We are gathered in person and online for different reasons. I know a couple of faces are here because of the deep-seated anger they feel at those in charge for refusing to protect the most vulnerable. I know one face knew one of the victims and simply does not know how to mourn and celebrate appropriately, given the friend’s life and faith. Some of us are gathered worried about our children and grandchildren and the traumas with which they must grow up. And probably a few are looking for a bit of wisdom in such a tragedy. The truth is, of course, that I have no such wisdom. There is nothing I can say that will wipe away the tears or the anger or the impotent frustration. Lives have been taken and lost. Lives have been impacted by the sight of that violence. There is very little I can do to make it make sense, to make it seem worthwhile.
What I can
do, however, is point each and every one of us back to the One who can redeem
this mess, the One who can wipe away every tear and use for good those things
intended for evil. In truth, it is for
events and so many other reasons that you and I are reminded that God has
called each and every single one of us as a nation of priests, as flickering
lights in a dark world. We are
constantly being prepared by God to face these things, so it should come as no
surprise that we bear this kind of cross.
Some of you
gathered with us here tonight are here because you are angry at God. You want to know, you demand of God why, if
He is truly good and all-powerful, He did not step in and stop the shooter or
save the lives of those children and adults.
It is one of THE QUESTIONS asked by non-believers over the ages. Could God have acted in that way? Of course.
Why did He not? We remind
ourselves that our Lord wants human beings to choose Him of their own free
will. Most of the time, we love the idea
that we have free will. For many of us
it amounts to choosing what kind of car to buy or what to have for dinner, but
the most consequential decision any human being will ever make is whether to
accept God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Rejecting
that offer makes us servants of idols we create or of ourselves. We believe that we are capable of doing what
needs to be done, or we convince ourselves there is no real consequences for
the things which we do. Or perhaps even
worse, we believe the whispers of the enemy and accept the seeming futility of
the work to which our Lord calls us. And
though we might write a different story, for those who choose wisely, we know that
immediate gratification is not the case.
Choosing to follow God through Christ means we become cross-bearers for
God’s glory. None of our problems are
magically waved away by choosing to serve God.
Heck, if anything, our problems are multiplied, as so many in the world
like to reject God and His wisdom, to say nothing of the His enemy who seeks to
draw us from the love of God.
Unfortunately
from our perspective, sometimes our own cross-bearing leads to our own
death. I say from our perspective
because we liturgical Christians specifically understand death as a horizon, a
limit of our own seeing. When we mourn
the death of a brother or sister or loved one in our church, we remind
ourselves that life is simply changed for our loved one, not ended. And though our sight is limited, we trust
God’s promises that one glorious Day we will all be gathered by Him for
eternity. We trust His promises that
every tear will be wiped away. So, in
the midst of mourning we remind ourselves of God’s unfailing promises and power
to undo all that has gone wrong. How can
those impacted by the shooting at Covenant ever have their tears wiped away? Can you do it? Can I?
No! Only God has that power and
wisdom. More important to us than His
power, however, is His desire for each of us as a consequence of our choosing
Him above all things. He has promised
that we will one Day dewll with Him and bask in His love and share in His glory;
and He always keeps His promises. And so
we have hope!
For now,
though, we are left on this side of the horizon. We mourn, we rail, we cower, we do any number
of things in response to such a tragedy.
And yet, as I reminded some of us gathered tonight, those responses are
not sins. Our very liturgy, week in and
week out, month in and month out, year in and year out, trains us and prepares
us for honoring God in our lives even in the midst of horrific tragedy. I know a few of you were drawn in to join us
this night by the idea that we could rightly complain to God and it not be a
sin. More than one forgot that God’s
people are not only allowed to complain but encouraged by God to complain when
things are not as they should be. None
of this liturgy before you was unique. I
did not pour over the Scriptures for these last thirty hours fashioning this
service. The Church has dealt with
innocent deaths and unjust suffering since God called Her to be His chosen
people just as God’s chosen people always have.
