I’m going to start by saying that my heart is heavy with yet one more school shooting, this one at a high school in Oregon. It should not be this way. There are way too many of these happening. I was shocked to hear on the NBC Nightly news that there have been 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. That’s astonishing. I would have guessed half that. Simply shocking.

It’s way too many. No one disagrees with that.

But I’m tired of reading Facebook posts about how upset folks are about this. “Lord, have mercy.” “When will this stop?” “Jesus weeps over this.” “This is beyond tragic.” “When will this end?”, blah, blah, blah.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment.

But it’s too easy. It’s too comfortable. To say something that gives the impression that I care allows me to keep it all at arm’s length.

Just what good do you think it does to post pious platitudes on Facebook? Or do you just feel better doing that?

I don’t really care how much you care. I want to know what you’re doing about it.

In my experience, we are doing precious little in terms of action. (My apologies to those of you who are actually doing something.)

Here are a few suggestions.

• Get informed. And you might begin by reading James Atwood’s America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose. Atwood is a Presbyterian pastor who has lived what he believes. He has done his research. His work is compelling.
• Break your silence. Talk about it. You don’t have to be strident. You can simply be conversational. Ask people what they think. Be respectful. Look for opportunities to share a contrary view respectfully.
• If you are clergy, make some opportunities for people to hear about the issue from a personal standpoint. Schedule an adult forum where the speaker is a victim of gun violence. Foster a discussion with open-ended questions so that there is a safe place for divergent opinions. I believe there is power in the simple act of conversation.
• Don’t let people tell you that the second amendment is all about the right of personal ownership of guns. I know that’s the mantra. As with the scriptures, the Bill of Rights is a document that gets interpreted. I’m puzzled as to why we have allowed the reactionary voices to define what the second amendment means. It’s been a long time since we have had anything resembling the citizen militias of the late 18th century. In fact, as far as I can tell, it’s been since the late 18th century.
• I’m not a big fan of preaching about controversial topics from the pulpit. Seems too much like a power thing to me. I get to say what I think and no one else gets a voice. But I am a huge proponent of preaching the values of God’s kingdom and letting people make their decisions. So, preach it, pastors! How God is a God of life and not death. How vengeance belongs to God. How the eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth ethic has been supplanted. How we are called to care for our neighbor, not fear them.
• Defy those who would make safety and security the ultimate good. It’s a god that we have been all to ready to worship, even at the expense of our own freedoms and our calling to love our neighbor. Security is not the ultimate good. The whole notion of safety and security and the right to defend ourselves has become a god in American culture and no one is allowed to question it. Question it.

And please, don’t waste your time writing to your congressional representatives. It does no good. For what reason do you think that your voice unaccompanied by any campaign contribution will make a hair’s breadth of a difference in opposition to the millions contributed by the gun lobby?

Honestly, I don’t know what will make a difference. I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will not be the proliferation of platitudes.

By contrast here are things that I know to be true. That  solutions begins by naming the problems, not be feeling bad about them. That powerful things can happen if people have the courage to talk about them. That when people join together in common cause, amazing things can happen. It’s time for us to give up on pious sentiment and lock arms and actually make this evil go away.

In February, 2013, I wrote a blog post chronically the plight of one of our member couples who, in their 90s, were forced to move from one retirement center to another an hour away from their community, and all because their money was running out. 

Paul died in April, 2013. Faye died on Memorial Day this year. The following is the sermon I preached at her memorial service yesterday.

As I’ve reflected over the past couple of weeks on Faye and on her life and on what became over the past dozen years a very special and unique relationship between a pastor and a parishioner, what has come to my mind so often is an old liturgical verse that my friend, Mark Mummert, has set to music.

(Sung:)  All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!!

When I came here in 2002, Faye was already 83 and while still vibrant, still very active, still working, the signs of death and decay had set in. Her beloved Paul had already begun his long struggle with dementia. For Faye, this meant an extra level of care, care about which she was the very model of love and faithfulness. Years later, she faced the reality of leaving their home and independent living. It was an agonizing decision that her head told her was right and her heart resisted with every fiber of its being. In the end, she decided that she and Paul would leave their home on Vine Street and move to The Meadows. It was so hard because Faye loved that house and she loved that neighborhood and she loved her neighbors. And of course, she loved that it was so close to Starbucks.

Then there was Robert’s death to cancer (he died in his mid 60s), a death that hit Faye very hard. Finally came the move to Alden and Paul’s death a little over a year ago.

. . .yet even at the grave, we make our song.

The way Faye lived was almost as if to defy death and to push death away. There was, for instance, that regular, everyday 3:00 ritual of the drive to Starbucks for a cup for coffee and a pastry.

When they moved to The Meadows, Faye could not have her home, but she was determined that their small living room would retain as much of the character of their home as possible. She had brought along a few of their best living room and dining room furniture and it was tastefully adorned with a few sentimental pieces and framed photographs. When I came to visit, she was always dressed up as if the President was visiting. She was a dignified and  classy lady.

