| Memphis School of Servant Leadership |
| Contact Information: Phone: (901) 320-7005 E-Mail: memphisssl@gmail.com |
| Soulword - Lead Story August 2009 |
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Not in our Homes or Hearts another Day She was a widow - in her 70’s - still living in the house she’d lived in most of her adult life. The neighborhood had changed. She knew few, if any, of her neighbors, and her son was worried. Convinced that she would not move he insisted that she at least take a handgun and learn to use it. After a fair amount of arguing, she finally gave in. She learned to use the gun and, each night, placed it in a drawer next to her bed. It was late or at least late for a widow who had been raised in the country. She was in bed when she heard the noise. Then came the footsteps, slowly down the hallway. She reached into the drawer and grabbed her new gun. When the doorknob to her room began to turn she aimed at the center of the door and tried to pull the trigger, again and again. In her panic, she failed to release the safety. And then he spoke: “Grandma. Grandma, are you ok?” My Aunt Lila faced a terror that none of us should face. She came close, all too close, to killing her beloved grandson. Within moments she was on the phone with her son, who lived across town, saying: “Come get this gun right now. I’ll not have it in my house another day.” When he arrived she made it clear that she had lived her life and was prepared to die at any time, but not prepared to kill – her grandson or, for that matter, any other human being. I have thought of this story often as the Tennessee House and Senate have voted to have handguns more, not less, accessible in public places such as bars and public parks. I have mourned the rhetoric about “bad guys” and “good guys” and “people, not guns, killing people.” I’m shocked that we continue to be suckered by such rhetoric – that we fail to recognize how many of the deaths each year are from people who know each other, who, in the heat of an argument have access to weapons that can and do, in fact, kill with much greater efficiency than would otherwise be possible. But more than that, I’m amazed that so many of us who profess Christian faith have failed to speak up, to say, as my aunt said, that we are prepared to die but not to kill. Isn’t that, after all, what the one we call Lord has both said and done? According to our confession of faith, the cross is both the wisdom and power of God. Such love, we insist each week in church, has and does overcome the powers and principalities – even death itself (Romans 8). Is such love the victorious power in history or not? In the garden of Gethsemane, when one of the disciples took a sword and cut off the ear of the guard who had come to arrest Jesus, Jesus did not say “put away your sword for now, the time to use them is later when it is your life (or a loved one’s) they seek.” To do so would have made all that he had earlier taught them a sham. Jesus clearly said to disciples then and says to disciples today that we are to give up our lives, not save them, to pick up our cross alongside his, to love both neighbor and enemy as we love ourselves. This is the love that we, as members of Christ’s Body, are to breath into this world. I am disappointed, sometimes angry, when politicians that know better vote for laws that make guns more accessible and publicly acceptable. I am surprised, even disheartened, when Christians who should know better buy into the rhetoric, into the culture of fear and violence that accompanies these laws. But honestly, I am overwhelmed with grief when preachers, by our silence or with words, go along with the dominant culture, failing to lead the church according to the words and witness of Jesus. It is time for preachers and laity alike – for all of us who, by way of our baptism, re-present Jesus Christ in the world, to say with conviction: “Come get these guns right now. We’ll not have them in our homes (or hearts) another day.” Billy Vaughan |