Here we are in the final Sunday of the Easter season. 7 Sundays of Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Christ. We’ve been learning about the early church in our readings through Acts, hearing about the coming of Christ in Revelation, and exploring who Jesus is and was in John. The day of Ascension was this Thursday. We might say that this is a celebratory time in the church summed up in the words of the Gospel today, where Jesus was praying for us that we may be one with him and the Father. Of one mind and one heart in this intimate experience of love for ourselves and humanity that flows on through time. It’s beautiful.

Darkness and Light Together

And yet we find ourselves again in a time of violence and death. Like so many people, my heart has been broken this past week from the shooting, which came quickly on the heels of two other deadly shootings. So, we find ourselves again contemplating death, the brokenness of our world, violence that doesn’t end and our hearts cry, How long, O God. How long! How long must the innocent and the vulnerable suffer the burden of the sins of our world?

But maybe today’s gospel is the perfect reading for our day and time, because here is Jesus praying for his disciples and for us, in the flow of his union with the Father, giving thanks and loving others without fear, even though the very next thing that happens is Jesus is betrayed and arrested in the garden, leading to his death. Here we are just about done with Easter and already our readings are reminding us of the crucifixion. The light and the dark of this world are always so close to each other.

But there seems to be so much darkness at times. We’ve been taking wave after wave of tragedy and trauma and it’s all too much sometimes. Perhaps we are wondering when we can rest.

When can we go to the grocery store, even while black, without fear?

Or when can we go to church, even while Asian, and not think about who might come to harm us? Or when can we, evens as teachers and children, go to school and enjoy the fun of the last week before summer without this happening ever again? How long, O Lord, must we wait? The gospel today is Jesus’ prayer for his disciples and for us, the new disciples. In the prayer, he says he does not ask for us to be removed from the world. We are to be here. We are where we are supposed to be, in this place of fear and pain and darkness and sin.

And yet we also have rest in Christ now. We are loved as we are, where we are. We are called to be of one mind and one heart with our Divine God. Always we can call on Jesus in prayer, always we can call on God and be heard and loved, no matter how sad or angry our prayers might be. God is big enough to take on our anguish and dismay.

And, in Jesus’ prayer, we are called into action. Jesus says, “In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission.” We have things to do. We have a mission. Yet in the face of these tragedies and in the face of stymied politics and the division and anger in our world, and the money flooding our governmental structures, many of us feel stuck. Helpless. Nothing seems to work to stop this violence against our children and vulnerable people. We always seem end up here, with more innocent lives lost. How long, Oh God, must we wait?

Now, in Acts reading today, Paul and Silas knew something about being stuck.

They were arrested for being disruptive to the flow of commerce in Philippi, beaten, shackled, and thrown in jail. That sounds pretty stuck to me. Sounds like not a great time, and yet they were worshipping God and singing hymns at midnight in their awful situation. And they were freed by God, with doors opening and shackles popping off. The funny thing is that they sat there. They didn’t run. Paul and Silas knew something about being stuck, but they also knew something about power and where the real power resided in this situation. It resided with God and in their prayers and discipleship, with them. They had nothing to fear.

What strikes me about this text is that the walls were meaningless to them. Yes, they were in prison, yet they prayed and sang. Yes, the walls came down, but they felt no need to run and consequently harm the jailer in their flight. The prison seemed to not be a prison to them. With the power of God, they saw the walls as flimsy as they ultimately were.

I wonder if Paul and Silas have something for us to really hear today. Maybe the walls of our stuckness, the walls of our prison of not knowing what to do or how to move forward are not nearly as real as we make them out to be. However, Paul and Silas take them seriously enough to not just walk out of them in disregard to what those walls meant to the jailer and his life. Afterall, the jailer would have been killed for losing the prisoners, thus he was about to take his own life. So, while these walls were not powerful when God was involved, they were important. They needed to be taken seriously for the salvation of the people involved.

So, what are the walls that imprison us and make us so stuck?

What are these walls made of as we watch mass shooting after mass shooting? Many might answer gun laws, and certainly our laws need updating and enforcement. This is long overdue and many measures are actually supported by the vast majority of the people in the country, regardless of party affiliation. So, there is that and there’s plenty to do to advocate for those steps.

But I wonder if gun laws are the only part of the answer. In the news, we also hear about how deaths of despair, addiction, mental health struggles, children’s suicide, domestic violence, and crime are all on the rise. Surely not everyone is in such despair and in such darkness that they find the light of children unbearable to the point of killing them. That is not normal. But is the rest of normal? Is it normal that we live in a society of epidemic levels of loneliness? Or the annual number of opioid overdoses in America is now more than the total number of American troops lost in Vietnam? We live in a society in pain… vast pain, fear, and hopelessness. Is it possible that we haven’t really stood up for sensible gun laws, because we honestly don’t think change can happen? Is it possible we don’t trust each other enough across our many divisions to work together for our shared values? Have we lost hope that the pain of our country can be addressed at all? Maybe that’s the real prison wall that keeps us stuck.

To that I say, let us remember we are Christians. Hope, faith, and love is our motto. It is our mission.

That doesn’t mean we don’t know fear or confusion. That doesn’t mean that we don’t flail and get stuck. Of course, we do. On our own, we’re as hapless as the next person. What we may have forgotten in our prisons of hopelessness is that we are not the source of our own inspiration. We are not the source of our love, faith, or hope. God is. The Holy Spirit is. Jesus is. We may have forgotten all of us are children of God, even those of us so lost in despair they lash out and kill. Even those who hide their hurt from being bullied, ostracized, or abused in darkness, in addiction, or in being lost. We need the gift of God’s faith that God’s love and hope is indeed enough for all of us. So, as we pray for the families who lost loved ones in the over 200 mass shootings that have happened so far this year in America, especially this week the families of Uvalde, Texas, let us also pray for ourselves, for the healing balm of Christ, for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to fill our imaginations and souls with hope for the Kingdom of God and inspiration of how we may find our work to do in the world as the shared body of Christ. Let us pray for our own rest and recovery in all of this turmoil, but let us not stay resting.

We have a mission. For you, it may look like calling your senator every day. It may look like practicing love and care with each person you meet. It may look like Celebration Lutheran writing notes of support and love to the teachers and staff at the school across the street. I don’t know. Our missions as individuals and as a congregation will vary and that’s perfect. That’s awesome. We may not even all agree on details. That’s OK, too. We don’t need reasons to get stuck and to stay stuck, like getting stuck in circles of endless bickering. We need the power and the flow of the Holy Spirit lifting our eyes beyond our prison walls. We need each other to do it. We need prayer. We need imagination. We need God. All of these things we have already, to make these walls of our own hopelessness to come tumbling down. We need and to be filled by God with all we need for the mission to come, for it is our work to do.

AMEN