A Prophetic
Response to Gun Violence
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor
In
this moment, my friends, what does God want of us? What are we called to do, in
the face of great devastation, some of which receives our nation’s attention,
most of which doesn’t? How can we, in our efforts to extend God’s Healing to
our sisters and brothers, address Gun Violence, a terrible tear in the fabric
of our nation?
What
is a Prophet? How does she hear the Divine Weeping and call God’s children to
awareness and action?
Hear
the call of Isaiah, who reminded us that God wants, more than anything else,
for us to
"…unlock
the fetters of wickedness, untie the cords of the yoke, to let the
oppressed go free, to break off every yoke. ...to share your bread with
the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into our homes; When you
see the naked, clothe him, and do not ignore your own brother. (Isaiah 58:6-7)"
The great
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel lived this lesson well. He reminded us that human
beings, living Images of God, to have faith. But the faith of a prophet,
Heschel taught,
…does
not mean… to dwell in the shadows of old ideas… [or] to live off an inherited
estate of doctrines and dogmas. In the realm of the spirit, only [one] who is a
pioneer is able to be an heir. (Heschel, Man is Not Alone, p. 164)
The
prophets are the ones who demanded justice in the world, starting with
Abraham’s challenge to God “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justice?
(Gen. 18:25)”
We
must “feel fiercely” (Heschel, Prophets, p. 5) like the Prophets of old. And,
like the prophets, as today’s prophetic witnesses, we must see no divide
between the political and the spiritual, for a world without fierce feeling is
a world without spirit, and a religious tradition with nothing to say to the
world is no longer engaged in bringing God’s world to a more blessed day.
It is
possible to lose hope. This world gives little encouragement to hope. And that
is why we do what we do, why we answer our call with all the ferocity we can
muster. We will not “stand idly by while the blood of our neighbors” (Lev.
19:15) continues to be spilled.
Say it
with me a tragic litany: Newtown. Aurora. Columbine. Tuscon.
Virginia Tech.
But
now acknowledge with me also: These massacres received national attention. But
the three high school students shot this past Thursday in Albany, CA did not.
Nor did Nor did the seven people killed and six wounded in gun violence this
past Saturday in Chicago, including a 34-year-old man whose mother had already
lost three other children to shootings.
A
prophet does not feel for SOME of these. A Prophet feels every death as
her own. A Prophet writhes with God’s Pain, their soul contorting in ways that
make breathing laborious.
I
repeat: It is possible to lose hope. But we are not allowed. Hope is our call.
Extending hope, enabling peace, offering prophetic witness to the awful events
of our day and communicating, over and over and over and over and over that
God’s world deserves better than fear and greed. God’s world depends upon the
work our hands, to be friends and partners together, to engage with our elected
officials and law enforcement, to notice the violence that doesn’t get
reported, to breathe in and breathe out and breathe in and breathe out. Because
if we don’t, less of God’s Work gets done.
I say
that there are those in our country to whom Jeremiah would say today: “On your
shirt is found the life-blood of guiltless poor. Yet inspite of all these
things, you say ‘I am innocent.’” (Jer. 2:14, quoted by Heschel)
If we
are to avoid complicity in the growing violence of our country, we must remain
every vigilant as witness to “the callousness of man” and not allow our heart
to do what it wishes, which would be to “obliterate the memories, to calm the
nerves, and to silence our conscience.” (Heschel, The Reasons for My
Involvement in the Peace Movement)
The
Prophets call us: Do Not Be Calm. Do Not Forget. Do Not Be Silent.
Friends,
given the pressure on us, on everyone, I invite you right now to take a deep
breath. Allow your body to experience a little more air. Breathe it in.
Remember your power, God’s Spirit, of which we are each but fragments.
There
is great fear on the part of some that any response as a rejection of the
Second Amendment of our Constitution. Fear. There are those whose very
work is the proliferation of weapons of war on the streets of our cities and
across our great nation with one over-riding concern: profit. Greed.
And
this heady cocktail of Fear and Greed and makes our work as religious leaders
difficult. But we know that sacred work is not easy work. We do not answer
to Fear and Greed. And we are not going to respond with hate to fear and
greed – that is the way to make the fear and greed every stronger. We’re going
to outlast them.
There
are those who have said this week that any response to Gun Violence reduces the
U.S. Constitution into a blank slate for anyone's graffiti. Lies. It is
our shared belief in the possibility of this country, our commitment to a
democracy of free women and men of every orientation and color in the rainbow
that gives us the courage to bend the historical arc of this country once again
toward justice.
We,
faith leaders who call God with an infinite variety of Holy Names, are called
in this moment to do sacred work and to weather the intense fear and greed in a
moment of national fragility. We will face the deaths our country continues to
endure at the hands of unfettered Gun Violence, at the hands of those who
follow the profit margins and ignore those marginalized by society.
Heschel
taught us, in the name of the Prophets, that “the heart of human dignity is
the ability to be responsible.” (Required: A Moral Ombudsman, United
Synagogue Review, Fall 1971)
We call
upon each other and all who will listen to be strong and resolute. We will walk
humbly with God (Micah 6:8) and we will refuse to ignore the suffering of God’s
children.
For
while, as Heschel said, in a moral world, “some may be guilty, but all are
responsible.” (The Prophets)
And so we pray together, women and men of faith, recognizing that which
we have in common
May
our great nation be safe place, where every person may lie down with no one
terrifying them. (Lev. 26:6)
May
people of every faith - and of no faith - work together to make the
necessary changes to heal our nation from the scourge of Gun Violence.
My
fellow clergy, women and men who serve God by serving all People, may the
passion of the Prophets infuse our work, our words, our deeds, our thoughts – every
fiber of our souls - so that when we do speak, we can cry more freely with
God’s Holy Tears and feel strengthened through that fierce feeling.
May
the Source of Life whose Spirit awaits realization in every human breath fill
us with hope and sustained determination us as we seek an end to all this death
in our land.
Amen.
