My brother loves the grocery store.
He’s a great cook, he’s got great taste in food, and most days he gets a hankering for something awesome — a killer brisket, a coconut curry — and he runs to the store to get what he needs. I love to tease my brother because he goes to the grocery store pretty much every day.
My brother lives in Boulder and he shops at King Soopers.
So this week was my first. The first time I felt my stomach drop at the breaking-news alert. The first time I frantically searched for my phone. The first time a mass shooting made my hands shake.
My brother is OK. But it was someone’s brother lying in that parking lot.
Christ, have mercy.
A friend shared with me this sobering statistic: there are enough guns in this country to give one to every man, woman, and child, and still have 67 million to spare.
It is easier to buy a gun than it is to buy Sudafed.
The shooter in Boulder was born three days before the Columbine massacre happened. For his entire lifetime, mass shootings have been common. Normal. Easy. He lives in a world where AR-15s are how men have a “bad day.”
Christ, have mercy.
Church: have we had enough? Are we ready to admit the incompatibility of gun ownership and discipleship in Christ? Because this will end the moment American Christians decide to end it. But we don’t want it to end. It’s the Christian senators who will prevent the passing of an assault rifle ban. It’s the Christian congressmen who will keep taking donations from the NRA. It’s the Christian voters who will keep electing the “pro-life” candidate, year after year, all the while burying first graders and grocery clerks and police officers and brothers.
It’s as if we don’t worship the crucified Christ at all — the victim, the powerless, the one who laid down his life. It’s as if what we really worship is power. Our liturgy is violence. And our ritual, week after week, is human sacrifice. It is idolatry. It is killing us. And it will end when we lay down our own damn guns, and admit that we have gotten this very, very wrong.
We will say out loud what has been obvious the whole time: you cannot carry a gun and also a cross.
“Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25)
Christ, have mercy.
Photo by Phil Aicken on Unsplash
