Responding to the Shooting in Uvalde TX

Morning, I want to spend some time talking about um some of the current events that have occurred um in the country, and then I'm gonna share a little bit about our plan for the summer.

So let me um let me pray briefly before we um talk about this.

I do not normally on a Sunday morning talk about current events.

Usually we're going through a book of the Bible, and um that whatever comes up in the text is kind of the is what drives the theme of what we're talking about.

But we happen to land here on a uh holiday weekend.

There have been some significant things that have occurred um within kind of Christianity and the Southern Baptist tribe over this last week as well as uh nationally.

And so I figured this would be a good time to talk about that and then give you a roadmap for where we're going over the summer with our preaching.

Lord, we um ask that you would bless this time.

We thank you for letting us gather.

Um what a privilege to gather in an air-conditioned room with this food that Joe has brought and the coffee that uh Zuki has made for us and an amazing sound system and Nick leading us.

Lord, we um have more than most churches.

Um, and we want to say thank you for that.

Um you have uh been so gracious and so kind to us, and um forgive us, Lord, for quickly forgetting um how much you've provided for us as a church.

And God, as we turn our attention and consider some of the things that have already been on our hearts throughout the week, with this shooting in Texas and up in Buffalo, and um the task force report that came out last Sunday.

Um, God, we ask that you would um that you would teach us and speak into our lives the things that we need to hear.

Um that you would help us to think um in a way that reflects the truths of scripture.

Um God, we we just commit this time to you, and we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

So, yeah, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about just responding as Christians when there is a school shooting, and then also there was a sexual abuse report that came out specifically for the Southern Baptists.

So let's start um just with um the um the shooting that occurred.

Um as many of you know, on Tuesday of this last week, an 18-year-old man killed 19 students, two teachers at an elementary school.

Um everybody knows that, right?

That's that dominated the news cycle.

And so the question is, is how do we, when these things occur, because there was just a shooting just um uh previous to that up in Buffalo, um, how do we respond?

And what does this look like?

And so um the first is just mourning.

Um you see kind of culturally watching, um uh, especially if you're actively engaged in social media or you're watching cable news, you're seeing a lot of people responding.

Um, and in a lot of different ways.

If you're watching cable news, you're seeing um a lot of uh kind of bickering over policy and politics.

Um if you are on social media, you're also seeing that as well as just mourning and um anger and frustration and blame.

But I think the first thing that we need to do is we just need to be as Christians willing to mourn.

And the reason for that is Genesis 1.27.

It says um for us as Christians, we believe the Bible teaches us about all of life and it informs our understanding about humanity.

And um, the Bible teaches us that God created man in his own image, and he created him in the image of God, he created them male and female.

And so when a person is killed, or 19 children are killed, um though they share the image of God, they bear the image of God, they represent God's image on earth, and we have a um a kinship to them.

We may not be blood relatives of them, but there is a shared similarity between us and them.

And so it is devastating when there is um a loss of life.

It is direct, it is a um the killing of another human being is grievous, different from the killing of a human or from an animal, because a human bears the image of God.

So when you watch National Geographic and you see, you know, a lion attack a zebra, we don't have a national day of mourning.

We don't take our flags to half-staff, right?

But and the reason why we mourn is because they bear the image of God.

Now, if you don't believe in God and you don't have a biblical framework for um why humans exist, if you see humans as accidental, you have a hard time justifying uh grief over the loss of life.

And I would encourage you if you don't, if you're not a follower of God and you're kind of thinking just about loss of life and uh this uh tragic event and you feel sad, the question you have to grapple with is is your grief justified?

We as Christians believe that we have a logical basis for our grief, that we can look at these humans that were their life was ended, and we believe that this was wrong, uh, that it was a violation of what God designed.

In Genesis chapter 4, there is this story of Cain and Abel.

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

Cain said to his brother, Let's go out to a field.

And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

And the Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel?

And Cain said, I don't know.

Am I my brother's guardian?

Then he said, What have you done?

Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

So now you are cursed, alienated from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood you have shed.

God says, I've seen this.

In fact, the blood of your brother cries out from the ground.

And um as scripture continues, this is not one-off, but this is God's um explanation of murder.

Um the baseless uh taking of life.

And so for us, when these things occur, there it is appropriate and right to spend a moment and just to mourn.

Whether you decide um that you're gonna skip a meal and you're um gonna mourn in that way, or you're gonna just give yourself a moment to mourn, it is appropriate.

