Proper 17 Year C 2025: Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

My oldest daughter is now three weeks into being a first grader. We found the sign shaped like an apple we bought at Target before she started preschool to write what grade she was starting and what she wanted to be when she grows up. She told me she wants to be an astronaut - a big step into realism from last year, when she wanted to be a unicorn. But as I dropped her off that first day, there was a prickle of fear. A prickle that was then realized this week when we got the news of another event that marks the beginning of a new school year: the first mass shooting at an American school.

On Thursday, I listened to an interview where a 10-year-old boy from Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis told of hiding under a pew with his friend on top of him, shielding him, as gunfire came through the stained glass windows while the kids were at mass Wednesday morning. Annunciation is named after the event which marked the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. But now, when I type “annunciation” into my search bar, the first dropdown option is “annunciation school shooting”. The same thing happens when you search “Columbine”. “Sandy Hook”. “Parkland”. Another word added to the collection of words that are forever changed in our collective consciousness. I remember rocking my oldest daughter, who was two at the time, following the shooting in Uvalde and weeping for the parents who would never again hold their children.

I am both old enough and young enough to remember my first school active shooter drill. My daughters will have no such “core memory”, as active shooter drills are part of the preschool safety routine. There will have been no time in the lives of kids born today when they will not have practiced for the time when someone enters their school with a gun. When the Columbine shootings happened, I was ten years old. It was many more years before I even knew that a columbine is a flower, not just the site of a massacre. Soon after that, we began “code red” drills. We were in art class at Sheridan Elementary School when our principal, Dr. Sibley’s, voice came over the speaker and we turned off the lights and all crowded together around the corner, out of sight of the door. It was a little silly - almost fun - to us. We knew it was a drill, and even when whatever administrator walked around checking door handles rattled the locked door of Ms. Mattley’s art room, it wasn’t scary. It was new, so any threat was not something that our sixth grade minds really understood yet.

I’ve dreaded the day when I would wake up to the news notification on a Sunday morning that there had been a mass shooting in whatever town I’m in. When I was in Colorado Springs, it happened one Saturday night in November 2022 when a man opened fire in Club Q in an anti-LGBTQ-motivated attack. Club Q was less than a mile from our house. We drove by the makeshift memorials as we took our kids to school. I was “lucky” enough that it wasn’t my Sunday to preach, because then how to respond was my rector’s problem. I’m a little…cynical in my feelings regarding my responsibility to respond to these events. I’ve wondered if, when that preaching Sunday comes when I awake to that notification, I'll just preach whatever I was already planning to preach, because we decided as a country, when we did nothing in the aftermath of the murder of a classroom of first graders at Sandy Hook, that the constant killing of children is the price we're willing to pay in America for our guns.

But we are called to better than that. Which is why, when prayer is offered for the constantly growing list of victims, it can feel hollow. As a Christian, it can feel embarrassing when those with the power to make change are asked for action and it’s never the right time and all they have to offer grieving families and communities are their “thoughts and prayers”. When that is all they have, I am reminded of the words of the prophet Amos, as he spoke on behalf of the Lord when he said, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:21-24) That is, if we are not willing to do justice, to work for righteousness, the Lord is uninterested in our words, no matter how adoring they may be.

In the words of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.” The Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota Craig Loya, who was elected out of Trinity Cathedral in Omaha, wrote in his statement, “the fact that we live in a nation where children are shot and killed while at worship or in school would be unimaginable if it wasn’t so common…We know that the whole purpose of our lives is to stand in the midst of a deeply distorted world and bear witness to Jesus’ better way of love. Our nation has made peace with the kind of carnage that played out in Minneapolis today, but we have not and we will not. It is essential that we continue to flood our elected officials with demands to reverse the grim choice we have made and pass sensible gun control laws that will prevent mass suffering and death. Whether our efforts are successful or not, it matters immensely that we as a people continue to point to a better way.”

It is fortuitous that, added to their voices, today we heard from the end of the letter to the Hebrews. All that is left after today’s reading is a benediction and final goodbye from the writer, whose identity is anonymous - they claim to be no one. I took the time to read through the entire letter this week. Throughout the letter, the writer of Hebrews urges the faithful, confident of their covenant relationship with God, to follow Christ’s example and live as he did, faithful, hopeful, loving, and patient in the face of persecution.

In the verses that precede today’s conclusive exhortations, the letter’s recipients are reminded to hope, which is a reminder I need constantly, but especially this week. In chapter 11, the writer defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (11:1) Conviction here is not simply a subjective attitude. For the writer, unseen realities are tested and “proved” by experience. The audience, members of the church’s “second generation” (2:3), had experienced persecution and had become disappointed that God’s promised kingdom had not yet come. Some members had begun to abandon the community. The author confronts this situation with a combination of exhortations to be faithful and warnings not to fall away. The writer continues in chapter 11 to give a catalogue of biblical experiences of those who set out by faith, ancestors like Abraham, Moses, and Rahab, who are all part of the great cloud of witnesses who surround us, who died in faith without having received the promises, but who encourage us to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (12:1-2)

We are encouraged by the author of Hebrews to persevere. To not lose hope. To let mutual love continue. To learn to say with confidence, “the Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.” (13:1,6)

In the promise of the future house of God from the prophet Isaiah, we see hope of a future where, “out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:3b-4) We continue to persevere in our hope that “the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make (us) complete in everything good so that (we) may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (13:20-21)