What Can We Do?

Just this week tragedy struck in the form of another high school shooting.  Every time we hear about this things we start to ask the questions ... how could this happen ... who is to blame ... what can we do to stop this?  Casting around for blame is easy.  We can ask where the parents were.  In the case of the shooting we can try and determine how the individual acquired a gun.  We usually wonder if there were some signs that we could have seen.  Was there a way teachers, friends, or anyone could have known things were about to become violent?  I was in high school when the shooting at Columbine took place.  I remember how things changed at the high school afterward.  Security was tightened, procedures were put in place to lock down the school and keep kids safe.  None of these things felt like they would really make a difference.  The fact of the matter is with that many children around it is impossible to keep everyone safe.

Marianne and I have been watching West Wing.  At one point on the show they talk about how the real nuclear threat from a terrorist organization is not the payload on some missile but a small device smuggled into DC or near some other target.  I like to think we have good security measures in place to keep our leaders safe, but against some threats it is easy to wonder how much can we really do.  As far as I know we never really had a good way to keep us safe from the Soviet threat, except mutually assured destruction.

When we are faced with threats, when we look at tragedies and wonder what went wrong, we want to believe there is something we can do to keep our children safe, to keep our leaders safe, to keep ourselves safe.  We cast about for answers, more gun control or more guns, better parenting, better support in schools.  We want to believe there is something we can do.

The scripture lesson for Sunday is Mark 8:31-38.  This is the first time in Mark that Jesus tells his disciples he is going to be killed.  Peter's response is one of shock, one of outrage.  I think we are like Peter.  Peter had grown up under the rule of the Romans.  He had probably seen friends, family members, or neighbors suffer under what was at times an oppressive rule.  I am sure he had felt powerless and wondered how his country could ever be free from the threat they faced.  Then he met Jesus.  Then he encountered this divine individual who could heal the sick, cast out demons, and perform all manner of miracles.  This was not an ordinary person, this was the Son of God.  If anyone could overthrow the Romans it had to be Jesus.  At least that is what he thought until Jesus said that he would fail, that the Romans would win, that even the Son of God could not defeat the might of Roman.

Like I said, we are like Peter, we want to believe in something that will keep us safe, something we can do to avert these tragedies and make everything better.  Like Peter I think we need to confront the fact that in the end that is impossible.  If, like God, we value free will, then it will always be possible for someone to find a way to cause harm, to hurt others, even to kill.  Jesus challenges us to think about this differently.  Jesus challenges us to realize that dying is not necessarily losing.  In fact sometimes living can be losing.  Jesus "loses" to the Romans because he refuses to play their game, because he refuses to believe that power, violence, and force are acceptable solutions.  He believes that is better to love and lose than to kill to win.

We cannot do something to guarantee that we will always be safe.  I knew people in high school that wore trench-coats like those that the shooters in Columbine wore.  I have friends who felt hurt, isolated, and alone in middle school and high school.  They never turned to violence, but I know there were days they thought about.  I know it sounds trite but I think if we just loved more it would make a difference.  I think it would help on the little things and ripple its way up to the big problems.  We cannot do something to keep us totally safe, but I would rather seek to love everyone and risk dying because of that then trusting no one ... because how else can we really be safe?