Aurora shootings

Tripp Hudgins 7-25-2012
Photo: Southern Stock / Getty Images

Photo: Southern Stock / Getty Images

This morning I read and sang this canticle.

Come, let us sing to the Lord;
 let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving
 and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
For the Lord is a great God,
 and a great king above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
 and the heights of the hills are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
 and his hands have moulded the dry land.
Come, let us bow down and bend the knee,
 and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is our God,
   and we are the people of his pasture
   and the sheep of his hand.
 O that today you would hearken to his voice!

   Psalm 95:1-7 (Venite)

Then I lamented. I lamented the work of human beings to tear down what God holds in God's hands. I lamented that my friends in the peace movement callously sent a press release decrying the gun lobby within what seemed like moments after the smoke cleared in Aurora. I lamented the inane anti-Darwinian posture of other Christians. We're all looking for something to blame. We cannot simply sit in our sackcloth and our ashes and lament ... lament our own failure, lament the actions of someone raised in church, lament our inability to protect the innocent, lament our powerlessness.

We cannot and will not lament our powerlessness. We need to learn how. 

Amber Odvody 7-25-2012
Fog and light photo, lussiya  / Shutterstock.com

Fog and light photo, lussiya / Shutterstock.com

“It was like a scene out of a movie.”

I’ve heard that phrase a few too many times in the past month.  

On June 26, after the third consecutive 100-plus-degree day, residents of northwest Colorado Springs fled their neighborhoods with a few belongings shoved in their cars as a wildfire came barreling down the mountainside. The billows of smoke and inferno flames, calculated to be three stories high, could be seen from anywhere in the city. It was like a scene out of a movie.

In the early morning hours on July 4, I received the text that I had been dreading: “Cliffy is with Jesus.” After a six-year battle with cancer, my biggest cheerleader, friend, and mentor, Cliff Anderson, died in hospice. Two months prior, Cliff was sharing his wisdom and offering his typical words of encouragement at a retreat for GreenHouse Ministry, an intentional community that we started together in Colorado Springs. But shortly after that weekend the diagnosis became clear. This incurable type of cancer was going to win, sooner rather than later. Watching his decline felt like watching a tragic movie.

At the midnight premiere of the new Batman movie, Dark Night Rises, on July 20 in a suburb of Denver, a gunman opened fire on a packed theater, killing 12 and injuring more than 50 people Witnesses to the shooting said it was like something out of a movie. The scene was an eerie echo of another mass shooting in a different Denver suburb 13 years ago at Columbine High School. Could this really be happening again?

Nadia Bolz-Weber 7-23-2012
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

itia Stillwell and Lori Meade embrace and pray with thousands of others during a prayer vigil. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

As a woman preacher, I can’t help but love St. Mary Magdalene.  She was the first witness to the resurrection. When I first discerned my call to be a preacher I got a tattoo of her on my forearm – it’s from a rare depiction in ancient Christian art – of her proclaiming the resurrection to the apostles. I felt that when I needed to, I could borrow her strength. And since July 22 is her feast day, we decided weeks ago to ditch the normal Sunday readings and celebrate her as an important saint to us.

But then Friday happened. I was still in New Orleans when I saw the news of the shooting. After praying that you were all safe I soon thought, “we can’t really hold a celebration of a saint today … it just wouldn’t make any sense.”

I had gone to New Orleans with an idea for a sermon on Mary Magdalene – a sermon about who gets to speak in the Bible and who gets to be named and blah, blah, blah.

And just as I was about to ditch it all and go with the regularly assigned reading for today, I went back and again read this story of Mary Magdalene at the tomb and realized, given the violence and terror thrust upon our community this week, that maybe Mary had more to say about it than I could. I decided again to borrow strength and voice from her. So were I a pastor who titled her sermons, this one would be WWMMP – "What Would Mary Magdalen Preach?"

Religion and gun photo,  sagasan / Shutterstock.com

Religion and gun photo, sagasan / Shutterstock.com

Of all the controversies that have followed in the bloody wake of the July 20 shooting rampage in Aurora, Colo., few have provided such a clarifying insight into the moral tensions and contradictions in American culture than the argument over whether gun control is a religious issue.

The Rev. James Martin, a popular author and Jesuit priest, was among the first to set out the terms of the debate, when he penned a column at America magazine arguing that gun control “is as much of a ‘life issue’ or a ‘pro-life issue’ … as is abortion, euthanasia, or the death penalty (all of which I am against), and programs that provide the poor with the same access to basic human needs as the wealthy.”

Martin’s central point was that abortion opponents spare no effort to try to shut down abortion clinics or to change laws to limit or ban abortions, so clearly believers should be committed to taking practical steps to restrict access to guns.

“Simply praying, ‘God, never let this happen again’ is insufficient for the person who believes that God gave us the intelligence to bring about lasting change,” Martin wrote. “It would be as if one passed a homeless person and said to oneself, ‘God, please help that poor man,’ when all along you could have helped him yourself.”

Trevor Hughes 7-23-2012
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Parishioners in Aurora, CO pray during morning mass remembering victims of the theater shooting. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Worshippers in Aurora, Colo., rocked by the July 20 mass shooting flocked to church Sunday, seeking solace within their faith communities.

"People are saying that if there's a day to go to church, this is it," said Allie McNider, associate pastor at Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church, about a mile from the movie theater where police say James Holmes opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 58 more. "They're looking for a sense of something bigger than themselves."

Meanwhile, in Rancho Penasquitos, Calif., a San Diego suburb and the hometown of alleged shooter James Holmes, Pastor Greg Hoffmann prayed with his congregation at Penasquitos Lutheran Church, where the Holmes family are members.

Hoffman spoke of the pain and shock the church community was feeling. He preached on the verse from Mark in which Jesus tells his disciples to "come with me to a quiet place."

QR Blog Editor 7-23-2012

ThinkProgress reports on Mayor Bloomberg's comments on the subject of gun control:

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doubled down on his call for stronger gun regulation in the aftermath of the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, telling MSNBC Monday morning that both presidential candidates must explain how they will address gun violence.

“How anybody can run for the highest office in the country where 48,000 people are going to get killed in the next four years and not have a plan. Maybe they do, maybe they have a secret plan to end the war,” Bloomberg said and called for strengthening existing laws and closing loopholes."

Read more here