Collect
God of Hosts, You call us to serve the Prince of Peace in a world that worships the god of war. Grant us today wisdom to discern the dark sayings of Our Lord, grace to hear the hard words of Our Lord, and courage to obey the clear commands of Our Lord, that we might begin to live now in the Kingdom of Heaven where we will one day live forever through the saving grace of Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.
Right Panel: The Church in the World
An old Johnny Cash ballad tells the tale of Billy Joe, a good-hearted but restless young cowboy who rides off in search of excitement. As he leaves, his mother pleads with him:
Don't take your guns to town son.
Leave your guns at home Bill.
Don't take your guns to town.
Of course he rejects his mother’s advice - what kind of country/western song would it be otherwise? - and dies in a showdown at the local saloon.
As of midnight, December 31, Texas House Bill 910 becomes law and properly licensed citizens have the right to display their guns in a shoulder or belt holster in public. We commonly refer to this as “open-carry.” Businesses, schools, and other institutions may opt out of this rule by posting a bill which warns that they are a gun-free zone.
On Wednesday, September 16, 1999, Larry Ashbrook strode into the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth and unloaded three magazines of bullets from a nine-millimeter semi-automatic handgun before turning the weapon on himself. Three teenagers and three adults were killed at the church and a fourth teenager died later at the hospital. Seven others were treated at area hospitals.
On Sunday, December 9, 2007, a gunman appeared in the parking lot of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs as Sunday services were wrapping up. He killed two people and wounded three others before an armed security guard drew her weapon and shot him to death.
On June 17 of this year, Dylan Roof attended the Wednesday night prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and sat quietly through the service before opening fire and killing nine worshipers, including the pastor.
Taken together, these two facts - tragic murders taking place during church services and a law allowing Texans to carry sidearms - raise the obvious question: Should Christians go to church packing heat? Or does Our Lord cry out to us as we whiten our sepulchres and head off to Northside, “Don’t take your guns to church!”?
Of course, as Baptists, that question leads us to one source: What does the Bible say? But that question can be harder to answer than it might seem at first. Before we can declare the truth of the sacred text of Scripture, we have to wrestle with the question of how we are going to interpret the Bible. Do we simply pull out a passage that seems to speak to the issue and declare, “This is what the Bible says”? This is known as a “flat” reading, the idea that whatever the Bible says anywhere is what the Bible says everywhere.
But this can lead to problems.
Proverbs 26.4 says, “ Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself.” So “the Bible says” not to respond to dumb remarks. However, Proverbs 26.5 says, “Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.” So “the Bible says” respond to dumb remarks.
Clearly in a case like this the Bible speaks situationally; depending on the circumstances, one response or the other might be better, and we must fan out across the entire landscape of revelation in search of biblical landmarks that will allow us to choose a particular course of action in a given set of circumstances. Everybody has a plan, a theory, a method of reading and interpreting the Bible. Let me give you mine.
I take it from the Baptist Faith & Message, the 1963 version, which says, under the section entitled “The Scriptures,” that “The criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted is Jesus Christ.” This means that since Jesus declared himself to be the focal point and ultimate meaning of all of the Bible (Jo 5.39, Lk 24.27), I read any particular passage in the full light of Jesus’ own words and deeds. To paraphrase the timeless children’s hymn, “The Bible says it, this I know, because Jesus tells me so.” Therefore, I want to bring our question, “Should we bring guns to church?” to the feet of Jesus. I think the text we have read this morning provides our best opportunity to find an answer.
Central Panel: The Text
We can give this passage a “flat” reading: Jesus says to buy a sword; that must mean Christians should take up weapons to defend themselves from persecution. Some even point to the word “now,” as if Jesus says, “Poverty and non-violence worked fine before, but the rules are about to change.” There are problems with this, however - problems looking backward and problems looking forward.
Looking backward, such an interpretation would undo most of Jesus’ teaching. He admonishes his followers to turn the other cheek to violence. (Lk 6.29) He tells his followers to take up their crosses daily, not to kill their crucifiers. (Lk 9.23) He rebukes James and John when they counsel violent retribution. (Lk 9.54-55) A few hours after this saying, he will tell Pilate that his kingdom isn’t the kind that involves war. (Jo 18.36) If we want to say that Jesus’ ideas about non-violence applied only during his earthly ministry, we have to ask what point there is in reading anything in the Gospels prior to the crucifixion, since all of it would now be out of date.
