The events from Tucson weigh heavily on me this week. I find myself feeling incredibly angry and then resigned that there isn't anything I can do about, well, anything. Everything is too big. Everything is too complicated. Everything, is just too, too, much! I know that the deaths of six people and the wounding of 14 others, including the Congresswoman, have left impressions on others as well, most notably their families. For the rest of us, we watch from a distance, offer up a prayer, an opinion or just stick our hands in our pockets, keep our heads down and go about the dailyness of our lives because it is all too real and all too familiar.
If all of that isn't hard enough, sad enough, pathetic enough, we have to decide if we are going to subject ourselves to the talking heads of media, (who whether on the left, right, middle or outside the boundaries of common sense), will talk about gun control, immigration reform, health care, political rhetoric, mental health and illness, etc, as clues, reasons and/or answers for why this happened. A friend told us she wasn't listening to TV or radio anymore today because all she was hearing was whether or not President Obama might/would cry during the Memorial Service. Are you kidding me? If he cries he will symbolize weakness in the midst of tragedy. A sign of an ineffectual leader. If he remains stoic, well what a cold-hearted bastard he is. Great! When we should be exploring ways of coming together despite our differences, our diversity, our views of how the world is or should be, we end up stumbling all over ourselves with the rhetoric of hate, suspicion and innuendo. No wonder we find ourselves in such public and personal turmoil...
On a personal and selfish level...If all of that isn't hard enough, (where have I heard that before), I have to write a sermon for Sunday and give people a word of Hope. A word that goes beyond rhetoric, empty promises, empty threats and into where people live and breathe. And I don't have nothing. Well, that isn't true...I have the rhetoric of Love. Martin Luther King Jr., tried to live out that type of rhetoric, it got him killed. He learned this love from the One he followed, Jesus of Nazareth. O, I forgot, Jesus' rhetoric of love got him killed too. Unfortunately, it's all I got...Love. Love not in word, but love in action.
In the first chapter of John's gospel, there are some folks who have heard who Jesus is and what he's suppose to be about and they hang around him in the shadows. Finally, Jesus asks them, "what are you looking for?" They want to know if he is who John the Baptist and others say he is. Jesus says simply, "Come and See." They want to know if Jesus can live up to the hype. He doesn't say yes or no. He says come and see...
Do my actions match my words? Sometimes. Does the rhetoric that I use reflect the culture, which seems to focus on hate, suspicion and innuendo or am I trying to walk to the beat of that other drummer, Jesus, the same one that Martin Luther King Jr did? The cost is pretty steep at times. But if I have to die for something, would I rather it be the rhetoric of Love? Damn...I hope so.
Sleep easier Tucson. You all are in our thoughts and prayers. May God love on you well.
M
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