Jeremiah 2:4-13
The content of this sermon is difficult, and includes references to gun violence, war, and famine. Footnotes have been provided not as an exhaustive list of resources, but as a starting place for those who wish to learn more about the facts of gun violence and its contributing factors. For steps to take action, I recommend Sandy Hook Promise, Bishops United Against Gun Violence, and this article by the Rev. Russ Allen. To learn more about the policies and stances on gun violence of the Episcopal Church, visit the policy page of our Office of Government Relations.
I find myself wanting to weep with the Weeping Prophet this morning. The words of Jeremiah to the people of God feel like words that could be shouted from street corners and painted across church banners right now. This week, two families had young children taken from them in a senseless act of violence on holy ground, their heads bowed in prayer.1 Earlier this month, a homicide was committed less than a mile from our house.2 A friend of ours woke to the screams of her neighbor, who had opened her door to find the victim’s body on her front porch. Over the past several months, an increasing number of families and communities have been disrupted by the removal of immigrant neighbors from their homes, their jobs, their visa hearings.3 I have colleagues who are leaving behind jobs they loved and communities they treasured because they do not feel welcome or safe. Around the world, acts of violence are met with overwhelming and indiscriminate violence, and now Christians in the Holy Land are being threatened with further violence and almost certain death if they remain in their churches.4 Clergy and nuns have chosen to remain in Gaza City to care for the wounded, the elderly, the disabled, and parentless children who are starving with the rest of Gaza and still bombs drop around the churches where they are sheltering.5 The violence of this world is heartbreak upon heartbreak, and the Word of the Lord comes to us in the voice of Jeremiah.
I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination. The priests did not say, “Where is the Lord?” Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit.6
Since I was born, there have been over 2500 incidents of gun violence on school property in the United States.7 The data available to me goes back to 1966, and it was chilling to see that there has not been a single year in the last 60 years that there has been less than 5 incidents of gun violence, and in fact since the 1970s we have not dropped below 11. This is not a new problem, but it is an escalating one. In my lifetime we have added metal detectors to the entrances of many high schools, implemented rules that require backpacks to be locked in lockers, or require those backpacks to be clear, or require that they be searched at random throughout the school year.8 We have increased awareness of mental illness and increased access to mental healthcare, although not nearly enough.9 We have developed new therapeutic and pharmaceutical treatments for mental health conditions,10 although they are not accessible to everyone. We have taught students how to hide behind desks and we have invented backpacks made to slow down a bullet.11 We have trained teachers to sacrifice themselves as if that isn’t already the modus operandi of every public school teacher in this country. We have studied the perpetrators12 and the causes,13 we have looked around the world to all the places this doesn’t happen,14 15 16 and still when it happens again we are left weeping and asking why.
Cross the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing. Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.
So far this year there have been 134 victims of gun violence at K-12 institutions.17 This number includes the wounded victims that survived, and the ones who did not. What it does not include are the thousands of students and teachers, children and adults, families and administrators, who had to hide behind desks, who had to count the survivors, who had to see the blood and hear the bullets do what bullets are designed to do. It does not include the hundreds of thousands of people who feared sending their children and partners to school the next day, because these shootings seem to always happen in waves. It does not include the doctors and nurses and EMTs who lie awake at night remembering the ones they couldn’t save.
Be appalled, O heavens at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord.
I know that many of us are tired of talking about this. Tired of hearing about it. Hoping to come to church and not think about it for a little while. Trust me, I am tired of preaching about it. I’m tired of sitting up late on Saturday nights praying, asking God whether or not I should change the text of my sermon in light of the most recent horrific tragedy to come across my newsfeed. I have no interest in being a prophet. They very rarely live to see the impact of their words. But Jeremiah is a prophet, and the Word of the Lord is for us.
For my people have committed two evils, says the Lord; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.
The people of God have always suffered most when we have chosen to place our faith in ourselves and the gods we create, forsaking the God who created us. We place our faith in human leaders, in human-made systems, in the rule of law and the power of money and the gun in the bedside table. We change our glory for things that do not profit, valuing profits over people and consumption over the collective good. We dig out cisterns for ourselves, we make plans and alliances and we blow the tops off of mountains and pierce the earth and plumb the depths of the sea. But none of it holds water. None of it holds water, because the cisterns we dig for ourselves are riddled with cracks and bullet holes. The water we collect for ourselves is poisoned by our greed and our disregard for creation and the future generations who will suffer the consequences, if we let them live long enough. The systems and idols we build in our image can hold no water, because they are no gods.
There is only one God who is the fountain of living water, and God gives that water freely. This water is not to be hoarded, or dammed, or bottled and sold. It is water that does not drown, but quenches and cools. It is water that puts out wildfires and washes wounds and takes away the salty sting of tears. It is water that baptizes and parts to make a pathway to liberation. It is water that does not need to be stored in cisterns or drawn up from wells, so freely does it flow.
It is my prayer that we will forsake our cracked and broken cisterns, the systems of sin and the habits of violence that do not profit. I know that it was Jeremiah’s fervent prayer that his people would hear, and see, and understand, that they would see their mistakes and do what they could to unmake them. I’d honestly settle for admitting we’ve made any mistakes at all, instead of continuing to pour water into cracked cisterns and offering thoughts and prayers when the water disappears. I pray that the Word of the Lord will come to us, and we will hear it. I pray that we will heed the prophets of our lifetime. I pray that we will turn back toward God, in thought, word, and deed. The living Word is the only thing that has ever saved us, and he is the only thing that ever will.
- https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/annunciation-catholic-school-minneapolis-shooting-08-27-25 ↩︎
- https://wset.com/news/local/warrants-reveal-new-details-in-fatal-rivermont-avenue-shooting-victor-giles-arrested-for-murder-of-kasim-holmes-august-2025 ↩︎
- https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/us-immigration-tracker-follow-arrests-detentions-border-crossings-rcna189148 ↩︎
- https://abcnews.go.com/International/churches-gaza-city-evacuate-despite-israeli-incursion/story?id=124986986 ↩︎
- https://en.jerusalem-patriarchate.info/announcements/joint-statement-by-the-greek-orthodox-patriarchate-of-jerusalem-and-the-latin-patriarchate-of-jerusalem/ ↩︎
- The excerpts from Jeremiah come from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. ↩︎
- Riedman, David (2025). K-12 School Shooting Database. https://k12ssdb.org/all-shootings ↩︎
- Schildkraut, J., & Grogan, K. (2019). Are metal detectors effective at making
schools safer? San Francisco, CA: WestEd. Available from https://www.wested.org/resources/
are-metal-detectors-effective-at-making-schools-safer ↩︎ - https://www.apa.org/pubs/reports/practitioner/2024 ↩︎
- https://psychopharmacologyinstitute.com/publication/upcoming-psychiatric-drugs-for-2024-anxiety-and-delirium-in-patients-with-cancer-and-psychodynamic-psychopharmacology-2839/ ↩︎
- https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/bulletproof-backpacks-wouldn-t-have-saved-anyone-recent-shootings-n1042801 ↩︎
- https://www.sandyhookpromise.org/resources/warning-signs/ ↩︎
- https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/ ↩︎
- https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/insights-blog/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier ↩︎
- https://rockinst.org/blog/public-mass-shootings-around-the-world-prevalence-context-and-prevention/ ↩︎
- https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/school-shootings-by-country ↩︎
- https://k12ssdb.org/all-shootings ↩︎
Mother A Writes 