Where’s Aaron? We Need a Hero!

Today, in Nashville, the elected leaders of my home state are gathering for a special session called by Governor Bill Lee that is “supposed” to address public safety. This special session was called following the mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, where three children and three adult staff members were shot and killed at random by a former student. In the months that have passed, we have heard from the Republican supermajority that any legislation restricting access to firearms would be a nonstarter for legislative business, even as Gov. Lee promised grieving Covenant parents that he would push for some common sense gun measures to be adopted.

There is a stubbornness and a fear in this supermajority - an unwillingness to even let seemingly minor firearm legislation advance to the floor to be publicly debated. This stubbornness persists even as recent polls have shown a large majority of Tennesseans in favor of common sense gun reforms. There is a worship of something other than God, even though I am not entirely sure what is being worshipped. A narrow, non-contextual reading of the Second Amendment? The powerful and wealthy gun lobby? The power of being an immovable object? The pride in showing other conservative states that we have the fewest restrictions on firearms? Whatever is at the center of this worship, it is not the Law of God, which says that above all else we are to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

This morning, as reports are coming in about the first activities at the capital building, I am reminded of Aaron and his heroic rescue of a doomed people in the Book of Numbers. The assembly of people had decided to rebel against God, and against Moses and Aaron as representatives of God. The people are being consumed by a plague of death as punishment for their rebellion, and even though they have previously threatened to kill him, Aaron quickly runs into the center of the plague and stands between the living and the dead. He makes atonement as he stands in the gap between life and death and the plague is stopped.

So, where is our Aaron? If we view the stubbornness in the refusal to pass legislation that would protect lives as a rebellion against the Law of God, perhaps the fact that firearms are the number one killer of children in Tennessee is our plague. Where is Aaron? Where is our hero who will stand in the gap between the living and the dead, atoning for our stubborn rebellion? Where is our hero who will convince God that we are sorry for killing our siblings or allowing our siblings to be killed in such great numbers? Who will stop this plague before another life is claimed?

Where is Aaron?