Looking forward, such an interpretation would mean that the early Christians completely rejected Jesus’ command. Yes, one disciple draws a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane (v.49-50), but that is the last time in all of Scripture that we see a sword in the hand of a saint! The book of Acts records multiple persecutions but not one case of armed resistance. When Herod beheads James and imprisons Peter, Christians do not fight; they pray. (Acts 12.5) Paul rejects Roman weaponry in favor of the armor of the Holy Spirit. (Eph 6) History reports that when the Romans attacked Jerusalem to put down the Jewish rebellion, the Christians obeyed Jesus’ teaching to flee. (Lk 21.21) They ran to Pella, a village across the Jordan river, and survived. The disciples seem eager to obey this command: they immediately show Jesus that they are, in fact, packing heat (v.39), they beg Jesus to punch in the nuclear code (v.49), and at least one of them is quick on the draw when the moment arrives (v.50). Why would they never again obey the one command of Jesus that made sense to them?
What then? I believe the best understanding of this passage is that Jesus prepares his disciples to join him in a dramatic enacting of prophecy. This kind of thing is common among Hebrew prophets. When Isaiah wants to enact the defeat and exile of those who trust Egypt instead of God for salvation from Assyria, he goes naked and barefoot for three years, living like one destitute on the refugee trail. (Isa 20) When Jeremiah wants to show that any nation resisting Babylon will be conquered, he straps a yoke to his shoulders and appears as someone who has been enslaved and forced to bear burdens. (Jer 27) When Ezekiel wants to predict the final conquest of Jerusalem, he eats unclean bread mixed from different kinds of grain and baked over a fire using dung for fuel; he literally lives like those we see today fleeing to Europe from Syria, starving pilgrims who cannot be too choosy about what they eat in order to survive. (Ez 4)
Jesus has already acted out two important prophecies in Luke 19 at the beginning of this same week. The Triumphal Entry isn’t a spontaneous parade; it’s more of a flash-mob that Jesus sets up. He chooses a donkey to ride to act out Zec 9.9. He selects the same route that the great Jewish conqueror Judas Maccabbeus had taken when he liberated Jerusalem from the Syrians a century earlier. He gives his disciples the talking point to feed the media: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” a slogan ripped right out of the Psalm 118 which predicts the coming of the Messiah.
He does the same thing when he enters the temple and ceremonially destroys it. Prophecy said the Messiah would rebuild the temple to make it a truly Godly place. (Mal 3.1) Later Jesus predicts that the temple will be destroyed (Lk 21), and he says in a similar context that he will be the new temple (Jo 2.19). So Jesus enacts a miniature Roman attack on the temple as a way of saying it will be destroyed and he will replace it with himself as the way to meet God.
I think he does the same thing here. The key comes in v.37 where Jesus interprets his own action: “For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless'; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.’" Jesus quotes Isaiah 53.12 and basically says, “All right, that’s our script. They’ve been looking for an excuse to arrest me as a dangerous revolutionary. Well, we’re going to give them probable cause.” That’s the only possible reason he could say that two swords wielded by fishermen were “enough” to face down an entire detachment of highly-trained and well-equipped Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Now look what actually happens: The disciple strikes his blow (v.50). Jesus says, “No more of this!” (v.51; The New Revised translation is very good here.) Then he heals the only wound ever inflicted in the only holy war ever fought. In fact in Matthew’s account (26.52), Jesus orders them to holster their sidearms because, he says, more swords only mean more corpses, not ultimate peace. Then Jesus goes willingly to a death he could have prevented with no help from the disciples’ blades. Again in Matthew’s account, we have that famous reference to calling “twelve legions of angels.” (Mt 26.53) You may have heard the old song, “He could have called ten thousand angels/To destroy the world and set him free.” That’s a good song but bad math: A Roman legion at full strength mustered six thousand men; I make that seventy-two thousand angels and Jesus actually said, “more than twelve legions.” If he’d wanted to settle matters militarily, he could have called in the shock-and-awe. He didn’t. The first and last act of Christian violence sanctioned by Christ took place two thousand years ago.
Right Panel: The Church in the Text
So back to our question: Should Christians go to church carrying guns as a defense against armed intruders? Some very well-intended people say we should.
I’ve heard people say that our world has become hostile to Christians, that we face violent attacks, and that this requires us to defend ourselves. There are two problems with that argument. The first is that it implies this is a new situation; but Jesus warned us all along that this was part of the deal. The early Christians died in droves but never took up arms against their persecutors. The other problem is that it implies we only take Jesus seriously as long as it doesn’t cost us anything, but that when things get real, we jettison Jesus and live by worldly “common sense.”
