SHOOT FIRST, THINK LATER
In the short
clip of the shooting, yet again, of a black man in America this week what
gripped me was the despairing frustration of the young woman. She jumped up and
down in utter anguish and when she was interviewed the words tumbled out in anger
and shock. Once again America is racked by unbelief that police are so itchy
with their guns that they shoot without thinking – and shoot continuously – a
man who was so obviously helpless and unresisting.
We are
caught off balance by the tragedy played out again of how human beings treat
one another out of some irrational and emotion based compulsion. Why is it so
hard to face up to the truth which presents itself to us in every situation and
is waiting to be recognised? Why do we prefer to be driven by primitive motives
of fear rather than rational motives of compassion? America has a particular
problem as they will not allow their government to control the use of guns. And
so people are afraid that others will use their gun first. Their instinct is to
shoot first and think later.
It is a
relentless agonising situation. But we would be running away from ourselves it
we think it is their problem only. All of us, one way or another, find it hard
to face up to the reality that presents itself to us daily. The reaction by the
Zimbabwe government to the Catholic bishops’ recent letter, calling on the
government to listen to the grievances of the people, is another example. They
could not bring themselves to listen and preferred to ‘shoot’ verbally instead.
Why is it so
difficult to listen? To hear what people have to say? To enter for a moment
into the suffering that people are enduring? Why is that so difficult? Is it
that we do not have the inner confidence in ourselves to hear other people’s
words and feel their experiences? Why do we feel so threatened?
There is a
passage in Jeremiah 20, which we read this Sunday, in which he confesses he
wants to run away. Facing the truth is just too demanding. ‘I will not think
about him. I will not speak his name any more’. Then, he says, he felt ‘a fire burning in my
heart, imprisoned in my bones. The effort to restrain it wearied me. I could
not bear it’. He was trying to resist
the truth but there was something deep within him that he held on to and even
though it felt for him like ‘violence and ruin’ he persisted and accepted his
mission to speak out.
Peter had a
similar experience in Sunday’s gospel. He wanted Jesus to run away. Don’t get
involved! Keep yourself safe! Jesus
turned on him and called him ‘an obstacle in my path’, a scandal preventing me
fulfil my work.
It would not
be easy for the police on America’s streets to listen but it would be a way to
freedom for them as well as the people they so easily shoot. It would not be
easy for our ministers to listen but it would be a way to freedom for them and
the people they so easily hammer.
But each of
us has to think, ‘where am I in this scene?’ It is so easy to say what other
should do. But if each of us can begin to listen, and to feel for those who
suffer, it could, in the end, become a contagious epidemic – a Covid 20.
30 August
2020 Sunday 22A Jer 20:7-9 Rom 12:1-2 Matt 16:21-27
