Luke 3:7-18
December 16, 2012
“A
voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her
children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
I’ve
seen these words from Matthew’s gospel repeated over and over again in the last
48 hours. They provide one way for
people who have been directly and indirectly affected by the tragic events that
happened this past Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut to express their grief and heartache. I’m using them because I also need to find a
way to express that grief and heartache.
I think we all do. We have all
been affected by what’s happened. Every
single one of us.
I
will be honest with you. I’d rather be
anywhere than here right now. I’d rather
be home in bed reading the paper or sitting in a restaurant drinking one more
cup of coffee. This desire is not fed by
my need to be lazy or take a day off. It’s
not because I don’t see church as the appropriate place to be in the aftermath
of something so monstrous. I feel that
way, because too many times I, along with my colleagues and other clergy around
the nation, indeed around the world, have had to stand in our pulpits and try
to make sense out of senselessness. We’ve
had to find some comprehension in what is incomprehensible. And we’ve had to give voice to the
unspeakable. I know that this is both
the somber and sacred task of pastoral leadership, but doing this even just one
time is too much. Yet here we are
again. Evil and violence has struck, and
we are at a loss to understand.
Bruce
Reyes Chow, former moderator of our denomination, stated that if he were
preaching today he would try to walk the fine line between what we want to hear
and what we need to hear. What we want
to hear are words of comfort. But the
problem I find is that when we stare in the face of such tremendous evil, I
just don’t have those comforting words.
None of us do. What words can
describe the shock and the horror and the heartache that we feel when we hear
about little ones, first graders, and their teachers and administrators being
gunned down? There are no words. I don’t have words. To try and offer false comfort seems a
terrible disservice to those who have died.
When
I have preached on Luke’s John the Baptizer in the past I have tried to paint a
picture of a wild man, of someone who was outside of the norm with a message so
shocking that we can’t help but stop and think seriously about what he was
trying to impart. In some ways John
seemed not quite sane. But right now
John the Baptizer with his bizarre dress and peculiar diet seems the sanest
among us. I do know this, for the people
in Newtown, Connecticut it really won’t matter if the world grinds to a halt on
December 21st as it has been predicted. For them, the world as they knew it ended
this past Friday. The darkness, it seems, has overcome the light.
But as people of faith, even when that faith
is faltering or doubting, we take seriously our belief that eventually the light
will pierce the darkness; that in the final run the darkness will not overcome,
the darkness will not win. We take
seriously our hope in the power of God, the goodness and mercy of God, and our
belief that the gospel is actually good news.
I know I said this just recently in a sermon, but it must be said
again. Our faith means that we also
acknowledge that hope and optimism are not the same. They are not synonyms. Optimism is the belief that everything will
be fine and dandy. Hope is the
recognition that life can deal us terrible blows. Sorrow and suffering are real. But hope is the belief that sorrow and
suffering is not all there is. Hope is
the belief that not only is God with us in our suffering God will bring us
through it to something more. Hope is
our trust that eventually light will pierce the darkness.
But
for now we wait in the darkness. We wait
and we grieve with those who grieve. We
mourn with those who mourn. Isn’t it in
times like this, when the unimaginable has become reality, that we realize our
common ground as humans? One of my
favorite quotes is from Mother Theresa who said that, “we will never know peace
until we remember that we belong to one another.” I’ve heard the essence of her words expressed
time and time again in the hours following the shooting. Author and poet, Maya Angelou, expressed that
these children were our children and the adults were members of our
family. Our president spoke eloquently
of this loss of our children, our beautiful children who should not have suffered
this fate.
I
know that we cannot possible begin to feel the depth of pain and sorrow that
those parents in Connecticut are feeling and will continue to feel. I know that the families of the principal and
the school counselor and the teachers and staff and the shooter’s mother are
grieving more deeply than I can truly grasp.
But I think, more than ever before, that what makes us most fully human
is our empathy. So we are grieving, all
of us. The difference as I see it in
losing a loved one who dies at the end of a long, well lived life and a child
or a young person, is that we not only mourn the death of that young person, we
also mourn the future. We mourn what
could have been, we mourn what should have been. We mourn the loss of potential and the
fulfillment of dreams. We mourn because whenever
our children are taken from us the future is dimmer. And the future is indeed dimmer this day.
We
mourn today because if we take seriously the idea that we are the body of
Christ made visible to the world, if we take seriously that the world is
populated with God’s children, then this terrible evil reminds us of how
starkly we are broken. When one of us is
broken, we all are. This is not my
attempt to answer the question, “why.” I
don’t have any answers. I don’t think we
ever will. I cannot claim the belief
that somehow God made this happen so something better will come out of it. I think that when something like this happens
it is exactly the opposite of what God wants.
So I don’t know why. None of us
do and we will have to live into that not knowing. But even as I say that I also profess that
God is present, God is in the midst of it all.
So
what happens now? Where do we, as a
people, go from here, from this moment?
John told the people who gathered around him that the fruits of
repentance they needed to bear would be seen in their sharing, giving. If you have two coats give one to someone
with none. If you have more food, give
some to someone who doesn’t. He told the
tax collectors not to take more money than they were supposed to. He told the
soldiers to not use their power or their position to extort money or threaten
and oppress those who have no choice but to do their will.
In
other words remember that these people belong to you and you to them. Remember.
For me remember is the
critical word we should take with us today.
Remember. Not only should we
remember what happened in Connecticut.
We should. We should remember the
names of those who died. We should
remember this horror so hopefully we can prevent it from happening again. But even more than that we must, we must
remember that we belong to one another.
Those babies who were mowed down on Friday were our children. And the children who face violence every day
in inner city schools are our children.
The children we tutor at Horace Mann are our children. The children who fall through the cracks of
our educational system, those are our children.
The children throughout the continent of Africa who are orphaned due to
AIDS or war or neglect are our children.
We belong to one another.
Remember.
We
have to remember that we belong to one another.
The hard working father and the gang member; we belong to them and they
to us. The first responders who rush in
and, yes, even the one who does the shooting; we belong to them and they to
us. And we have to remember. We have to
remember. Right now it’s easy to do
that. Right now it’s simple to
remember. But it can’t just be in the
wake of a tragedy that our memory for what binds us together gets
reignited. It has to be always. Every day.
We have to remember passionately and with great commitment that as God’s
children, we belong to one another. And
as we remember we must act accordingly.
We must love accordingly. We must
love fiercely and that love must be reflected in our deeds here and throughout
the world. What other choice do we
have? We belong to one another. So remember and let us pray…
God,
Your love cares for us in life and
watches over us in death. We bless you
for our Savior’s joy in little children and for the assurance that of such is
the kingdom of heaven. In our sorrow,
make us strong to commit ourselves, and those we love, to your unfailing care. In our perplexity, help us to trust where we
cannot understand. In our loneliness may
we remember those who have died, trusting them to your keeping until the
eternal morning breaks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book
of Common Worship, 1993 Westminster/John Knox Press)
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