And it is um it has a biblical foundation.

There is a basis that we have as Christians to say, yes, that's wrong.

It's grievous, and God cares deeply.

In fact, the blood of these kids that were killed and the teachers that were killed, they also cry out to the Lord.

Um the second thing uh that we need to do, in addition to mourning the loss of life, is to mourn the fact that this town will be affected by these deaths for decades to come.

And these families, um, some of them will forever, parents will forever feel the absence of their children, brothers and sisters will have feel the loss of their siblings.

And again, mourning over that is so appropriate.

At the same time, again, as Christians, we need to consider our relationship with this tragedy.

So if you're like me, you know that this was an inescapable event.

It was on, it was coming up as notifications on my phone.

Do you have notifications turned on on your phone?

Yeah, and so the notifications that are coming up were updates about this shooting that was occurring, that had occurred.

Um, and then the reports of you know, did the police respond fast enough or not?

And so when these things happen and it dominates our attention and is vying for attention, because this obviously is just this time around, there's going to be something next month and the month after.

Again, what is our relationship to these things?

And I want to put in front of you six verses from um Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

Um, and this is what he writes He says, For we know that if our earthly tent, if our earthly tent we live in, is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands.

Indeed, we groan in this tent, desiring to put on our heavenly dwelling.

Since when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.

Indeed, we groan while we are in this tent, buried, uh burdened as we are, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, so that mortality may be swallowed up by life.

Now the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment.

So we're always confident and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

Do you see that in these six verses, Paul talks about our bodies being like a tent?

That right now we're living in a tent that is a as uh that our bodies and our presence is separating from the presence of the Lord, and we're living on this earth in a tent.

Let me go back to verse one again.

Our earthly tent that we live in, if it is destroyed.

In other words, if our body is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling.

So you're we are gonna put off this body and we're gonna be present with the Lord when we physically die on earth.

And so the way that Paul is teaching about this, Paul is instructing this church about their temporal existence on earth in their physical body, um, he is he's explaining life on earth.

We're groaning, we desire to be uh having our heavenly, our eternal body.

Um we are clothed, we will not be found naked.

So when we put on that heavenly um body, we're not gonna be naked, we're not gonna be bodiless, we're not gonna be disembodied spirits.

Um indeed we groan while we are in this tent.

We're burdened because we do not want to be unclothed.

So I want to put this image in front of you that right now it you can pinch your skin, you can feel the body that you're in.

And we are prepared.

God's prepared us in this way.

He and we have God's spirit now as a down payment.

So we are relating to God in this body, anticipating a future state where we will have a new body in heaven.

And here he says, we're always confident, knowing while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.

And so when we face these types of tragedies, we need to remember this: that we are living in bodies with a location.

The internet and televised news exposes us to sensational information far away from our bodies and our influence.

With the rise of cable news and the internet, we now have access to massive amounts of information about the brokenness in the world.

And so what do you what do we do with that fact?

Do you have the capacity to take in all of the human tragedy that is occurring right now at this moment?

And I want to suggest to you that you don't.

We have access to an amazing amount of information, but we do not have the emotional capacity to care deeply in an appropriate way over the amount of tragedy that is always occurring in the world.

And so again, it is important for us to consider what is our relationship to these tragedies.

As you know, our world is filled with atrocity, human trafficking, genocide, war.

We do not have the capacity to adequately mourn every tragedy that we are made aware of.

Our hearts, some of our hearts, um, in this what we call the information age, we shut down.

We either we either dance to the music of the latest tragedy, and it's this roller coaster ride, but many of us just it's like overwhelming.

How do you take it all in?

How do you go from Ukraine and the fact that right now there are cities that are cut off and there are like babies dying because they cannot access, because moms are now uh malnourished, they can't produce milk, and there's a shortfall of uh formula.

Like there are horrible things happening right now all over the world, not just in Texas.

And so not to um take away from the grief of um what has occurred in Texas, but we've got to be honest with ourselves.

Do we have the capacity to care deeply about every tragedy that is right now happening?

And I again would suggest that we do not.

We have to, listen, we have to re-engage the people in the places where God has put our bodies.

Because when you sort through this and you evaluate how do you care deeply, I would just point you back to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, to what Paul is saying about your body that God has given you, he has embodied your spirit within a tent, or he's embodied your soul within a tent.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

You exist in a physical space.

And yet when you pick up this phone or you turn on your TV, you're carried away from your physical body to some other things.

