‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why is there no healing for the wounds of my people?’ – Jeremiah 8:22
Last Thursday, the church I pastor hosted a candlelight vigil to honor the ten men and women cut down by an assault-style semi-automatic rifle with a high-capacity magazine in the racially motivated mass shooting at the Tops Market in Buffalo, NY. While planning the event, another episode of gun violence occurred at a church in Laguna Woods, CA, adding yet another victim to those we recognized at the service. The vigil was a somber attempt to create sacred space for lamentation and reflection, and, from that space, generate constructive action toward the goal of eradicating the twin evils of hate and gun violence that characterize so much of American life these days.
On the following Sunday, a member of our congregation, one of the most socially active I know, apologized that he had been unable to attend the vigil because of work. He expressed his hope that we would not need another one any time soon. The moment those latter words passed his lips, we looked at each other and sighed; we both knew it would only be a matter of time before the next high-profile act of violence involving guns would occur.[1] The only question was: how long would it take?
Two days.
Tuesday evening I came home from work and saw the news. Another gunman, armed with an AR-15, the assault-style weapon of choice for mass shooters in America, had shot up a fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde, Texas. By the following morning, the death toll had risen to twenty-one: nineteen children and two teachers. Nineteen children, each about 10 years-old, who simply went to school that morning to learn. Each with hopes and dreams for the future. Each who now, if I may paraphrase Neil Young, will never get to grow up, never get to finish school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool. Their teachers, two women with families of their own, died as heroes while attempting to shield the children with their bodies.
One would think nothing could be worse than this. But what makes it worse is that this is nothing new. Shootings of the kind we have just experienced in Buffalo, Laguna Woods, and Uvalde are pretty much part of the landscape these days. They have been for decades. I thought of listing some of the place names, but the list would be so long it would probably crash your server. The stories are somewhat different in each one, but the vast majority of the time, there are common denominators: an assault-style weapon was involved; and/or a person who should not have had access to the weapon used obtained it lawfully for lack of appropriate background checks and screening; and/or there were warning signs flashing (a documented history of mental illness, a published manifesto, a string of violent social media posts, a record of threats or violent behavior, etc.), the kind that should have alerted someone in authority to have acted before it was too late, or at least have served as an impediment to the purchase of a gun or ammunition had appropriate background checks and screening been employed. Any and all of which could easily be addressed with sensible gun legislation that would have, if it had been enacted in time, prevented at least some of the shootings; that would have saved at least some of the innocent lives. That could, even if enacted after the fact, save countless lives in the future.
Which leads, of course, to the infuriating common denominator we experience in the aftermath of every mass shooting: the hard reality that no commonsense gun legislation ever passes. What happens instead is as predictable as the rising of the sun. Within hours of a mass shooting, politicians and pundits on the left call for common sense gun control measures while politicians and pundits on the right talk about the loss of life, including the lives of children, being the ‘cost of freedom’ (an expression that makes my blood boil even as I write it). This plays out over a couple days, maybe a week, until the pro-gun forces of intransigence prevail, and nothing is done. Then, most of the public gets bored, forgets, and moves on to think about happier things.
Until the next time, when the cycle starts all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Oh, and bury the bodies.
Predictably, the politicians and pundits are at it even as I type. The script is being followed to the letter. And while people are hot today, if history is any predictor of what is to come, we know that as soon as there is a lull in the violence, people will just move on to happier things.
And so, Jeremiah’s lament, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead?’ echoes in my soul today. For like him I ask, ‘Is there no hope? Is there no one who can bring healing to this land? Why is there no healing for my people?’
Five years ago, I wrote Jeremiah’s words at the head of another blog post about another mass shooting. Over the course of a month, in fact, I had written two posts in reaction to high-profile mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs. In them, I decried the fact that nothing had been done and nothing would likely be done. I called for a time of lamentation, of sackcloth and ashes, in which we would sit in the dust and grieve the violence of our society. I urged people not to simply move on to happier things, not to seek solace in something more comfortable, but to wade into the misery, to let it sink in, to empathize with the victims and survivors, and to then leverage what they felt toward constructive action.
My response is the same now, with one difference. Our lamentation time, as necessary as it is, cannot go on for too long. We must cut it short and get about the business of making a better world before the next shooter strikes. It is time to step up and do something. It is time to engage in creative, nonviolent actions which push for an end to gun violence and create more beauty and peace in the world.[2] It is time to act politically and vote the fools who think that dead school children are the ‘cost of freedom’ out of office. It is time to demand our state and federal legislators pass common sense gun legislation and that our governors and President sign it.
If there is a balm in Gilead, we are going to have to make it. I for one, will begin today.
I’m no longer waiting until the next time.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
[1] I say high profile, for, as we should all know, gun violence happens every minute of every day in America.
[2] E.g., in the church I serve, we are partnering with RAWTools to decommission guns and turn them into garden tools (see www.rawtools.org).