March for their lives

 

Matthew 21: 1-11
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 2, 2023

Photo of a protest sign that reads "What if these kids are the answer to your thoughts and prayers?  Are you listening??"

Five years ago, on the weekend of Palm Sunday, my family and I, along with millions of other people across the country and around the globe, marched for our lives after the Parkland school shooting. It was a youth-led march, one of the biggest youth protests since the Vietnam War. Like Sandy Hook six years before it, this mass shooting was touted by some as a possible tipping point for gun control legislation.



Since 2018, in which there were 336 mass shootings, there have been 2,492 more, 131 of those occurring this year alone. The number one leading cause of death for children ages 1-19 is not books or drag queen story hours or gender-affirming healthcare or Pride parades but gun violence. Fact-checking websites looking at the data and quibbling over age does not address the fact that one child lost to gun violence is one too many. And here we are, after another school shooting, on Palm Sunday, when we sing the words “the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring”.



The word “hosanna” is hardly sweet. It means “save us”, and our children have been looking to us to save them as we looked to those who came before us. As long as there have been empires, children have not been valued—seen but not heard. We have not listened to children and trusted what they have told us. When did you know you were heterosexual? When did you realize your gender identity? We who have never had to question these things had our lives laid out for us like a map to follow, without barriers or obstacles in our way. When we have misgendered someone and received an angry response, is that not a cross we can bear for them? Can we hear the “hosanna”, the “save us”, “save me” in their anger?



It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “A riot is the language of the unheard”. This past Friday, on International Transgender Visibility Day, across the country, students walked out of school demanding protection for LGBTQ students and to protest against gun violence. In Nashville, Tennessee students and adults flooded the capital building yelling, “Not one more!”, shouting “Do your job!”, standing in stairwells and hallways, shaming legislators as they tried to make their way through the building. There are legislators who are focusing on the shooter and their identity, saying that transgender people should not be allowed access to firearms but by that reckoning, why haven’t we banned cisgender White men from possessing a gun? Those who want to protect the 2nd amendment say that we should focus on mental health but then vote against school-based mental health programs.



Make no mistake, Palm Sunday is a protest, not a parade. It is a disruption of the status quo, a plea for a better world, a demand for better government. Five years ago I wrote these words: “And the message is the same as it was 2,000 years ago: we are not only tired of living in a violent culture but we are dying as a result of it and we can stand it no more. Every march for civil and human rights that has ever been is about the right to exist safely in public space, to breathe the same air without fear for our lives; to have life and liberty and be able to pursue happiness like anyone else. We are indeed marching for our very lives, for the life of future generations, for the future of the human race. As one student, X Gonzalez, said [at the first March for Our Lives], fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”



Holy Week is about the most sacred mystery of all: how we move from life to death to life again. It is the story of the cross and of suffering but it is also the story of the resilience of joy and love. But our children do not need to know any more about death. These children and young adults have grown up in the shadow of 9/11, in a nation that has conducted a seemingly endless war. They have learned to live with trauma as they have been trained to hide from an active shooter, as they have had policies and laws enacted against them and their trans friends. They have been marching for their lives their whole life long.



Just as there is White fragility, I believe there is also cisgender and heterosexual fragility. Whenever those who have privilege are challenged, it can be tempting to place our feelings in the center rather than confront our bias. This Table calls us to disrupt our lives not just for one another but for the most vulnerable, the most threatened among us. The hate and fear aimed at our transgender friends and neighbors will not just go away on its own. The distrust of the voices of children and young adults and the rejection of their bodily autonomy requires that we disrupt our lives, our ideas, our opinions and listen to them. This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shared with you. Remember me, Jesus said. “Save us”, the children, the people cried.



As one protest sign read, “What if these kids are the answer to your thoughts and prayers? Are you listening?”



AMEN.

Benediction


Those who are vulnerable and oppressed
Need steadfast company on their journey
Even more than we do
As we move from life to death to life again
Let us have clear wisdom
Courageous hearts
Persistent moves forward
The sacred mystery of life, death, and life again is with us.

Even though we know what this week, this life will bring,
Even so we sing, Hosanna! Save us, we beseech you!