Now, Paul wrote letters from afar to other people that he cared about, but he happened to recognize as he's debating, Steve and Tony and Nick and Derek and I have been looking at this in at prayer meeting when we were going through 2 Corinthians, Paul knew he had specific relationships that were for him.

And then he knew there are people that I'm not responsible for that are outside of my arena.

And so I would just, as you navigate the information age where it's like it is overwhelming, and then it's churning, which I'm going to mention next.

The news cycle is just going and going and going.

How do you decide what to care about?

And I would just point you back to your body, the body that you have.

And you are, you and I are freed.

You may decide, hey, God has called me to care deeply for these families in Texas beyond the news cycle.

It may be your ministry.

There's I know there's people that when Katrina happened in the Gulf Coast, it changed the course of their life.

And they decided I'm going to care deeply for the people in New Orleans.

And they've been doing new, they've been doing ministry in New Orleans long since that event occurred.

I know for me, God called me back in 2016 to come and care deeply for Baltimore City.

Whether it's in the news or not in the news, this is where God placed my body and said, this is where I, this is what I want you to care about.

And so again, as a Christian, I would just point you back to where is your body right now?

Where does God put your body and what is in close proximity to it?

What are the relationships?

And that doesn't mean that that uh you can't care about your distant, like my parents live in New Jersey.

Should I not care about them because I'm not close to them?

No.

But I have a relationship with my parents, but it's not somebody else's parents, right?

You and I, you have we have to recognize that we're limited in our ability to respond.

And the way that the internet works and news works, it wants to disembody us.

I I have um I've shared from Michael Frost's book, Incarnate, before, but I want to put you before you this quote.

Um I this is one of the books over the last two decades that has, it was probably the top ten books I've read.

It's called Incarnate, but he talks about how we are so oftentimes excarnate in our culture.

We're called to be incarnate like Christ.

What did Jesus do?

He came into the world, took on flesh to serve humanity, right?

We are tempted in our culture to be excarnate, defleshed through our screens.

So he says this.

In this book, we will look at ways contemporary society has defleshed the human experience, disembodying others by treating people as objects or ideas.

Ultimately, all this has resulted in a disembodied approach to mission, the mission of the church, a drift towards incarnational expressions, where disembodied advocacy is preferable to the dirt and the worms and the compost of localized service.

We see this in the preference for short-term mission trips and the treasure hunting approaches to evangelism where we are expected to minister to strangers, we'll never see again.

Do you understand what he's talking about?

That he's getting at there.

I mean, he unpacks this throughout the whole book, um, the first few chapters of this book.

But when we pick up our phones, it's almost like our flesh melts away and we're carried away from where we're actually at.

And I would suggest to you that God has limited you and I to our bodies and an ability to care.

Um, the second thing as we consider this is um we're living in bodies with a location.

Oh, I think I said that already.

Let's go to two.

These stories are given prominent attention because the shock, value, and horror essentially they get turned into a form of entertainment.

So just we need to be on guard.

We need to be careful as we are paying attention that we're not paying attention as a form of entertainment.

We need to make sure we engage these stories as good stewards of our minds and hearts.

How much information do we need?

Because, especially like the cable news stories, they want like the thing that was going on the last few days was did the police respond fast enough?

And so they're gathering information, all this information, and then there's outrage, and different leaders that are outraged, and what did the parents think?

And are the parents now upset with the police because they didn't respond fast enough?

And the appeal to you and I is you need to have a strong opinion.

And this is with every news story is to try to manipulate our emotions, to cause us to care deeply and to form an opinion.

One of my pastor mentor friends, he said he is uh he wisely said in an interview last year, I don't know.

I don't feel the need to have an opinion about this thing.

It was like a political scandal that he was um he was being interviewed about.

And he's like, I really don't know what happened.

And I don't feel the pressure to know.

I know that 19 kids died, and that this boy shot those 19 kids, that two teachers were killed.

And um it's not my role to care about every little detail um of how fast the police responded.

The third thing is this the cycle, the news cycle churns through these stories as if they're resolved within a few days or a week, when in reality uh Uvaldi will be dealing with this for decades, right?

When we know that.

We know that, but we know that next week it's not gonna be, or in two weeks it's not gonna be in the news, right?

And that's not fair.

That's not fair to the people that are there.

So, on one hand, there's this recognizing God's got Christians there that's gonna take care of it, and I cannot constantly care for Uvaldi for the rest of my life.

But I also need to recognize that I does need to be a care beyond the news cycle.