Just before the service today, I was saying to Ken (surviving son) how fitting it was that this service is in this room. She loved this place; she loved this room. She would bring Paul to church every Sunday. She loved the services, the music, the preaching, the liturgy, but she loved just as much the opportunity to be around people, to bask in the love and care of those relationships that had been formed and cemented over decades of being a part of the same faith community.

And there was our Thursday morning bible study. In think in the beginning, she brought Paul because he had been the one to relish bible study. When I first came to Faith, there were two Thursday morning bible studies, one for the men and one for the women. If I remember correctly, she used to drop Paul off, do some errands, and then come back an hour later to pick him up. But then when we combined the two groups, she stayed and sat next to Paul, helping him find the passages and so on. At least in the beginning, she was just along for the ride. But that time and that study became extraordinarily important to Faye, and our time together in bible study fostered some very rich and meaningful conversation about God and faith and the church and life in this world and about death and what comes next. These were honest and rich conversations. They became the basis for a deep and meaningful relationship.

Faye was smart; she was strong; she was classy; she was elegant. And she was full of spunk. She loved her Paul with a devotion that I have rarely witnessed. She loved her sons and her daughters-in-law and her grandchildren and extended family. She deeply loved her church and her friends there. How often did I hear stories about the 4th Nighters? She loved Glen Ellyn. She should have worked for the Chamber of Commerce. Maybe part of that was that she loved the roots that she and Paul had put down here. She loved her work and all the relationships she build through that work.

See, even in the midst of all the struggles and the slow approach of the grave, Faye loved life. She was grateful for the good life that she and Paul had had. She simply love life. She loved life as an Easter person would love life. Faye’s song was Alleluia!

We used to talk about death and about what happens after death. Those conversations happened first in the days after Bob’s death and then again after Paul died. Faye could never quite accept the Sunday School notions of heaven with jewel-studded mansions and streets paved with gold. What she took great comfort in was the notion of life. Because she loved life so much, the prospect of a new and rich and eternal life with God brought great comfort. It’s the kind of life described in the lesson we read from the Revelation of John. (One of the texts for the memorial service was Revelation 22:1-5.)

John paints a picture that is far too often taken as a literal description of heaven, a misunderstanding, I believe, of the purpose and intent of that vision. Instead, John gives us a sense of what this new and eternal life will be like. It will be full. It will be refreshing. It will be the laying down of burdens and disappointments and sorrows and regrets and pain. There will be healing, not just for the physical ailments that characterize our long, slow slide into the grave, but healing of all that has ever stood as an obstacle in our relationship with God and with each other. Everything accursed will be no more.

And we will see God. And we will see God. And we will see God.

And we will bask in the everlasting light of Christ, the One who came to show us God. The One who came to bring us God’s love and grace and mercy. The One who knows us as only the Good Shepherd knows us. (The gospel lesson was John 10:11-18.) The One who carried our burdens and our sins to the cross and then buried them in that garden tomb. The One who rose again as the assurance that neither is our grave, neither is Faye’s grave, the end of the story. That One, that One, invites us, as he has invited Faye, to bask in his light and enjoy that life that will not end.

And, so, Death, Grave: you are not the end of the story. Death, Grave: you are not the last word. Alleluia is the end of the story; alleluia is the last word.

(Sung:) All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave, we make our song. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia.

I have a confession to make. I’ve been preaching every Easter Sunday since the early 90’s and I think I’ve been missing the main point for most of that time. What has been there all along has moved from the background and recently has become glaringly, shockingly obvious.

I think that I have nearly always preached about the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for the individuals sitting before me; it has been some variation on the theme of the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for our own lives. Or, should I say it more precisely, the implications of Jesus’ resurrection for each individual who is sitting in that sanctuary on that Easter Sunday. Occasionally, I’ve highlighted the evangelistic element inherent in the resurrection stories, but even then, I think it has been couched as a call to each person to be one who goes and tells.

What has struck me this time around — and got some mention in my Easter sermon this year — is the unmistakable communal underpinnings of the resurrection accounts. With the exception of John, every evangelist tells of the women going to the tomb together. They went to do their work together. And when they were sent, they were sent to the gathering of disciples, not to individuals. When Jesus walked along the Emmaus road, it was with two disciples. When they recognized Jesus, they immediately returned to Jerusalem to the place where the 11 were gathered, in other words, to the community of Jesus’ followers. Even in John, if you grant that Mary Magdalene went the tomb alone, she didn’t stay alone. She went to tell Peter, and when she finally recognized Jesus, she was given the instruction to go tell the community.

According to John, Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared to the disciples. Regardless of where Thomas might have been, he doesn’t first encounter Jesus alone, but in community, with the others who had encountered the risen Lord. And as far as I can tell every one of the post-resurrection appearances was to a gathering of disciples.

