We Can't Just Pray with Our Words

I really want to scream and swear at the top of my lungs because mass shootings are becoming routine in this country. We're horrified. We offer our thoughts and prayers. We go about our business. Then we do the same song and dance when the next tragedy occurs.

Horror, thoughts, and prayers are all appropriate responses to such madness. I don't question the sincerity to those reactions. And yet each time there is this narrative of "This has to stop!" But expressing horror, sending thoughts, and offering prayers are doing little to stand in the way of this swelling tide of death. 

Prayers are wonderful. Our church is having a prayer service on Wednesday and I am so thankful that is taking place. But prayers must be something that compel us to do something in this world. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus instructs us to pray "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The life and teachings of Jesus demonstrate that we are supposed to be part of the answer to that prayer. Those who follow the way of Christ are supposed to be doing on-the-ground work to bring about that kingdom and will.

In other words, if we just pray and it doesn't compel us to actually confront the horror that visits us again and again and again then we're just offering words. We're not as concerned about God's kingdom of peace, love, and justice coming as we say we are. We have to pray with our actions. Our prayers over mass shootings, for racial justice, a divided country, for hurting friends should burst forth into the movements of our hearts and minds, hands and feet.

We have sit down and have the tough conversation about why it's madness that individuals have access to weapons whose sole purpose is to hit as many human beings as possible as fast as it can. We need to talk about mental health, prejudice, and poverty. We have to talk to our government representatives. We have to confront how violence is glorified in this country. All of this has to be a part of our prayers.

In the first chapter of Isaiah, the prophet relays a vision in which God roars:
"When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen;
    your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
    remove the evil of your doings
    from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
    rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
    plead for the widow."

If you aren't going to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow, I'm not going to listen to your prayers. That is what it says. Those words indict me, you, and all of us who offer our thoughts and prayers. Our prayers are empty if they do not move us to be a part of what God is about. And make no mistake, God is not about the slaughter that happened in Las Vegas, the shooting at a church last week in Tennessee, the massacre at a nightclub in Florida, the mass murder at a church in South Carolina, the unspeakable tragedy at an elementary school in Connecticut. Again and again it happens and we cry out "How long?" and God answers us back "How long indeed?"