And the fourth thing is this these events are used to score political points rather than to move policy formation forward.

We've just got to not let either the political figures that we vote for or the political figures that we didn't vote for.

We need to be opposed and appalled when politicians use these events to score their points rather than having a dialogue about problem solving.

God entrusts governments with authority to protect communities with laws.

Those laws are formed through a process.

That process is important for human flourishing.

So the leaders that are um Leading in local government and at a national level, they have the responsibility to form policy and to not be scoring points off of dead kids.

And when they do, even if they're people that we voted for, we need to be bold enough to say that's wrong.

Because it's it's shameful.

It's shameful.

Government leaders are using can use these events to attack their political opponents, and that is the last thing that should be happening.

And so those are just, as I was reflecting on it this week, and realizing we don't do this every time there's a tragedy.

I do want to just remind us of these principles and just say, hey, we're Christians that have this eternal, that have an eternal perspective, but we also have a temporal perspective that's given to us through Scripture.

Um, and I think that that the Bible informs some of our thinking.

Okay, the second thing is this report that came out.

So as many of or some of you may know, uh there was a let me read read kind of the summary of this.

The church that it our church is affiliated with the Southern Baptists.

Here's our affiliation.

We have received hundreds of thousands of dollars of support over the past five years from uh the sub the Southern Baptist Church Planting Initiative that's called the North American Mission Board, as well as local Southern Baptist churches.

And then as a church, we give back hundreds of dollars to our local association on an annual basis.

So we're putting back a little bit of money into the local convention from our tithes and offerings.

Last year at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual gathering in um, I think it was in Tennessee, the messengers, which is about 6,000 people from different Southern Baptist churches, not just pastors but different individuals, um, gathered together and they voted to set up a task force that would evaluate um sexual abuse complaints that were brought to the executive committee.

Now, if sometime you want to hear how the Southern Baptists are organized, it's very nerdy, it's a whole government system, and I'd be happy to explain it to you, but not this morning.

But the executive committee is one of the top governing bodies for the Southern Baptists that that directs funds and how um how the Southern Baptists are going to cooperate together.

And so they had been receiving abuse allegations, and there was a sense that these allegations and reports had not been properly handled by the executive committee.

And so last year there was a vote, and they were told there needs to be an independent group brought in to do an investigation.

And so Guidepost is an outside group that was hired, they did their investigation, and then last Sunday afternoon they issued a 288-page report.

And I linked to that in the email I sent uh to the church this morning.

It shows that there were numerous reports of sexual abuse made to the executive committee over the past 21 years, and those who reported those, uh made those reports were met with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some on the executive committee.

The report made a series of recommendations, um, and then in two weeks from now, the Southern Baptists again will gather in Anaheim, California for another convention, uh, the annual convention, and there will be further action that will be taken and new things will be voted on.

So we are um we are affiliated with the Southern Baptists, that means um we are an autonomous church that gives some money into a pool, and that money is then used to support missions and education and to help plant other churches like us.

Um how are we responding to this, or how should we respond?

First of all, um, our church is financially supported by the family of churches that are described by this report.

It's like a distant uncle being convicted of a crime, and it is embarrassing.

So there is a sense of just embarrassment.

One of right on the second page of this report, one of the um former presidents of the Southern Baptists is named having a credible complaint being brought against him.

And that was upsetting to me because I interviewed that guy on a for a podcast about church planting a few years ago.

And so my my name is associated with this guy.

And anytime that happens with anybody, you're just there's this sense of like, oh gosh, that's horrible.

How embarrassing.

Get that down, don't let that be public, right?

But on the other hand, it is encouraging to be a part of a family that voted to have an investigation done and then overwhelmingly detested what was revealed.

And so it is grievous.

The report itself and some of the um stories of what has occurred is so embarrassing and so upsetting.

But at the same time, it is good and healthy that the actual governance of the Southern Baptist Convention brought about, demanded this report.

The report happened, it exposed some bad, and now I I believe and trust that as the Southern Baptists have done in the past, they will continue to respond.

Finally, as a church, we're committed to mercy and justice.

We're trying to make the church, this church, a safe place by implementing systems and policies that protect the most vulnerable.

So for those that care for our kids, they go through a background check.

We have policies that relate to the compassion center and men and women not being alone together in the compassion center.

Um we have leadership that's ready and willing to listen to complaints that come up.

And we care about victims of injustice and are compassionate towards those that suffer.

So it's difficult.

