June 19, 2016 - What do we believe?

Proper 7, year C

I have spent most of last week feeling sad. I didn’t get the news about the Orlando shooting until after I got home from church on Sunday – so I was already pretty tired. I think I was also depressed about all of the predictable reactions to the shooting. It seems as if everyone retreated to his or her default positions, and all the old arguments were repeated over and over.

Being an Episcopal priest, I have many friends and colleagues who are gay. They are very sad and afraid. We are all too old to be dancing in nightclubs, but Pulse was a kind of place where my friends remember feeling safe – and now that’s gone. The violence and hatred that we hope to keep away visits us anyway. It is hard not to be discouraged.

I remember a time when the NRA was all about gun safety. As a youth I remember going to a shooting range with my father. There were many rules. You never point a gun at anyone, ever. You treat every weapon as if it were loaded. You never take off the safety until you have looked downrange and are prepared to fire the weapon. Swagger, bragging, boasting, were all looked down upon. There was great respect – for the weapon – but more importantly, for human life. Now there is the noise and nonsense of hate and a selfish assertion of rights over respect for the other.

It does not have to be this way. We get caught up in all the rhetoric and in the endless news cycle as if it were true simply because it is so loud. What do we truly believe? In what do we place our faith?

Today we hear another chapter in the life of Elijah. He has just prevailed spectacularly over the priests of Baal. Now Jezebel wants him dead. He flees in fear. Has he already forgotten what God has done? Perhaps he thought that the great miracle on Mt. Carmel should have been enough to change Israel. He runs and hides and he is depressed. Through angels, God guides and sustains Elijah through the wilderness. Eventually God passes by Elijah on the mountaintop. God is not in the wind, or in the earthquake, or in the fire. God comes to Elijah in the sound of sheer silence.

Maybe we want spectacular displays of strength. God often gives us only the words of truth we already know. Is it a test of our faith that that should be enough?

Jesus takes a detour across the Sea of Galilee to visit the place called Gerasene. There is a place of tombs where a man tormented by many demons lives alone and wild. The people try to restrain him, but he breaks the chains and howls. They are used to him being this way. Jesus frees him by casting the demons into a herd of pigs – an odd but spectacular display of power. I find it interesting that the people only become afraid when the see the man clothed and in his right mind.

What causes the fear? Perhaps the people are afraid because they are confronted with the reality that the status quo will no longer be tolerated. God will not let us settle for the abuse or neglect of others, even if we cannot find a way to change. Jesus has compassion even on the people whom we have cast aside or hidden away as not acceptable to our sensibilities or our worthy of our compassion.

I believe that the Pulse nightclub would be just the kind of place that Jesus would have gone. I think he would have enjoyed Latin Night in Gay Pride month. I also believe that he would be unafraid to confront people bound by hate and fear. He would reach out to those who feel they need to protect themselves with guns or who only feel safe surrounded by angry rhetoric. He would have offered an ear to zealots who feel it is their duty to destroy – even their own lives.

We have our own mountaintop miracle that defines what we believe. Jesus died on the cross and rose again. He destroyed sin and death. Don’t we believe that? Why do we live as if it were not true?

We need to listen to the sound of sheer silence. What is the truth we already know? God loves the whole world – no exceptions. God is saving the whole world – no exceptions. Every person is a child of God, no matter how angry, or violent, or foolish, or frightened.

What can we do? First, we need to remember our faith. God’s love can never be broken – no matter how much we fail. God has given us a message of love. We need to share it. More than ever, our world needs to hear about God’s love. We need not worry ourselves about clever apologetics, we need only tell God’s love, as we know it.

We also need to take up our work as agents of reconciliation. We need to reach out to those who are isolated and lost. We need to find a neighbor who is different from us and listen to them with compassion. We need to cross those human barriers we take for granted. We may not like their story. We may not agree with them. God loves them: we can too. We can’t change all the madness of the world. We can live the truth of God’s love and live in peace with all our neighbors. We can create with God a new way to live together.