Homily – 10-15-17

Oh, those darn Israelites!  They are at it again.  We have seen time after time that they turn away from God, seemingly at the drop of a hat.  The God who led them out of bondage in Egypt.  The God who parted the Red Sea for them.  The God who fed them manna in the wilderness.  Apparently that was not enough.  For no sooner does Moses climb the mountain to speak with God, then they are ready to bolt once again.  “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

So Aaron makes a golden calf and they begin to worship it.  This is expressly against what God has commanded them.  And God says to Moses, “Your people have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it.”  God is angry, for no matter what He does for them, the people continue to take him for granted and turn away at the first chance they get.

We sit here this morning many generations removed from the story.  And let’s be honest, we sit here in judgement of the Israelites.  We ask ourselves, how could these people have been so faithless?  How could they abandon God’s ways when he has done so much for them?  And we look down on them, partly in pity, but also partly in contempt.

But before we judge them too hastily, there is something we should consider.  Have we done the same thing that they did?

We tell ourselves, no, we haven’t abandoned God’s ways. We haven’t built a golden idol and paid homage to it.  But then a tragedy like last week happens, and we are forced to reexamine that statement.  Have we truly embraced God’s ways?  Are we living as God wants us to live?  I don’t think that we are.  I think we have built a golden calf of our own, an idol that we have allowed to replace God in our minds.  That idol is violence.

We live in a culture that venerates violence.  Violence seems to be everywhere that we look.  Movies, television, music, video games, they all feature violent images.  And it seems that the more violent they are, the more popular they become.  Violence has become the norm, and it is insidious.  Since it is everywhere in our culture, we have become immune to it.  We don’t even notice it, any more than a fish notices the water in which it lives.  And then real-life violence intrudes into our lives, and we are forced to face the fact that we have been complicit in allowing it to become our culture.

Don’t misunderstand me.  None of us wanted a tragedy like the one we have just witnessed.  It was an evil and terrible thing and the repercussions will be with the victims for the rest of their lives.  But while none of us would cause such an evil, we must accept some responsibility for allowing our culture to become so obsessed with violence.  So much so, that an act like this could become commonplace.  For, I am sorry to say, that is what it is.

I was very disturbed when I spoke with my 20-year-old son about the shooting.  He was deeply affected, as we all were, by the fact that it would happen here in our own town.  The loss of so many, and the callous disregard shown for human life by the shooter was jarring, and magnified by the fact that we know the area so well and most of us have at least some connection to one or more of the victims.  But as we talked, it became clear to me that he saw this, not as an isolated incident, not as some abomination that came at us from nowhere, but rather as a normal event.  And then it dawned on me.  My son does not have the same life experience I have.  I was raised in a world where an act such as this was nearly unthinkable. A tragedy like this was not part of our worldview.  In school, the only thing we had to deal with was the annual fire drill.

But my sons are growing up in a world where acts like this not only take place, but they occur regularly.  These kids have been raised in a world where the phrase “shelter in place” is part of their lexicon.  Where all schools have emergency response plans in case someone enters the building with a gun.  Whether you live in Las Vegas, or Orlando, or Sandy Hook, or Columbine, senseless acts of violence are the norm for this generation.

I don’t know about you, but I found this shocking.  And it became clear to me that we have a choice.  We can either accept this, or we can work to change the culture.  I vote that we change the world.  For I am not ready to accept that violence is here to stay and we must simply accept the world we have made.  I say we must change the culture.

Don’t misunderstand me; this is not an easy proposition.  It is not about changing a gun law or two, though that is something we should be looking at.  It is not about a quick fix, for we swim in violence as a fish swims in water.  But it is a challenge that we must accept.  It starts with each one of us.  We must become aware of the violence that surrounds us and we must reject it.  Stop buying tickets to movies that glorify violence, stop buying games that do, stop supporting violence on television.  If we stop offering our money to companies that produce violence, I assure you they will notice.

But acting on our own is not enough.  For one of us cannot change the culture alone.  But together we can make a start.  Epiphany is a member of Nevadans for the Common Good, an organization of religious communities that come together to advocate for social change.  This is a good place to start.  NCG is embarking on a house meeting program where hundreds of people from the member churches will come together to share stories of the things that impact their lives.  We will be having several of these meetings here.  The feedback from these meetings will fuel the agenda for the group for the years to come.  I urge you to participate; to bring to the conversation your own stories.

Now you may be sitting there saying, sure I would like to see change, but it is too late.  Violence has been with us forever and we cannot make the changes we need.  To that I would remind you that 200 years ago black people were thought of as property without the same rights as whites.  In 2008 Barack Obama, a black man, was elected President of the United States.  100 years ago, women were not thought to be intelligent enough to vote.  Today women run multinational companies, sit on the Supreme Court and in Congress, and are one of the most influential voting blocks in the nation.

We CAN change our culture.  It is not easy, and it takes a great deal of work and pain.  But if enough of us are willing to put forth the effort, if enough of us are ready to say “no more”, then we can begin to return our world to God’s path.  We can put away the golden idol of violence and live as Jesus commanded us, not harming but loving one another.