If you want to read it, or if you have more questions about that type of thing, or if there is something that you need to report, um, uh by all means.

We are a church that will listen, um, and there is a process in place, and there's training that's in place that is available to me as a pastor and our other leaders that's provided by the local Baptist Association.

All of that stuff is in place.

Those of you that have gone through our membership process know how our church is governed, that I have accountability.

There are people that can scrutinize my life and look at my life, and there's ways that our leaders are evaluated.

Um, and so, yeah, it's important.

Uh it's important that these things are addressed, and we need to continue to pray that there would be really wise solutions moving forward.

It is, it does, in closing, it does reveal an interesting fact about church government.

Because the Catholic Church went through this whole scandal two almost two decades ago where we realized there had been rampant sexual abuse at schools by priests.

And that's so upsetting.

It happened here locally in Baltimore.

There's a whole Netflix documentary about it.

That's just so sad.

And the way that the Catholic Church is organized is it couldn't be more uh hierarchical with layers and layers of leadership that are very separate from local leadership, right?

You have a pope.

I mean, you cannot have more of a structure that protects leaders than what the Catholic Church has.

So then the Baptists, we're we're kind of like, yeah, you know, we have this very flat leadership where our members vote on stuff and they appoint their pastors, and you would think there'd be more accountability that exists within that system.

And I still believe that there is.

But both, you see, both groups have scandals in them.

And both groups were for a little while, uh, the for a little while, leaders went without accountability.

And so thank God that Jesus is the pastor of the church.

Because Jesus is not gonna have a scandal.

So um as close as we can be to Jesus, I think, the as a church is the better.

So, again, if there's any questions about that, um, feel free to ask, and let's be praying for the convention that'll happen in two weeks from now.

Over the summer, we're gonna be preaching.

I'm gonna be preaching a series called Dear Church.

It's gonna be based on the seven letters to the seven churches from Revelation 2 and 3.

And uh we're gonna spend some time just talking about church, uh, church life and how does Jesus evaluate churches?

Like when Jesus looks at our church, uh, what is he saying?

Because he looked at seven.

He talked to John, who is on the Isle of Patmos, and he says to John, he gives him this revelation, he says, I'm I'm the one in the midst of the lampstands.

I'm here.

I'm looking at it.

Jesus is here, he's looking at us as a church.

And he gives his kind of report card, he gives his assessment of these seven churches, and he identifies different things about these seven churches.

And so we're gonna talk through that this summer.

That's one of the things that's gonna go on.

Seven sermons, um, each one addressing a different church.

And uh I'm looking forward to that.

We also have seven guys right now in our preaching cohort.

These seven men have expressed a desire to preach and they're at their own stage in developing as a preacher.

Uh, some of them are just starting out and they will preach their first sermon this summer here in the church.

Others have been preaching for a while and just want to continue to grow.

So um they're gonna have a chance.

So I'm really looking forward for you to hear.

Uh Marvin's gonna preach his sermon, first sermon.

I think Hudson's gonna preach a sermon this summer.

Um Nathan will preach a couple times this summer.

It's gonna be fun.

So um make sure that you're super enthusiastic as those guys uh preach and take good notes.

Cheer them on, bring your bring your pom-poms, you know.

We'll cheer them on together.

Okay.

All right, let's uh let's uh pray and then we'll close with this final song.

Lord, we thank you for um that we're going into this summer.

Uh keep everyone safe for the holiday.

We pray that you would just bless um bless us, God, with uh just a sense of refreshment and renewal tomorrow.

Help us to rest well and to go into this summer with um hearts and uh hands and minds that are open to what you want to do in our lives and through us.

God, thank you that you care deeply for these um kids, these little kids, these babies that were killed by this young man.

Thank you that you care for the families.

Um, thank you that you are a compassionate God, that their blood actually does cry out to you and that you care so deeply.

And God, we hurt with them.

Um we're so grieved.

And Lord, we know that they're not the only ones suffering this morning, but that there is pain across this city.

Um there are at least four different families that lost um loved ones this week through uh murders that occurred.

And uh Jesus, we ask that you would just have mercy.

Lord, guide us in our own care.

Help us to just live in our bodies well this week and to love our neighbors and our families and our coworkers and to understand that that you've put our bodies in a particular place for a reason.

And help us really to love people this week, to care deeply for those specific people you've put in our lives.

Thank you, God.

Lord, receive our worship with this last song.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

You know, it's funny, Josh and I never