Which, by the way, is very common, but doesn’t make much actual sense.
For instance, we’ve all heard the famous slogan coined by Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” But let’s do the math on that. First century Jewish patriots thought the only way to stop a bad Roman with a sword was a good Jew with a sword. Result: No Israel for nearly two millennia and still no temple. Jesus said the only way to stop a bad Roman with a cross was a good guy willing to die on a cross. Early Christians actually took him seriously. Result: No more crosses, lots of Christians.
I think Jesus’ answer is clear: No, Christians should not come to worship the Prince of Peace bearing the weapons of the god of war.
Do not misunderstand me: I do not mean that if we lay down our arms Jesus will protect Northside and no one will ever enter this sanctuary and kill people. Jesus makes no promises of that kind; in fact, he promises us prison and stoning and exile and crosses and even says that there will be times when the people who kill us think they’re doing God a favor. (Jo 16.2) What I do mean is that in a world grown increasingly violent the Gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to lead the way by living the Kingdom of Heaven before that Kingdom has fully come. We have the opportunity to lead the world out of violence, not follow it into more violence. We have the chance to show the world Jesus, not just tell the world about Jesus. We may - it isn’t really very likely, is it? - but we may have the occasion to resist to the shedding of blood (Heb 12.4) without being the ones who shed blood ourselves.
Conclusion
That’s the challenge: To live in a kingdom that isn’t yet here, because that is the only way for the kingdom to come here.
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge put this in an interesting way. A great student of science, he noted that when the larva of the horned fly spins its cocoon, it leaves two tiny cavities for the antennae that it does not yet possess! Now, if the little pest could reason, it might say, “Why go to all the trouble of making room for what isn’t there? You show me those antennae and then I’ll make a place for them.” Of course, if it did this, it would never develop antennae because, when they tried to grow, they would find no room!
It is the same with the Kingdom of Heaven: We live in the pupal stage, if you will: Neither we nor our world is anything like being fully formed in Christ. Yet we are no longer what we were; like the insect in a cocoon, the Christian in Christ has entered a new and irrevocable stage of life. And Jesus challenges us to leave room now for the Kingdom that has yet to come! To live between the “now” and the “not yet” as though the “not yet” had already arrived. To feel the potential Kingdom work in us, even as the actual world works on us!
We can say, “Show me a safe world where I never fear anything at church, and then I’ll come to church unarmed.” But if we demand to see that world before we agree to live in that world, that world will never come!
I think the word of Our Lord to us is as clear as that old Johnny Cash song: Don’t take your guns to church.
Invitation
There are a range of responses someone might have to today’s message. Members of this church, I invite you to respond, not by agreeing with me, necessarily, but at least by pledging that you will, like those noble Bereans of Acts 17.11, search the Scriptures daily to discern the truth of this message. Dig deep into God’s Word instead of surfing the shallow whitecaps of the cable news networks and listen to Christ instead of the culture. Break free from the talking heads of television to discern the voice of Christ who is the Head of the Church.
Christians who are not members here, you need a church home and God may be calling you to Northside. No one will ask you to sign a pledge stating that you will never bring a gun to church. But you know now that this is a congregation unafraid to wrestle with the difficult teachings of Jesus as they apply to our own real lives. If that is the kind of church where you want to serve Christ, you are welcome to present yourself for membership.
To anyone who has not trusted Christ as savior, I will say this: Whether or not I have read the Bible correctly on the subject of guns, I have at least made it clear that Jesus calls his followers to a difficult and sometimes dangerous life: no false advertising today about prosperity, with all the hard stuff left in the fine print. But Jesus does not call us to suffering for suffering’s sake; he calls us to eternal salvation that makes everything - even suffering - work to our ultimate good and God’s ultimate glory. So if you’re willing to follow a Savior who not only predicted persecution but suffered it himself on our behalf, you are welcome to come and declare yourself his disciple.
Benediction
If there must be violence, may the Lord make us
Those who endure it,
And not those who inflict it.
Those who end it,
And not those who begin it.
Those who redeem it
And not those who return it.
If there must be violence, may we suffer it
In Christ
And With Christ
And as Christ,
That in us the world might see Christ,
And in seeing Christ might see God,
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
One God now and forever,
Amen.
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