CREATING PEACE IN A VIOLENT WORLD
Rev. Dr. Joyce Antila Phipps
Texts: Malachi 3: 1-10; Luke 3: 1-6
This past week has been one that has shocked our jaded sensibilities. In Oxford, Michigan, a small town of about 3500, a young student, only 15 years old, entered his school and began shooting people with a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol., purchased by his father just the week before.
It’s now been nine years since that terrible day at Sandy Hook Elementary School when 20 students and six staff members were murdered with a gun bought on the internet. The year before in January 2011 a man opened fire on a public meeting in Tucson, seriously wounding a Member of Congress and killing six and wounding 18 others.
And just little over a year ago in New Jersey, Daniel Anderl, the son of a targeted Federal judge, was murdered as he opened his front door. Homicides spiked by 23 percent in 2020, and the year now ending is no different. This, in spite of the fact that New Jersey has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Of course, the impending Supreme Court ruling on New York’s law may upend our attempts to have gun sanity. Guns are easily available on the internet from Glocks to 9mm Sig Sauers. Got to have our guns, you know. And still we have no background checks thanks to the gutless wonders we call our Congress.
We have had two high profile murder trials over the past several weeks, including the acquittal of a person who as a minor had a AR-15, brought it across state lines in order to “protect” property. What balderdash! At least, the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery were convicted in their pursuit of vigilante style “justice.”
The statistics on gun violence are overwhelming. The United States actually has more guns than people. There are other nations that have a high percentage of gun ownership, but the violence is rare compared to what occurs in our Nation.
The statistics are daunting. This past year 2020 saw the largest increase in homicides since1905. The more than 25 percent increase resulted in over 20,000 murders, the overwhelming of number with guns.
Gun sales also surged during the pandemic. The response of people with guns is a bit like the toilet paper and paper towel hoarders. Gun sales skyrocketed. Today’s reading has a portrait of John using the words of Isaiah. This morning’s reading stops just before John calls people coming to be baptized a brood of vipers who face God’s wrath because they do not bear good fruit.
Do we need to undergo a refiner’s fire before learning to live together? What is required for us to create peace in a violent world? These are really difficult questions and have no simple answers. Almost every crisis or pseudo-crisis we seem to face results in a violent response, whether it is an angry crowd at a Walmart or firing guns in a school. Have we always been this way?
But even thoughtful analysis does not answer our central question: how do we create peace in a violent world? This question cannot be addressed in isolation because it involves our responsibility to help others have peace in the world as well. There have always been people who respond to crisis by panic, and there have always been people who are unbalanced and should have no access to guns.
But simply blaming the spike in homicides on the fact that a few mentally ill or emotionally disturbed people have access to guns is not enough. Much of the spike in homicides cannot be so blamed.
Most homicides, like the one in Oxford, Michigan, are committed with handguns, such as pistols, including the semi-automatic ones used by the shooter in this case. Although more jarring to our sensibilities because of the number of people kill, proportionately fewer are committed with weapons such as the AR-15. Much like the protests of the 1960s, the protests following the murder of George Floyd have resulted in a response, although perhaps not the kind of response one would think.
A recent survey from the Pew Charitable Trust indicates that more people are concerned about safety and want more police protection not less, although the sentiments differ by race and ethnicity. Minority persons feel that there is “too much” policing due to their history with police while whites want more policing. Middle-class whites seem to live in a Norman Rockwell world.
There’s no question that we need a new approach towards gun violence, this year the Supreme Court has a case regarding New York’s law on carrying a concealed weapon in public. This 108-year law requires “good cause” for a permit to do this. Just what we need: any idiot to carry a concealed weapon on the streets without a permit.
Of course, the Justices don’t face the same reality the rest of us do as we walk on the streets. They are insulated from the cost of gun violence. Almost ten years Daniel Lazare wrote an essay entitled, “Your Constitution is Killing You,” regarding our national obsession with guns and the violence that results.
We need to move beyond our wild west mentality and to work at creating a society in which peaceful approaches are the solution to argument as well as difference. And we need to do something about gun violence.
We need to develop models of engagement that lead to peace that are more complex than repeating sweet aphorisms of peace in our hearts. Understanding the cultural context gives us clues but does not answer all the questions,
Let us pray: Embracing and all-encompassing One, we ask that you give us a vision of peace and the imagination to actualize the peace you want for us in the world. In the name of him who is your peace, even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.