After Last Sunday
As Lindsey and I continue to raise Abraham and Frankie, I realize how in some ways, it can be like a video game. We are set with certain objectives at the beginning of a level, and if we complete them, we gain experience that allows us to gain a new level. Changing the first diaper - new level. Having your child fall asleep as they rest in your arms - new level. Helping them with their first project for school - new level.
Well, I can tell each of you that this week I had achieved a new level that I knew was coming, but hadn’t completely been prepared for - having to flush a beloved fish down the toilet - new level. His name way Guy, and was a bright blue Betta fish Abe and I purchased on a whim our first summer here in Austin. The fish was Abe’s roommate over the last couple years, delightfully swimming around. Abe would often direct a small lamp in his room on the tank where Guy lived, making him the centerpoint of a room filled with far more exciting and interactive things. But, Abe seemed to genuinely love that fish, his first pet that he could call his own; and I might argue his first true friend as he was just beginning to get a sense of the big world outside of his mommy and his daddy.
This all came crashing down on Friday. As I entered into Abe’s bedroom I saw Lindsey holding Abe and we watched the fish gasping for its last breaths. The details are a little hazy, but as far as we can ascertain, Abe wanted to get a closer view of Guy, and had apparently forgotten some of the granular details of fish breathing, and left him out of his tank a little too long. When we figured out what was happening, it was too late. Tragedy beset that corner of the Anderson household. It seemed that at least a few minutes, all we could do is sit together, in spite of ourselves even at moments. I knew I was going to have to work on saying goodbye to Guy in the bathroom, Lindsey was finishing up some cleaning after dinner, and Abe was saying that while he would miss Guy, he really wanted a red fish, as he had recently declared red his favorite color.
But we sat. And we held Abe. We let him know that we didn’t blame him, and that Guy cared about him. And it was okay to miss Guy. And that no matter what, we loved Abraham. I found myself beginning to choke up as I saw the small tears that clung to Abe’s eyelashes - he was mourning as best as a near-four-year-old can. He lost someone he cared about in a place intimate to him.
In the last week or so, I think many of us can relate to that feeling. I can’t tell you what the feeling was like in Austin as the first thing I heard was that there had been a shooting in a small Texas church. I went as quickly as I could to ascertain where it had occurred and just as soon as I had breathed a sigh of relief that the lede didn’t mention Caldwell, I just as soon realized the gravity of what was happening - in only a few minutes, 26 parishioners and the shooter were dead in Sutherland Springs, the result of as far as we can tell a domestic dispute. Even as I think of it now, there is a pain deep in my gut. I can’t make sense of this well. I talked to some of my friends from school who preach nearby - Nixon and Yorktown and Floresville - and they don’t know what to do. They are organizing prayer services, doing counseling, and holding their communities up as best they can.
I’ve watched other folks as well, and have paid attention to those in power to see how they respond. Many of our Texas leaders - Governor Abbot, Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, and others including the President, Paul Ryan and Steve Scalise offered their thoughts and prayers to the people in Sutherland Springs. However, others, including Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Cuomo replied bluntly, and one comment in particular from a representative in Washington said that “They were praying when it happened. They don’t need our prayers. They need us to address gun violence and pass sensible legislation.”
These responses seem to fall into two categories that have seemed to become all but predictable. One that groups into saying that the best solution to any tragedy is a pithy line related to thoughts and prayers, the other rejecting it wholesale and saying that specific action is the only recourse. This is apparently not new, because it seems as though the texts today are dealing with similar issues.
Amos, the farmer prophet, speaks the voice of God about as plainly as one can.
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
At this point in the book of Amos, we have been witness to countless acts of violence and betrayals of God at the hands of people all around the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. And now, it seems, the well-to-do of the region believe that the best thing to do is to go about their normal worship lives, offering up the “thoughts and prayers” of the day to God. God clearly isn’t impressed. No type of worship, offering, prayers or songs will be of any use to God. Instead, God calls for justice and righteousness - care for those who have been hurt over and over again by systems that they didn’t create, yet suffer the consequences of. In fact, the entire book of Amos reads this way - the outsider farmer from the South heads north to his kinsfolk to tell them of the tragedies that have beset the poor, and the answer from the priests and kings of the day is to be shown the door and roundly ignored. Yet, they will still go on, thinking and praying.
And so, this seems to be an open-and-shut case, right? The answer is action! Get guns into churches so folks can protect themselves! Get guns out of the society so that everyone is safe! Let’s go buy a red fish tomorrow, Abraham! The tank is hardly even dry from its cleaning, but we need to fix this problem!
Action may be important, sure, but the gospel text seems to argue that action needs to have its right place. The difference between the wise and foolish bridesmaids is not action - each of the ten retrieved an appropriate supply of oil, each of the ten waiting for the groom, each of the ten followed the instructions to wait. The difference in the wise and the foolish bridesmaids was timing. The wise bridesmaid took the time before hand to prepare an extra measure of oil, while the foolish ones had to find the 24 hour oil depot to purchase the balance of oil, and by the time they’ve returned, the groom had come, and they were not able to celebrate the feast.
Too often, in our haste to act, we leave ourselves unprepared, and as a result miss the Christ in our midst. And so our calls for action feel empty, and as a result we might not be a whole lot different than the well-to-do of Amos’ day, doing a whole lot without any good.
How do we prepare for weeks like this one when senseless tragedy besets us in the places that are so intimate to us?
I believe that it is in this space that we find our resource. We come to the font, broken each of us, and are reminded that each of us are sealed and beloved, no matter who we were before. We come and gather at the table, from the east, west, north and south; a remembrance of the decree Christ gave on Thursday with the full knowledge of the death, violence and emptiness of Friday and Saturday, as well of the full knowledge of resurrection on Sunday. We confess, we forgive, we hear the word. We are send out. These actions are not just “thoughts and prayers” but are the oil in our lamps as we wait for Christ to return. From the wellspring of our worship comes compassion, comes grace, and comes the reality that though this world is at times bent on its own destruction, there is hope.
The hope of being held as a community of faith buries its dead that there is redemption, but even more important right now, that there is space to mourn, to lament, and to feel the pain without being told the solutions. That there is still sacred space in the midst of these moments. That we need not run to the next thing to satisfy the lack of preparation ahead of time, because how do you tell a person who lost a son, daughter, husband or wife that the first thing that they need is to make a specific stand on the machinations of the incident? Yes, there will be time to make policy decisions, there will be time to debate and to determine. But perhaps, right now, the best justice and righteousness we can enact is present, prepared belovedness. Or, as Joaquin Ramirez, a survivor of the shooting last Sunday said, “I tell all the parents in this world: hug your children today… love your children. This may be your last day with them.”1
Abe still doesn’t have a new fish. The space where Guy’s tank used to be is still barren. He has said to us that he misses Guy, and we walk through the pain of losing someone he loved with grace. There will time to talk again about not removing a fish from a tank, but what good is that lesson now? For now, Abe knows he’s loved.
You are loved. The people of Sutherland Springs are loved. And we are invited into spaces that allow us to be loved and cared for without ersatz emotion or imposition for a particular politic. And perhaps, even for just a couple days longer, the most just and righteous thing we can do is speak that truth to one another. Amen.
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