Reverend Cremer, thank you. Your reflection lands at exactly the right time and with exactly the right clarity. My own season of Bible study is long behind me, but what you’ve written speaks to both faith and reason. It’s a reminder that prayer and policy aren’t rivals. They’re supposed to be partners.
What I heard in your reading of Isaiah is simple and bracing: worship means nothing if we’re willing to live with injustice. In your terms, “hands lifted in prayer” can’t be the same hands that refuse mercy. You grounded that in text and history, but you also did something essential for this moment: you separated prayer itself from the habit of using it as insulation against action. That distinction matters.
I’ll add a few things from the civic side that, to me, rhyme with your message. In public life, words don’t carry authority unless they’re matched with outcomes. If an official invokes God after a mass shooting but fights background checks and slashes mental-health funding, that’s not faithfulness, it’s evasion. Even for those of us who don’t sit in pews, the ethical logic is obvious: love of neighbor has to look like fewer funerals.
It also helps to say out loud what gets blurred after every tragedy: people living with mental illness are overwhelmingly not violent. Many are already doing heroic everyday things just to get through the week. Stigma pushes them into silence, and silence keeps people from care. We can hold two truths at once: a small subset of untreated conditions in rare circumstances can raise risk, and the biggest population-level driver of lethal outcomes is easy access to firearms. Caring for people and caring for safety are not competing projects.
So if leaders want their prayers to have integrity, the measure is practical:
Expand real access to care and enforce mental-health parity so insurance treats the brain like the body.
Fund mobile crisis teams, warm lines, and school-based counseling so help arrives before the cliff, not after it.
Pass universal background checks and safe-storage requirements.
Use extreme-risk protection orders so families and courts can pause access when someone is in crisis.
Close intimate-partner loopholes and make those prohibitions stick.
Invest in community violence interruption that is steady, local, and proven.
None of that requires demonizing anyone. All of it lowers the odds that another parent gets the call.
It also feels right to name the many faith leaders and congregations who already pray and act. I’ve watched clergy organize food and rent relief, accompany families to hearings, staff hospital chaplaincy, and lobby for laws that protect the vulnerable. They don’t announce it with cymbals; they just keep showing up. Holding space for grief and pressing for change is the tradition at its best.
If I can translate your prophetic word into a civic rule of thumb, it’s this: don’t let public piety outrun public duty. If you say “we’re praying for the victims,” also say “here are the bills I’m co-sponsoring, here’s the funding I’m restoring, here’s the coalition I’m joining.” Publish votes. Publish dollars. Publish timelines. In Isaiah’s cadence, wash, learn, seek, defend, plead — and then show your work.
For those of us not in office, there’s useful, ordinary labor too. Check on the friend who goes quiet after the news cycle. Say “therapy” as comfortably as “dentist.” Volunteer where you live. Support the unglamorous policies that move the numbers. And when someone tries to swap a press release for a plan, answer with calm persistence: prayer belongs at the vigil; responsibility belongs at the dais.
You ended with hope, and I want to stay there. Isaiah’s rebuke isn’t the last word; the invitation to repent and repair is. People of deep faith and people of none can still agree on this: love of neighbor means reducing harm, telling the truth, and protecting those most at risk. If our prayers lead us there — to funded care, to sensible safeguards, to a public square where dignity isn’t theoretical — then they’ve done holy work.
Thank you for calling us back to that alignment. I’m listening, and I’m committed to pulling in that direction.
I find myself wondering how well I embody the call to defend the poor and vulnerable. Do I consistently stand for justice or do I too easily and quickly shrink back?
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.” Sums it up vividly. The person who persists *only* in thoughts and prayers, divorced from actions that would minimize lethal school (and other) shootings, has hands "full of blood." Even if they are not actually pulling the trigger.
This is spelled out as clearly as one possibly could. Now if some of these politicians could grow a spine and stand up for the little people that need to be lifted up so that they can care for themselves. It is paying it forward.
I think there is also critique of the masses here. The people of Israel knew God’s call to be people of justice, mercy and righteousness, but generally did nothing to embody the righteousness which they were called to embody (eg. Ex 19:5-6). Sure, Ancient Israel was no democracy. But we are, and if we do not speak truth and justice to the halls of power, we are likely complicit in injustice perpetrated. The standard we walk by is the standard for which we will be held to account.
I needed to read this. This last mass shooting broke me and seeing the biblical context for what was so clear to me gives me hope and calls me to act….for love and for justice.
Thank you so much for getting to the heart of the matter and explaining the true meaning of scripture and how it applies in today’s world. Too many today who profess to be Christians do not practice basic Christian values. This needs to be told.
Exactly how I feel about our current situation. I have been wanting an explanation from the Christians about the inaction and why there’s so much hypocrisy but after reading this I am realizing that this is the struggle we have faced this whole time. We have to stand up together against injustice and it’s hard, that’s the point of being Christian!
Beautifully said. Thank you!!!
Thank you for this. It's wise, mature and hopeful.
