Abandoned

 7 Easter, Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La.

I am a teacher. I have earned my living primarily with words. Then I became a deacon and my diaconal ministry consisted of more talk, working together with other folks across the social, economic, and religious spectrum to shape public decision-making to benefit the common good.

 

Being a deacon includes preaching. But today, because of the confluence of events and the church year, I stand before you charged with the task of filling this space in our worship with words… and I have none. I feel abandoned. Quite utterly abandoned.

 

 

And not just by words. Jesus the Christ has left us. We have spent the last several weeks reading about and contemplating his resurrection appearances. Last Sunday he told us clearly that he was going and that we could not go with him. He ascended into heaven several days ago, according to the church calendar, and the Holy Spirit has not yet come.

 

Before he left us, Jesus prayed for us. We call it the High Priestly prayer. It is a wonderful, multilayered expression of his love for his followers.

 

Only the Gospel according to John records this prayer. It is a long prayer, the longest prayer Jesus prays in his time on earth, at least according to the written record. Thus our lectionary divides it into 3 parts: Year A gets the first part, Year B the second part and Year C—the year we are currently in—gets the 3^rd part, which I just read to you.

 

And it is in the 3^rd part that Jesus prays specifically for US. He prays not only on behalf of those with him at that moment, but, he says, also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word. That, friends, would be us.

 

So reading this tender, loving prayer, in which Jesus invites us into communion with himself and the Father, and invites us to experience his glory, and offers to fill us with his love… Reading this prayer for us should be comforting.., should it not?

 

Usually, for me, it is. “Comforting” is exactly how I have experienced it many times in the past.

 

But not this year. This year reading this prayer floods me with grief, and helpless anger, and most of all.. an overwhelming conviction of unworthiness. Utter unworthiness. Hopeless unworthiness. For we have failed. Again. And yet again.

 

I mentioned a confluence of events with the church year, and to that I must turn our attention… dragging my feet every step of the way.

 

Some of you will recall that just over 4 years ago, I was on the docket to preach here at Grace Episcopal just days after the murder of 17—teenagers and teachers—at a high school in Florida.

 

I’m not going to preach that sermon again today. Should anyone want to review it, it is still available on my sermon blog here.

 

But, sadly, that sermon is as relevant now as it was the day I preached it. So today it seems, simply, futile. Futile, because the same empty excuses about why we can’t do anything about gun violence began to flood our airways and social media almost before the sounds of the shots in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, had died out.

 

Here's one thing that’s changed. Today I’m a grandmother. My precious grandbabies turned 5 months old just a few days ago. In a couple of weeks, they will be baptized and made Christ’s own forever.

 

And I know just as surely as I stand here this morning that even though they are infants now, I will blink my eyes and they will be going off to school. I am terrified at the thought.

 

Yesterday, writing this sermon, I got to exactly this point, and stopped. I didn’t know what to say next. So I went outside and pulled weeds, and hosed down the carport, and dug up a couple of oak saplings that had taken root in a flower bed. And after several hours of intense yardwork, I came back to my computer and… I still didn’t know what to say next.

 

And so I turn to prayer, the only kind of words I know of that have much chance of changing us, because I believe changing us is the first necessary thing.

 

These words come from a group of Episcopal bishops who responded to a mass shooting by writing a litany to commemorate the dead, to comfort their loved ones, and to honor survivors and first responders. It has been updated many times and is very long. I have arbitrarily edited it down to include only mass shootings in schools.

 

If you share in my heartbreak and rage and despair, feel free to join in the response, “Let light perpetual shine upon them.”

 

Let us pray.

 

God of peace, we remember all those who have died in incidents of mass gun violence in this nation’s public and private spaces.

 

Thirteen dead at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-eight dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Six dead at Santa Monica College, California.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Five dead at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Umpqua Community College, Oregon.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Seventeen dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Ten dead at Santa Fe High School, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Four dead at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

Twenty-one dead at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
Give to the departed eternal rest
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

All those who have died in any incident of gun violence.
Give to the departed eternal rest.
Let light perpetual shine upon them.

 

To survivors of gun violence, grant comfort and healing.
To those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, grant peace.

Protect and strengthen first responders who care for victims of gun violence.

Move us all to act in whatever way we can to end the evil of gun violence in our society.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN