The first Sunday of the month so often finds me wearing disposable food safety gloves and parceling out a box of fifty Munchkins across the eight or ten tables around which we gather for our monthly Agape communion meal.  Nothing changes this ritual, not even the uniquely and appallingly American ritual of mass gun violence, in which we remember the humanity of Jesus as much as his divinity: his friends and his religious practice; his eating and drinking; his fragility and fear.  These were shared by the thirty-two (as of this writing) people in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, who had so much in common with Jesus, so much in common with all of us gathered around those tables and wondering which Munchkins had a jelly center.  In the wake of all this death, we remembered Jesus’s, and we looked for the way forward.

Or did we?  If there is a way, I’m no authority on it.  During the meal, I wrapped a tangy-sweet chunk of applewood smoked Cheddar around the crusty bread meant to represent the body of Christ and thought of the thirty-two people who will never enjoy bread and cheese again.  Then, too, after church, we rode the train uptown and took in a Broadway musical.  Then, too, it just happened to be the revival of Oklahoma!, which interrogates, and none too gently, the American lust for both violence and happy endings.

Valerie preached on the parable of the rich fool: “You fool!” God says to a rich man who, like many of us here in New York, has a little storage problem, “this very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?”  It was the lectionary text, and a painful coincidence for the dead of El Paso, stocking up at a back-to-school sale.  There is no way forward for those who abandoned the markers and notebooks, socks and hair ties in the aisles of the Walmart.  And there is no way forward for those enjoying one last drink with their friends, just as Jesus did, in Ned Pepper’s bar in Dayton.

For the living, it has to consist, Valerie offered, in gratitude, in not losing sight of the other.  The rich fool eats, drinks, and makes merry alone; God reminds her that her plenty won’t count for much when her life is demanded of her when she is alone.  God gave Jesus friends with whom to share a last meal, erstwhile though they may have been.
God gave the world Jesus, and God gave the world Glendon Oakley, who saved several children during the shooting.

The rich fool is rich in examples of how to do better.  The rich fool washes her hands and passes out the Munchkins.