Wear Orange: When Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough

Alison Faison • May 30, 2023

Isaiah 2:4 says, “He will settle arguments between nations. They will pound their swords and their spears into rakes and shovels; they will never make war or attack one another.” 

I read Sandy Hook Promise posts on Instagram as well as occasionally do actions with Moms Demand Action and cannot escape thinking of the horror a parent experiences after their child or teen is shot. This is not sensationalism or fake news. On August 27, 2019, I took my middle school daughter to Lincoln High School for a Town Hall on gun sense, directly relating to the shooting of 15-year-old Day’von Hann, a student who lived in the Mission District. Then Speaker Nanci Pelosi, Rep. Jackie Speier, Founder of Moms Demand Action Shannon Watts, CA Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, and 17-year-old Phillip and Sala Burton High School student and member of United Playaz, AJ Santiago led the meeting. After these change-maker women shared personal experiences, data, and gun sense bill proposals, I was sure we would have gun violence reform. I was wrong. The CDC says that firearm incidents are the second-leading cause of death among American children and teens. One out of ten gun deaths involve age 19 or younger.


Everytown Research relays that “there were more school shootings in 2022 (46 shootings) than in any other year since Columbine.” One would think that this statistic would be enough to take immediate action to make common gun sense bills into law and enforce them in court. Money talks, so much of the bills continue to be blocked by gun supporter groups. How do we empower our children and teens to use their power to urge legislative, judicial, and executive branches to make change now? We need to continue telling stories of the pain and grief that parents and adults continue to experience after a child dies because of gun violence. Speaking the truth that advocates protection of all people follows Jesus’ non-violent civil disobedience. Christians are obligated to love their neighbor and care for the vulnerable. If they do not want to prevent gun violence against innocent civilians, their beliefs are not based in Jesus’ life-affirming truth.

Everyone is encouraged to wear orange during June 2 – 4, 2023 to bring awareness to gun sense solutions. Wear Orange was started by teens after their friend Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed in 2013 on a playground in Chicago, one week after marching in President Obama’s second inauguration parade. 2013 was ten years ago. Many suggestions have been made for eliminating bump stocks, military style machine guns and magazines, requiring background checks, and more. We are not seeing progress in eliminating gun violence. Most domestic terrorist shooting perpetrators are young adult white males, so we need to quash the false narrative that most mass shootings emerge from poor communities of color.


Everytown Research relays, “In America, every day 12 children die from gun violence. Another 32 are shot and inured. That’s over 16,000 children wounded or killed by gun violence every year. Since Columbine in 1999, more than 338,000 students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence at school.” If adults want to continue to revert to blaming mental health on these tragedies and then do nothing, they are missing their call to end violence by regulating guns and enforcing gun laws.


After reading statistics or going through the shock and grief of another mass shooting, we experience overwhelm and then freeze. How can we take small steps to use our power as residents in the U.S. to create safety? How can we activate our grief to make positive change?


Wear orange to church on Sunday, June 4.

Do more research on gun violence in your community. Look at Gun Violence Archive. Check out this website Everytown.org/solutions. Call your governor and leave them a message saying that you’re concerned about gun violence. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office: (916) 445-2841. Small steps make a difference.

Photo by WearOrange.org

Cover Art by Jess Churchill

 

Rainbow stained glass that reads
By Rev. Marci Glass July 6, 2025
As we continue reading the Book of Revelation as a book of resistance, we encounter a story of a woman who gives birth in space, while a dragon waits to eat the baby. Hopefully, none of our own birth stories are that dramatic. But there are days, and sometimes years, when life comes at you in ways other than you predi
A rainbow stained glass image with the text 'un-scrolling doom' on it
By Rev. Victor Floyd June 29, 2025
"Why dost thou doom scrolleth even now?"(Victor 3:16) On this Queer Pride Sunday, we worship the One who shows us how to live with integrity and profound joy. That which is against God shall not stand! As the world unravels, celebration reveals our power to resist.
A rainbow stained glass window that reads 'unveiling the empire'
By Rev. Joann Lee June 22, 2025
The book of Revelation includes scary beasts with horns and special marks with numbers revealing who they are. But rather than foretelling future events, what if they were unveiling current rulers and empires who preyed on their people? Let us slay the beasts of oppression and injustice as we resist the empire and embr
Colorful stained glass image with the text 'revelation as resistance' on it.
By Rev. Marci Glass June 15, 2025
This week we will begin a sermon series on the Book of Revelation. It is often used by Christians to predict future events, but it wasn't written for that purpose. The Book of Revelation was written to call people to resist the Roman Empire. It carries on the tradition of 'apocalypse' which is Greek for 'revelation'. In apocalyptic literature, God reveals, or makes clear, how to respond to the world in which we find ourselves. But it is written in a way that obscures the message from the people who it critiques.
Holy Spirit Coming by He Qi - 3 colorful people with flames praying
By Rev. Marci Glass June 8, 2025
The story of Pentecost is a story of adoption. God takes strangers and makes them family. And while adoption is good news for those of us who experience it, that good news doesn't make it easy. God brings strangers together and makes them family, but God doesn't make us all the same. We are adopted into God's family with all of our differences and our disagreements. How can we celebrate the differences between us, rather than using them as wedges to divide us?
Priscilla - by Silvia Dimitrova (2003) - a woman in adorned gown holding a dove with 3 men around
By Rev. Marci Glass June 1, 2025
This week's story from the Book of Acts speaks of the importance of hospitality when life is difficult and dangerous. Where does God call the church to be when people are facing exile, persecution, and danger?
A group of diverse people surrounding a table, a recreation of the Last Supper with disabled folks
By Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow May 25, 2025
Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow's sermon for May 25, 2025
Lot and family leaving Sodom, Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
By Rev. Victor Floyd May 18, 2025
A queer preacher takes on a notorious “clobber passage” and its history of pain and death. The sin of Sodom has nothing to do with same-sex marriage or trans children—and everything to do with willfully ignoring God's command to welcome strangers and practice hospitality. Let them know we are Christians by our love.
Keith Haring's Best Buddies - 2 human shapes that are yellow and orange embracing each other
May 11, 2025
When I have offered hospitality, often I thought I was doing something kind for someone else. And I sometimes have tried to figure out how to get out of it, because it is work to welcome people in to your life. But it has almost always ended up being a much bigger gift to me than it might have been to the person I thought I was helping. God uses the people we meet and encounter in our lives to call us deeper into God's mystery of grace.
A tree covered in multicolor yarn - an installation by Carol Hummel, 2013
By Rev. Marci Glass May 4, 2025
The Book of Acts continues the story began in the Gospel of Luke. The Good News of the Gospel is being taken to the ends of the Earth, because the Spirit is on the loose! From being a movement of people who knew Jesus, and people who had heard him teach and speak, it grows. Exponentially. From Jerusalem, to the rest of the Middle East, and then to Europe, Asia, and even San Francisco. This is the Good News--that God's Spirit will not be limited or constrained. How do we welcome and celebrate the differences that come with the Spirit's invitation? How does hospitality create, and re-create the church?
More Posts