Note: Emanuel Church had a guest preacher on December 9, 2012, so there is no sermon on the blog for that Sunday.
(Scripture: Zephaniah
3:14-20; Philippians 4:2-9; Luke 3:1-18 )
This morning’s Scripture readings, on this 3rd
Sunday in Advent, give us visions of the coming reign of God. Zephaniah speaks of a time of restoration for
Judah, when the lame and outcast are welcomed back into the community and
Judah’s fortunes are restored. In our
reading from Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist is out at the Jordan river
preaching repentance, and urging his listeners to make the changes in their
lives that will help them live into the new reality of the reign of God in
Christ Jesus. And in our reading from
Philippians, Paul tells his readers, despite the controversies that have
engulfed their church and despite Paul’s own captivity, to rejoice in the Lord
always.
Rejoice? Given the
events of Friday morning, a reading of Paul’s words seems jarringly out of
place. On Friday morning, Adam Lanza, a
20 year old man, possibly plagued by mental illness, barged into an elementary
school and opens fire. Before turning
the gun on himself, he killed 20 children, most not 10 years old, as well as a
teacher and various school staff.
Apparently before setting out for the school, he had gunned down his own
mother, who by all accounts had been quite devoted to his well-being. The young man had stolen his older brother’s
ID, and in the confusion it was originally reported that the older brother was
the shooter…..and so the older brother learned of the death of his mother and
younger brother in the worst way possible, hearing his own name associated with
the horror.
Other than with tears, how are we to respond to all of
this? It is perhaps human nature, and
perhaps part of our cultural conditioning as Americans, to search for ways in
which this tragedy could have been prevented.
We want a way to fix this so it doesn’t happen again…but I think we find
that perhaps there are no quick fixes. Certainly
we can point to our society’s easy availability of guns, and there seem to be
more and more incidents of unstable persons getting their hands on an arsenal
of guns, walking into public places – a school, a movie theatre, a mall – and
opening fire. It’s a conversation that
needs to take place. On the other hand, the
state of Connecticut already has gun laws on the books that, while not the
toughest in the nation, are more restrictive than those of many states. Apparently Lanza’s mother was a gun collector
and had a number of legally-acquired guns in her home. We should ask what it means in our culture
that implements of death are considered desirable collectors’ items, and we can
certainly question the wisdom of her sharing her home with multiple guns and a
possibly-unstable son, but she likely had no way to know what was going on in
her son’s head. We can point to the
shortcomings in our society’s care for the mentally ill, which are many and
grievous – many of the folks we see on the streets panhandling are mentally
ill, and in earlier decades would have been put in institutions which, while
they had serious failings of their own, at least kept people fed and sheltered
from the elements. But by all accounts,
the Lanza family was relatively well off, and likely could have afforded
treatment had it been deemed appropriate.
Our society has become polarized
and violent, with various factions figuratively and sometimes literally at one
another’s throats – but it’s unlikely that Adam acted out of a political
agenda. About the only thing we can say
with certainty is that, had it not been for the heroic efforts of teachers and
other personnel at the school who literally put their own bodies on the line to
shelter the children in their care, many more children could have died. Friday’s events showed the worst – and the
best – of human nature.
St. Paul wrote of “the mystery of iniquity”, and there is a
sense in which the pervasive presence of evil is a mystery, a sense in which we
can’t fully get our arms around the causes of Friday’s events. The other question that comes up, inevitably,
is “where was God?” Why didn’t God stop
Adam, maybe strike him dead before he could harm others, or at least cause his
guns to jam or maybe cause his car to break down on the way to the school? Theodicy is the question of why a benevolent
God permits widespread evil. And
Scripture doesn’t give us a neat, tidy philosophical answer to that question –
perhaps the book of Job is as close as we come in Scripture, and while Job
clearly speaks against the notion that all evil comes as divine retribution,
beyond that, we don’t get a lot of clarity – basically God tells Job to mind
his own business. Indeed, later in Luke’s Gospel, discussing some Galileans
whom Pilate had executed, and discussing some others who were killed when the
tower of Siloam collapsed, Jesus said, “Do you suppose these people were worse
sinners than others? No….” The
Psalms give us many lamentations against evil, many cries of “how long, O
Lord”…but we don’t get a philosophical argument, but instead hear emotional
prayers for God to intervene. This
morning’s reading from Zephaniah speaks of Judah’s restoration – but the rest
of the book up to that point speaks of vast destruction that will be coming
upon both Judah and its neighbors.
The early church seemed to take the presence and
pervasiveness of evil in the world for granted – remember Paul writing not only
about “the mystery of iniquity”, but about “powers and principalities, and
spiritual wickedness in high places.” Their response wasn’t to question “why
does evil exist?”, not to be shocked when tragedy struck, but rather to give
thanks to God for not abandoning them to tragedy. This morning’s reading from Luke’ s gospel
starts out with a list of “who’s who” – “In the fifteenth year of the reign of
Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was
ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and
Trachonitis and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas
and Caiaphas….” – these are the folks in political and religious authority, and
to a person they’re a nasty bunch; all had or would come to have blood on their
hands…. But then we read of God’s
response…. “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.” The crowds come to John – they know that the
political and religious establishment of their day has no real answers – and
John calls on them to bear fruit worthy of repentance. Unlike the other Gospels, in Luke’s Gospel,
the crowds push back and ask “what should we do?” And John calls them to act justly and to care
for their neighbors and for the poor: “whoever has two coats must share with
anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise” To the tax collectors – “Collect no more than
what’s required.” To the soldiers “Don’t
extort money from others, and be content with your wages.” All are demands that are difficult, and, well
– demanding – but doable. And all are
ways in which John calls his hearers to live into the reign of God that Jesus
will bring into the world.
Throughout the Gospels, there’s a constant push and pull
between good and evil. John preaches a
baptism of repentance, and Herod has him beheaded. Jesus is born to Mary, and Herod orders what
we call the massacre of the innocents.
Jesus gathers his disciples, and one of them betrays him. Jesus teaches and heals, and is arrested. The religious and political establishment
conspire to put Jesus to death, and God brings about resurrection. The
synogogues expelled the early Christians and the Roman empire persecuted them,
but Paul tells his readers to – “rejoice!”
To rejoice – anyway!
Christ did not come to earth amid Christmas carols and mall
displays, but in a world where life was held as cheap and tragedy was the rule
rather than the exception. Amid tragedy,
we are called to remember how dependent we are on God, to look up, to cry
out. God has not abandoned us, and will
not abandon us. Where is God? Amid the weakest and most vulnerable. May the weakest and most vulnerable find a home at Emanuel Church as well.
Amen.
(I would also encourage readers of this blog to check out the Trappist monk Thomas Merton's meditation, "The Time of the End is the Time of No Room", from his book "Raids on the Unspeakable".)
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