Mom, Apple Pie, Baseball, Chevrolet, Smith and Wesson

          What could be more American than Mom, Apple Pie, Baseball, Chevrolet, Smith and Wesson?  We have strong sentiments about our mothers.  We have an appetite for homemade desserts cooling in the kitchen window (who does that anymore?).  Baseball has been the traditional All-American sport (now superseded in popularity by football).  Chevys have been an icon of Americana (“What’s good for General Motors is good for the USA!”).  And along with our love affair with the automobile a large portion of Americans have had an affection for guns.

            The Second Amendment to our Constitution protects our right to bear arms, and is as rooted in our history as the right of freedom of speech, and supported by one of the strongest lobbies in the country.  I have no problem with people owning guns.  I have family members who love to hunt.  While I am not among them I do benefit from a fair helping of venison stew every now and then.  Hunting is a reasonable activity it seems to me, satisfying a visceral human need, as well as helping to maintain population control among certain species of wildlife.

            Still, I have to wonder why any American citizen needs to have in his or her possession the kind of automatic assault weapons that were owned by Newtown, Connecticut resident, Nancy Lanza, and used by her mentally-ill son, Adam, to kill her and twenty-six other children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday.   There is more gun violence in the US than in any other wealthy nation because we have the least restrictions on gun ownership than any other nation.  Ironically, Newtown is the location of the second largest gun-lobbying institution in the US, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

            There is a specious argument that “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  But as one of my colleagues has said, “you put enough guns out there, and somebody’s going to get hurt.”   

A few hours before the Newtown murders last week, a man entered a school in China’s Henan province. Obviously mentally disturbed, he tried to kill children. But the only weapon he was able to get was a knife. Although 23 children were injured, not one child died.*

            I expect that what happened at Newtown last week will not lead to the end of recreational gun ownership, or hunting, or anything of the sort, nor should it.  But I do hope we will finally have a reasonable limitation on the kinds of weapons that none but the military need in their possession.

            And lastly, writing as a Christian pastor, I have to wonder how any follower of Jesus could possibly justify a counter argument.            

*Quoted from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-the-solution-to-gun-violence-is-clear/2012/12/19/110a6f82-4a15-11e2-b6f0-e851e741d196_story.html?hpid=z2

Unconditional

          What sets Jesus apart from the rest of humanity was his capacity to love unconditionally.  This is (along with some additional points), indeed, why we Christians say he was the Son of God.  Jesus loved in a way the rest of us only occasionally do, thus there was something fundamentally different about him --- he was Other than we are. 

He had compassion for the crowds.  He showed kindness to the prostitute.  He offered hospitality to the tax collector as well as the poor.  He showed no favoritism among those of different social strata.  He loved all equally, and fully, with no conditions, no strings attached.  Even as he was crucified he loved them all – loved us all – pronouncing no curses on his persecutors.

          One caveat here:  Jesus did reserve some choice words of judgment for folks who were self-righteously religious.  The 23^rd Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel offers us a stark picture of Jesus as one who could not condone the hypocrisy of the overly-religious Pharisees of his own day.  He was appalled at the way they made their religion not a joy but a burden on the people.  I suspect Jesus was upset because these semi-professional religious folks were implying that God’s love was conditional.  One telling quote is verse 15, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

          My colleague, Rich Irwin, once said to me that he keeps that verse handy as a reminder that his ministry to people is not to trip them up in have-to’s, ought-to’s, and musts, but to release them for joyful living. 

          As a pastor I must remind myself daily to love people for who they are, not for what they can do for me, or even for what they can do for the church.  That we are loved unconditionally, as Jesus loved, is at the heart of the Christian message, and to love in that way is the essence of Christian discipleship.  Everything else is just decoration.

          Obedience to certain principles of morality and ethics is helpful, of course, but I believe we find our true, authentic selves, not by following principles (no matter how high-sounding), but by responding to being loved unconditionally. 

          Theologian Douglas Adams likens it to his experience of his grandparents.  Parents expect their children to toe the line, to follow the rules, which is all well and good.  But when children fail to measure up, as happens to all of us, grandparents will take them in their arms and love them in spite of their shortcomings.  And when any of us are loved in this way it sets us free to be our best selves.  When we believe there is nothing we can do that will prevent us from being loved, then we are liberated to attempt living at its best, and fullest. 

          God loves, unconditionally, every one of us.  That is the message that Jesus incarnates.  There is nothing we can do to make God love us more than God already does, AND there is nothing we can do to make God love us any less.  Go, therefore, and live . . . and love.  That’s why God made you.  This is the way Jesus saves you.