Christ Breaks the Rifle, Icon by Kelly Lattimore
The late Father Daniel Berrigan SJ is my “go to guy” on all things scriptural. His commentaries on Hebrew Scripture, especially the biblical prophets, remind us that our Bible is a human construct. What we call the “Word of God” also contains many things that the God revealed to us by Jesus become dangerous contradictions. We would be wise, whenever we open our Bibles, to give priority to the one St. John called the Word and use Jesus as the lens through which we read what we call the Word of God. Not everything in our Bible is inspired by the Divine. As Phyllis Trible reminds us, our Bible also contains “texts of terror.”
The events at Apalachee High School this past week have make us ponder the words from Proverbs, “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity and the rod of anger will fail. . .Do not crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.” (Proverbs 22: 8,22) I suppose that the fact that the fourteen year old boy who has been charged with the rampage and the arrest of his father make us believe that justice has been served. Those responsible will have their day in court. We can return to offering our thoughts and prayers. Nothing has or will be changed.
Michelle Au is a pediatrician and a member of the Georgia House of Representatives. In the last legislative session she introduced H.B. 161, entitled the Pediatric Health Safe Storage Act. As she explained on Democracy Now on Thursday the bill was quite simple. It was only three pages long. And all it does is it requires that any firearm that can be accessed by a minor, someone 18 or younger, be locked up securely, period. [1] Although a hearing was conducted it was never brought to the entire legislature for a vote. A fourteen year old child had access to an assault weapon that could have been securely locked away if only elected leaders would have passed a common sense law, or if a father hadn’t given a rifle modeled after a weapon of war to his teenage son.
Since the school shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 there have been 416 school shootings in K through 12 schools. Besides those tragedies, in the past year, more than 1,150 guns were brought to K-12 campuses and were seized before anyone fired them. [2] It leaves one wondering, “Where, O where is justice?” If today’s text holds any weight we must ask, “When will the Lord plead the cause of those crushed in our schools? When will the Lord despoil the life of those who despoil the innocents?” And the most important question, “When will American citizens demand that action be taken to end the greatest cause of death of children and teenagers in our country - the horror of gun violence.”
The rhetoric we have heard since Wednesday pretty much echoes what we have heard all 417 times such tragedies have occurred - “this is not a time for partisan politics” and “our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.” The words seem hollow. And if we are waiting for the Lord to do something, I fear we will be waiting for a long time.
In his commentary on the Book of Acts Fr. Berrigan wrote, “If the imperial apparatus is stalled, and it most certainly is, if the official necromancers and magic men are paralyzed and the politics stale beyond bearing - they need not detain or dismay the eye of faith. When our leaders have become misleaders we are called to go about other affairs, properly scriptural, consistent and courageous. We are to dream. To act, for others, on behalf of despised justice and violated peace. Thus we ensure, despite all official incoherence and havoc, that dreams can come true.” [3]
Our dreams of a safe world for our children calls us to follow the one who said, “Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14) Jesus, who taught us to dream of that unrealized kingdom, left us with the task to bring it about in our time. We are called to be fulfillers of the dream.
St. Teresa of Avila writing in the sixteenth century reminds us of our sacred calling: “Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” [4]
[1} Democracy Now, September 5, 2024
[2] Washington Post, September 5, 2024
[3] Daniel Berrigan, Whereon To Stand, The Acts of the Apostles and Ourselves, paraphrased, 1991
[4} Writings of Teresa Avila