Changing our Violent Hearts

This morning in worship we prayed for the many victims of the shooting that took place in Tucson, Arizona yesterday. We asked that God would have compassion on those who lost beloved family members and friends. We prayed that God's healing power would be extended to those who had been wounded. We asked that God would guard our own lips from saying things that might encourage people to do violent things, or speak of people in such a way that violence might be directed at them. We also prayed for the perpetrator of the violence. We didn't ask that he escaoe responsibility, but we asked for healing. Indeed, as more news comes out, the young man who committed this terrible act seems to be mentally ill in addition to being saddled with the diseases of racism and hatred.
Driving to Connecticut to celebrate the Christmas season with our family we noticed a highway sign on route 495 giving directions to the funeral of a police officer. It turned out that the officer was a member of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Woburn, MA. He was killed while trying to apprehend a robbery suspect. Violence is too much with us.
Sadly, in recent years praying prayers for the victims of violence has become much to commonplace. It was only a few years ago, after the violent shootings at Virginia Tech that our leaders promised to take action so that such a thing could never happen again. The rhetoric seemed appropriate at the time, but our leaders don't make such promises anymore. The epidemic of violence seems to have overwhelmed them, and to our shame, we have come to accept it as part of life. Perhaps our leaders have come to realize that as long as we continue to confuse the priority of the right to own a gun with our sacred right to life, such promises are empty.
In one sense, such promises don't even matter. We will never be able to legislate the demise of violence until we change the hearts of a good many of our fellow citizens. We need to change the way we speak to one another,and we need to move beyond the rhetoric of confrontation to a place where we celebrate our common humanity and truly begin to see in one another the face of Jesus Christ.
In Matthew 5:44, Jesus teaches us that we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. We need this kind of radical shift in the way we think and in the way we relate to one another. Instead of using our talents to demonize and denigrate one another, we should look harder into the faces of those with whom we disagree. Is it possible that in the faces of these "enemies" there is the faintest trace of our Lord's face? Faith demands of us that we at least try. Then, by constant practice we will begin to see some of the other common features with which God has graced each one of us, and that in itself would have a salutary effect.
Yet, I know this; that if we do not try, we are the wielders of the hammer, that even now, pierces the flesh of Jesus,to nail him to the cross.