures who resist coercion by others. We all yearn for self-determination and resist being controlled by others—whether it’s through ridicule, physical harm, enslavement, or being killed. Throughout human history, societies have established institutions and rules—like the sixth commandment—to prevent coercion of some people by others. Of course, since we are sinful creatures, even a good system of laws often becomes rigged so that some people enjoy freedom at the expense of others.
In recent history, though, the human rights movement has championed self-determination for all, not just for some. This movement has often made progress around the world, bringing new freedoms. And yet, some places have become even more coercive, relying on the law of the gun-barrel, rather than the law of the ballot box. From violent means of voter suppression in our own country, to war and terror in the Holy Land, coercion continues to hold sway.
As followers of Jesus, however, we should know that Jesus intensifies God’s commandments, rather than abolishing them. He makes them even more challenging! Jesus takes, “Thou shalt not kill,” and proclaims instead that we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Jesus tells his disciples in Gethsemane to put away their swords, rather than fight to save him from the Roman soldiers. Our Savior is one who allows himself to be hung on a cross in complete and utter vulnerability. Jesus embodies the liberating gospel of peace, not the imprisoning gospel of coercion and guns. As his followers, should we not also do the same?
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