Is this not what happens when we don’t take sin seriously?
I did learn this at the seminary. The importance of taking sin seriously. I do remember the words from my childhood liturgy. We are BY NATURE sinful and unclean. We are IN BONDAGE to sin and cannot free ourselves. I know that human brokenness is real and tragedy is its consequence.
Taking sin seriously is the true work of faith.
Yesterday in our community we saw what can happen when we do. And when we do not.
There is a particularly gut wrenching kind of fright that comes to a parent when you hear that first report of a crisis at your child’s school, an experience that cannot be fully imagined until it happens to you. It is your primary vocation, after all, to keep them safe, a Godly charge to protect them and help them, and it hurts to find out that you cannot. The only, really only, help is to know that there are other responsible, professional, well-prepared people who willingly and competently share that charge and do their jobs well. Somewhere along the way, a group of teachers and administrators at our school overcame the “it would never happen here” mentality (the first symptom of sin denial) and planned and practiced and prepared for something horrible to happen.
Because they took sin seriously, they kept my children safe. Today I am thankful to God for them and their faithful work.
Sadly, though, we did not take sin seriously enough to stop this before it happened.
We will tell ourselves, of course, that we could not have known, that we could not have foreseen, that it is the nature of tragedy to be inexplicable and inexorable.
But that’s just an excuse.
I think it’s time to admit that we can do better. It’s time to admit that we have the tools and the ability and the wherewithal to identify our neighbors and children who are particularly in danger and at risk, who have become disconnected in whatever fashion from community and reality and hope and are just waiting to be picked off by the devil and used against us. It’s time for us to admit that we do know what’s wrong with our world and do something about it.
It’s time for us to admit that we are slaves to sin and be responsible in whatever way we can. To have the will to admit that we are in trouble and that we need to do something about it.
Can we now begin to own what we are doing to our children and to each other and to ourselves, how we are neglecting and abusing one another, how we have disowned and discarded too many of God’s children, how we have become miserly in love and kindness and gentleness and patience where we need it the most? Can we now own the profligacy of our anger and our addiction to violence and our worship of guns?
Can we finally take seriously the brokenness of our own creation, that our sin is killing us and can we try to do something about it?
Can we grieve?
For that is, I think, the bottom line, that we merely pass through these events now and do not grieve them. Rather than face down our denial we have become inured to our pain. This is, after all, just another school shooting. It’s news for today, until the next. And then it passes.
Except that it’s not. Except that another exceptional person has been lost to us, and the grief is becoming unbearable. Paul says that the wages of sin is death. Are we not dying enough yet?
Let us grieve fully this loss, let us capture its pain and sorrow, that we would fully experience the price of our smallness and our brokenness and our failure. Our sin. That we might change, something, someone, if just some little bit.
If not for what has been, then for what will be, let us take this moment this sin, seriously. And let it be enough.
I did learn this at the seminary. The importance of taking sin seriously. I do remember the words from my childhood liturgy. We are BY NATURE sinful and unclean. We are IN BONDAGE to sin and cannot free ourselves. I know that human brokenness is real and tragedy is its consequence.
Taking sin seriously is the true work of faith.
Yesterday in our community we saw what can happen when we do. And when we do not.
There is a particularly gut wrenching kind of fright that comes to a parent when you hear that first report of a crisis at your child’s school, an experience that cannot be fully imagined until it happens to you. It is your primary vocation, after all, to keep them safe, a Godly charge to protect them and help them, and it hurts to find out that you cannot. The only, really only, help is to know that there are other responsible, professional, well-prepared people who willingly and competently share that charge and do their jobs well. Somewhere along the way, a group of teachers and administrators at our school overcame the “it would never happen here” mentality (the first symptom of sin denial) and planned and practiced and prepared for something horrible to happen.
Because they took sin seriously, they kept my children safe. Today I am thankful to God for them and their faithful work.
Sadly, though, we did not take sin seriously enough to stop this before it happened.
We will tell ourselves, of course, that we could not have known, that we could not have foreseen, that it is the nature of tragedy to be inexplicable and inexorable.
But that’s just an excuse.
I think it’s time to admit that we can do better. It’s time to admit that we have the tools and the ability and the wherewithal to identify our neighbors and children who are particularly in danger and at risk, who have become disconnected in whatever fashion from community and reality and hope and are just waiting to be picked off by the devil and used against us. It’s time for us to admit that we do know what’s wrong with our world and do something about it.
It’s time for us to admit that we are slaves to sin and be responsible in whatever way we can. To have the will to admit that we are in trouble and that we need to do something about it.
Can we now begin to own what we are doing to our children and to each other and to ourselves, how we are neglecting and abusing one another, how we have disowned and discarded too many of God’s children, how we have become miserly in love and kindness and gentleness and patience where we need it the most? Can we now own the profligacy of our anger and our addiction to violence and our worship of guns?
Can we finally take seriously the brokenness of our own creation, that our sin is killing us and can we try to do something about it?
Can we grieve?
For that is, I think, the bottom line, that we merely pass through these events now and do not grieve them. Rather than face down our denial we have become inured to our pain. This is, after all, just another school shooting. It’s news for today, until the next. And then it passes.
Except that it’s not. Except that another exceptional person has been lost to us, and the grief is becoming unbearable. Paul says that the wages of sin is death. Are we not dying enough yet?
Let us grieve fully this loss, let us capture its pain and sorrow, that we would fully experience the price of our smallness and our brokenness and our failure. Our sin. That we might change, something, someone, if just some little bit.
If not for what has been, then for what will be, let us take this moment this sin, seriously. And let it be enough.
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