What would Jesus say about guns?

What would Jesus do? This is a question many ask this time of year. What would Jesus say about the pervasiveness of weapons and their use on young innocents?

If you are a Christian, or even an admirer of Jesus, you simply cannot avoid what he said and did. And Jesus could not be clearer. In the pinnacle of his teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says this: “You have learned that they were told, ‘Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.’ But what I tell you is this: Do not set yourself against the man who wrongs you. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left.”

When his disciples were like politicians vying for the title of the most powerful, Jesus rebuked his disciples by lifting up children as the benchmark for faith and saying, “And whoever welcomes a little child like this in My name welcomes Me. But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

When Peter, upon Jesus being betrayed and arrested, drew a sword and struck a soldier, Jesus rebuked him, “Put your sword away! He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”

So America, especially those who deem America a Christian nation, I beg you to follow the Christ you claim. America, put your swords away! Transform them into good plows and good work. America, put your swords away! Place them onto the trash heap of history filled with empires and cultures that have withered away on the battle fields and mass graves of their own making. America, put your swords away! We are living and dying by those swords. Our schools are wracked in fear. Our parents are tormented by the images of schools in lockdown, of children racing away in terror from mad men with guns, worried if their child made it out or will be next. America, put your swords away! Our children are dying. The millstone is around our necks. We are drowning in the depths of suffering seas salty like our tears. America, put your swords away! Let this Easter season be a season of repentance for our mindlessness, our heartlessness, our selfishness when it comes to the scourge of weapons of war. And may it lead to transformed hearts and new hope. America put your swords away! Receive your new baptism, put away old, dying individual selves, enter again the womb of living waters where compassion flows, be born anew rising as a new collective self walking the path of love, peace, and righteousness.