So, here’s what I think I’ve been allowing to fade into the background all these years. Jesus’ resurrection was just one more piece of the large work he came to do of bringing in God’s reign, of establishing a people for the sake of drawing the world into God’s loving embrace. While there is such a thing as individual salvation, the individual salvation is always the means to the end of fashioning a people. So, when he was raised, Jesus went right back to the work he had been doing, of gathering a people, of building a community, this time a community that could laugh in the face of death, knowing now that even death will not stand in the way of God’s work of redemption and reconciliation.

I have been mired in the grossly individualistic nature of American Christianity for so long that I can’t even see how it affects the way I understanding things and the way I preach. I have been unwittingly supporting an application of the resurrection stories that is not false, but misses the point.

If the big thing that Jesus came to do was to fashion a more inclusive, more universal people of God for the sake of accomplishing God’s intentions for the world, that big thing came to some kind of climax in his resurrection. And the point, it seems to me, was resurrection community, not individual salvation. Individual salvation is not excluded; it’s just not the point.

Listen to how Bernard Lohfink says it:  Baptism. . .obligates us to a new life in the world. Whoever has died with Christ in baptism is born into the new society of the church. . .The Easter expectation in Christian communities means expecting that at every hour the Spirit of Christ will show the community new paths, expecting new doors to open at any moment, counting on it that at any hour the Spirit can transform evil into good, hoping that at every hour the impossible will become possible.” (Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was)

For the sake of the world.

A congregation faces a challenge. Someone at the table suggests that others have probably faced the same challenge. The questions go flying. What have they done? What has worked? What is available to us? And someone will probably say nearly these exact words, Let’s contact them. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

The metaphor of reinventing the wheel is a misleading image to rely on for moving forward on the challenges of congregational ministry. The wheel is a great gift. I am a bicyclist. I love what I can do and where I can go on two wheels. And I’m thankful nearly every day that the wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented on a regular basis. I’m thankful that I can use the technology of the wheel and let the creativity of the technicians be spent on making my bicycle lighter, more durable, and more comfortable.

But all of those things are technical problems. If a wheel is not durable, then the experts can apply current technology to make it more durable. If the wheel is too small, make it larger. If the hard metal of a wheel makes for a rough ride on the stone of city streets, then find technology that will make it softer.

The problem is that those of us who are working in the church (or any other social institution, for that matter) are not working in a setting where our greatest challenges can be solved by technology. To use the metaphor, it’s not a matter of making the wheel more durable or larger or more comfortable for riding.

We work in places with history. With people. With local and institutional cultures. With present anxieties and past dysfunctions. We work in places that are nothing if not unique. So, technical answers to our deep challenges will not work.

To invoke the no need to reinvent the wheel implies that what worked somewhere else will work here. Maybe. But more likely not. What worked somewhere else worked as a function of the unique people involved, the unique gifts and skills, the unique moment in time, and a whole host of other factors. When it comes to trying to answer the challenges of congregational ministry in our time and our place, the truth is we probably do need to reinvent the wheel in each setting. Meeting the challenges of ministry is so deeply and so profoundly contextual. In each case we do ourselves a disservice to begin by asking the question of what has worked somewhere else.

When I suggest that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel I perpetuate the myth so prominent in North American culture that here are experts and they have the knowledge and I don’t.

I disagree. While I covet the knowledge of experts when it comes to technical problems — like the weight of my bicycle — there is no one who is more expert in your setting than the people who are in that setting. What’s real is that no one knows your context better than you do. You know the people, you know the community, you know the challenges, you know the culture. No one, not even the so called experts know what you know.

And you have people who know your context just as clearly as you do. They are the committed leaders of your congregation. They are the folks who volunteer their time and offer their talents to make sure the congregation is true to its mission. If you’re in the plains of Nebraska, these people are far wiser about the culture and the community of the plains of Nebraska than the experts at the seminary in California. The seminary folks are likely experts at what works in a seminary community. Or in the congregation they served before they landed at the seminary. But you are expert where you are. What’s more, if you consistently invoke the wisdom of the so-called expert, it’s likely to shut down the conversation of the folks who know the context better than any of the academics in the hallowed seminary hallways.

Here might be the most significant down side of invoking the no need to reinvent the wheel mantra. It short circuits, even shuts down, the creativity and imaginations of the folks who know the context best. When leaders can bring people together and challenge them to take responsibility for the ministry and to be accountable to one another for what happens here, people rise to the occasion. When their gifts and their expertise are acknowledged, the solutions emerge. When people are asked what are the possibilities and what they want to create together, avenues and opportunities and even strategies emerge that will be far more effective than some program that worked in a church light years away.

Let me offer one caveat: I’m not suggesting that we don’t tell the stories of our own successes. I think its important for me to know what worked somewhere else and for me to tell others what worked here. But we don’t tell the stories as packaged products that we have any illusions can be imported or exported wholesale. We tell the stories as the ground of hope. When I hear that someone else somewhere else took their challenges head on, imagined a future, and walked successfully into the future, then it gives me hope that we can do the same thing.

So, here’s to hope. Here’s to creativity. Here’s to engaging the people who have the wisdom. Here’s to facing our challenges head on, believing that the gifts of the Spirit are in the people.