Daily Lesson for June 13, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson is in Memoriam:

Our hearts are all broken for the beautiful lives so callously robbed from this earth early Sunday morning in Orlando. We mourn with those who mourn and pray that God would give them the strength and peace they need to walk grief's sorrowful path.

In recent hours I have spoken with several friends in the LGBTQ community.  They feel now particularly targeted and vulnerable. This is a moment for us to reach out to them as they are indeed our brothers and our sisters.  It is our duty as brothers, sisters, friends, allies and other persons of goodwill to stand in solidarity with -- to pledge ourselves to confront the homophobia wherever we might find it.

I have already made a similar pledge to my Muslim brothers and sisters, who now also feel vulnerable to threats of retaliation. Last year, I and 30,000 other Americans signed a pledge to build a circle of protection around our Muslim neighbors and, if necessary, to give even our bodies in their defense.  I stand by this pledge, knowing that it is evil's way to exploit its own evil acts in the effort to divide and then conquer us.

There will now be continued debates about guns and gun laws. I can tell you that I will not tell others that they ought not to be allowed to carry or buy weapons, especially when threatened by those who would kill and destroy.  But I myself have chosen to walk unarmed, and pray I shall continue to do so, not because I do not believe guns are necessary but because I believe that when someone lives by a gun something inside him or her dies by the gun also.  This is the cruel price of the protection of violence and its a price I am not willing to pay -- not yet anyway.

As for this act of terror in Orlando and its relation to the rising threat of terrorism we have seen in the last decade and a half, these are the days Jesus spoke of when he said, "The love of many will grow cold." Compassion can wear thin. The better angels of our nature can be tested.   Talk of love can become intolerable.  But Jesus added, "The one who endures to the end shall be saved."  In other words, it is in times like these that the values which make us who we are are tested. Values like equality, democracy, the judgment of the person by the -- in King's words -- "the content of his character" and not the criminality of his neighbor. If we lose these values now then terror has won.

Two years ago our church joined with a small number of other churches in town for a prayer service in response to the then-still burgeoning threat of ISIS.  I preached the homily and used as my text Matthew 13:24-43, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, where Jesus compares the evil of this world to weeds sowed into a crop of wheat by "an enemy". The farmhands are frustrated and want very much to go out and pluck up all the weeds.  But the farmer cautions them not to do so because in pulling up the bad they will be sure to pull up a lot of good also. It is better to wait, he says, until they're all grown up -- until you can be sure and tell a weed from the wheat.  The weeds will have their day in the sun, but the harvest is coming when they will sure enough be done away with.

In times like these our love is threatened to grow cold. We are tempted to go out and round up all the weeds.  But a lot of good would be lost also. The prevailing wisdom is rather to realize that weeds are now a reality. We have to now accept that reality. We can't go in and just spray or tear up the whole field. For in doing so too much good would be lost. Instead we have to wait, identity, contain, and then when we know for sure which is a weed and which is weed go to pulling.

To do anything else would not be an honor to those who lost their lives to evil in Orlando, or Sacramento, or anywhere in the world. In fact, it would be a dishonor. And it would be exactly what the enemy wants us to do.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that," Dr. King so eloquently said. And to it, I would humbly add this maxim also: Hate cannot drive us to hate; the light inside us is much too strong. For it is the very light of very light, and up against it no darkness of any enemy can prevail.