Sunday’s readings are about neighbors. The reading from Exodus says, “Thus says the Lord,” “If ever you wrong your neighbor and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will flare up, and I will kill you.” In the Gospel reading Jesus tells Pharisees wanting to trap him that they are commanded to “love your neighbor.”
Loving someone is really quite easy if love is a feeling. We feel happy, even delighted, perhaps satisfied with ourselves as we live in the feeling. We can keep the feeling, even if another person bothers us. We can avoid the bothersome person at family gatherings, keep our ear phones on at work, pretend we didn’t see them at the grocery store. Love being an action requires more of a commitment on our part. It is a commitment to attend to a neighbor, care for their well-being personally and socially, and keep them from harm or help heal any harm they experience. What would we do if someone harmed our neighbor or our loved one? The vast majority of people would not kill them. The average person cannot imagine killing another person. The average person would not be able to live with themselves for taking another person’s life and for taking that person from others who love them. Gun owners, especially those who own AR-15s and AK 47s ready to kill enemies, are not your average person. A person who owns a warfare grade assault weapon like the Ruger SFAR, identified as the rifle the U.S. Army Reservist – a good guy with a gun – in Maine used to kill 18 people, is not your average person. Such weapons owners are exceptions. They represent a pathological exception to the average person, to the normal human being. They are ready and willing to kill, whether or not a loved one is harmed. They are simply ready and willing to kill. They have been made ready and willing to kill by a U.S. culture that is not your average culture. It too is an exception – a pathological exception to the average culture, to the normal culture. It too is ready and willing to kill, whether or not anyone or anything is harming it. It has been made willing and ready to kill by an Old Testament that is not your average book. Not because the Old Testament is an exception but because it is the norm for books judged sacred that normalize killing as sacred, as today’s first reading asserts; “Thus says the Lord,” “I will kill you.” The book is taken literally by an exceptionally unhealthy culture with exceptionally unhealthy people some of whom like to call themselves Christ-like but cannot ‘love their neighbor.’
“England is a cup of tea. France, a wheel of ripened brie. Greece, a short, squat olive tree. America is a gun. Brazil is football on the sand. Argentina, Maradona’s hand. Germany, an oompah band. America is a gun. Holland is a wooden shoe. Hungary, a goulash stew. Australia, a kangaroo. America is a gun. Japan is a thermal spring. Scotland is a highland fling. Oh, better to be anything than America as a gun.” (America is a Gun – Brian Bilston)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, en-courage us to be brave with gun owners.
Question: What can I do to help heal the U.S. gun culture?
Oct 29, 2023 Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time