Reverend Cremer, thank you. Your reflection lands at exactly the right time and with exactly the right clarity. My own season of Bible study is long behind me, but what you’ve written speaks to both faith and reason. It’s a reminder that prayer and policy aren’t rivals. They’re supposed to be partners.
What I heard in your reading of Isaiah is simple and bracing: worship means nothing if we’re willing to live with injustice. In your terms, “hands lifted in prayer” can’t be the same hands that refuse mercy. You grounded that in text and history, but you also did something essential for this moment: you separated prayer itself from the habit of using it as insulation against action. That distinction matters.
I’ll add a few things from the civic side that, to me, rhyme with your message. In public life, words don’t carry authority unless they’re matched with outcomes. If an official invokes God after a mass shooting but fights background checks and slashes mental-health funding, that’s not faithfulness, it’s evasion. Even for those of us who don’t sit in pews, the ethical logic is obvious: love of neighbor has to look like fewer funerals.
It also helps to say out loud what gets blurred after every tragedy: people living with mental illness are overwhelmingly not violent. Many are already doing heroic everyday things just to get through the week. Stigma pushes them into silence, and silence keeps people from care. We can hold two truths at once: a small subset of untreated conditions in rare circumstances can raise risk, and the biggest population-level driver of lethal outcomes is easy access to firearms. Caring for people and caring for safety are not competing projects.
So if leaders want their prayers to have integrity, the measure is practical:
Expand real access to care and enforce mental-health parity so insurance treats the brain like the body.
Fund mobile crisis teams, warm lines, and school-based counseling so help arrives before the cliff, not after it.
Pass universal background checks and safe-storage requirements.
Use extreme-risk protection orders so families and courts can pause access when someone is in crisis.
Close intimate-partner loopholes and make those prohibitions stick.
Invest in community violence interruption that is steady, local, and proven.
None of that requires demonizing anyone. All of it lowers the odds that another parent gets the call.
It also feels right to name the many faith leaders and congregations who already pray and act. I’ve watched clergy organize food and rent relief, accompany families to hearings, staff hospital chaplaincy, and lobby for laws that protect the vulnerable. They don’t announce it with cymbals; they just keep showing up. Holding space for grief and pressing for change is the tradition at its best.
If I can translate your prophetic word into a civic rule of thumb, it’s this: don’t let public piety outrun public duty. If you say “we’re praying for the victims,” also say “here are the bills I’m co-sponsoring, here’s the funding I’m restoring, here’s the coalition I’m joining.” Publish votes. Publish dollars. Publish timelines. In Isaiah’s cadence, wash, learn, seek, defend, plead — and then show your work.
For those of us not in office, there’s useful, ordinary labor too. Check on the friend who goes quiet after the news cycle. Say “therapy” as comfortably as “dentist.” Volunteer where you live. Support the unglamorous policies that move the numbers. And when someone tries to swap a press release for a plan, answer with calm persistence: prayer belongs at the vigil; responsibility belongs at the dais.
You ended with hope, and I want to stay there. Isaiah’s rebuke isn’t the last word; the invitation to repent and repair is. People of deep faith and people of none can still agree on this: love of neighbor means reducing harm, telling the truth, and protecting those most at risk. If our prayers lead us there — to funded care, to sensible safeguards, to a public square where dignity isn’t theoretical — then they’ve done holy work.
Thank you for calling us back to that alignment. I’m listening, and I’m committed to pulling in that direction.
I find myself wondering how well I embody the call to defend the poor and vulnerable. Do I consistently stand for justice or do I too easily and quickly shrink back?
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.” Sums it up vividly. The person who persists *only* in thoughts and prayers, divorced from actions that would minimize lethal school (and other) shootings, has hands "full of blood." Even if they are not actually pulling the trigger.
This is spelled out as clearly as one possibly could. Now if some of these politicians could grow a spine and stand up for the little people that need to be lifted up so that they can care for themselves. It is paying it forward.
I think there is also critique of the masses here. The people of Israel knew God’s call to be people of justice, mercy and righteousness, but generally did nothing to embody the righteousness which they were called to embody (eg. Ex 19:5-6). Sure, Ancient Israel was no democracy. But we are, and if we do not speak truth and justice to the halls of power, we are likely complicit in injustice perpetrated. The standard we walk by is the standard for which we will be held to account.
I needed to read this. This last mass shooting broke me and seeing the biblical context for what was so clear to me gives me hope and calls me to act….for love and for justice.
Yes, and Amen!
Amen!!
'As the theologian Miroslav Volf famously puts it, “There is something deeply hypocritical about praying for a problem you are unwilling to resolve.”'
Thank you so much for getting to the heart of the matter and explaining the true meaning of scripture and how it applies in today’s world. Too many today who profess to be Christians do not practice basic Christian values. This needs to be told.
This was a great article and a must read for all. Thank you Rev. Cremer.
Thank you! Powerful and spot on brother!
Great message!
Exactly how I feel about our current situation. I have been wanting an explanation from the Christians about the inaction and why there’s so much hypocrisy but after reading this I am realizing that this is the struggle we have faced this whole time. We have to stand up together against injustice and it’s hard, that’s the point of being Christian!