Sermon : On Fear and Violence

In less than a month several members of this church have been violated by the pandemic possession of this nation. Gary Davis lost his colleagues, Kevin Michael Burrell and James McDonald. These two police officers were shot in Compton on Feb. 22. Robert Montgomery lost his cousin, Derek Ellis, in Long Beach. They were all victims of violence. All victims of the barrel of a gun.

What do we do when the abstract becomes concrete? What do we do when death plunges us into a sea of fantasy and make-believe? We respond to the horror of death with, “It can’t be true. Well, I spoke to him only yesterday.” What do we do when tears well up in our eyes as the body’s desire for life fills us with rage?

We are living under the shadow of the storm clouds of despair and hopelessness, post-April 29, 1992. We hide our pain behind the mask of our anger. Has the healing taken place? Or are we resisting it because it is easier to live the lie of our independence than accept the truth of our interdependence. We are living, as it were, between court verdicts. We are living fearfully and some of us courageously through the seasons of violence.

My friends, as a community of faith we must not conform to the value disciplines of the world, nor should we buy into the simplistic, irrational shop talk that “riot-torn cities” will be transformed when the plans of Rebuild Los Angeles are implemented.

First, don’t get “mad,” with a view toward getting even. Violence is so pervasive and powerful. Violence must not be the final arbiter in human affairs. We can, as Christians, do better than getting mad and getting even.

Second, don’t succumb to the belief that you are your best security, meaning you are a mature adult and can take things into your own hands because of the constitutional right to bear arms. In other words, don’t buy or acquire a gun. I wonder whether we can be critical of gang members when post-April 29 gun sales have increased drastically. Is this what role modeling is about?

Third, don’t moralize and make any correlation between race, gender and the need for violence as a hallmark for manhood, womanhood, the protection of or the advancement of race pride or ascendancy. Violence has become the coming-of-age ritual of human kind.

What can we do? First, don’t get angry; however, if you do, and most likely you will, channel your energy in positive directions. Get involved with community organizations. Be active in programs for change in the “deprivations” that permit the continuing cycle of powerlessness among disadvantaged communities. Second, get rid of your guns. Live courageously, cautiously and faithfully. I can hear some of you saying, “Pastor, you must be crazy.” Well, this I can concede. Sometime ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, and I paraphrase, “Those who believe in an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth will end up blind and toothless.”

I wonder whether it is reasonable to suggest that violence is the “new slavery” that plagues our nation. The oppression is so severe, and to some, so comforting, that the shackles are kept in place by the language and symbols of violence. The Emancipation Proclamation against violence has been declared by the emancipator, Jesus. Can’t we live in faith and not in fear? We are free. Jesus said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives . . . to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”