And so we rightly complain to God.
Like the martyrs gathered right around Him we rightly wonder “How long,
O Lord?” “How long until You put an end
to this mess and bring us safely to Your dwelling place?” “How long until we are comforted?” Like Rachel before us, we refuse to be
comforted.
We do not
end there, though. Those of us who
attend liturgical churches have been engaged in the observance of a Holy Lent
for five full weeks now. We reminded
ourselves on Ash Wednesday that we are ashes and will, one day, return to
ashes, unless our Lord returns before then.
Hopefully, we have all been focused on our individual and corporate sins
and, most importantly, our inability to fix the consequences of those sins—our
need of a Savior. Certainly this event
brings our corporate sins to the fore of our minds. Some of us who identify as Christians love
guns far more than Jesus; some of us place greater trust in our ability to
defend ourselves and our loved ones than in God’s redemptive grace and
power. Our self-described “Christian”
politicians chase money, votes for the next election, or higher office, rather
than leading, rather than protecting and serving—the very oaths that they swear
upon taking office, rather than honoring the God they claim to serve in their
words, their actions, and the exercise of the authority God has given them. And when confronted with difficult challenges
or tensions, some even throw up their hands and proclaim there is nothing that
can be done, as if there is zero hope commended to them in their faith in God
promises. We, as a nation, have devalued
mental health care to the point that it is incredibly challenging and expensive
to get, to say nothing of the scorn associated with it. We value pithy statements and zingers online
rather than true relationships. We excel
in “othering” whatever group we do not understand, convincing ourselves that
they deserve to suffer, even as we remind ourselves week-in and week-out that
He stretched out His arms of love on the hard wood of the cross to draw
everyone, everyone—even the others--into His saving embrace.
And lest we
think such events are only corporate sins, how many of us are tacit in our
support of such failed leadership or participate in the online zingers? How many of us vote for politicians who would
rather play “gotcha” with those across the aisle than work for the benefit of
all their constituents? How many of us
would rather spend a few minutes here and there lobbing online grenades than
getting to know those with differing opinions on whatever the hot take of the
day happens to be? How many of us join
in the scorn of those whom we know who seek mental health care? What’s worse, how many of us would rather not
be cross-bearers for God’s glory? How
many of us would rather leave things as they are, rather than picking up our
crosses and following Him? How many of
us like to give those drowning around us a cinderblock rather than a lifeline
to Christ?
That’s why
the liturgy always leads us to our own culpabilities, our own sin. Though we complain and rail against God for
what He has not done in our estimation, we also forced to acknowledge our own
roles, known and unknown. And we
recognize that the teachings of Scripture and our liturgies are right. We need a Savior. Only God can restore us to Himself.
Then we
gladly celebrate the Eucharist. We
remind ourselves over and over that the Cross, which we will talk a lot about
next week, is the means whereby we were all raised to new life, where we were
all healed by His wounds, where we know ourselves to be loved beyond
measure. And we eat that flesh and drink
that blood knowing it feeds us in ways we can never truly understand; knowing
it nourishes us for the work that God has given us to do, even when such work
is as dark as many of us now face.
Like
athletes who practice constantly or astronauts who prepare and prepare, you and
I do this work trusting that God will prepare us for the work He has given us
to do. Better still, in the midst of our
preparations, He tells us not to worry.
He will be present with us in the struggles. He will give us the words; He will give us
the materials; He will give our work the meaning; He will even give us the
faith to glorify Him in our lives. And
even if that calling and cross-bearing leads to our deaths; even that He will
give back to us, just as He gave back Jesus’ life to Him!
I get the
hurt, the anger, the fear, the despondence, all of it. We are all clay vessels called to witness to
God’s redeeming work. It is part of why
tonight we offer anointing of oil. We
will intentionally pray that God will take those emotions and transform them
into the passion we need to do the work He has given us to do, that we will
hear our Father’s reminder that He will use us, if we are willing, to draw
others into relationship with Him. But
far more significantly, we are reminded this night that our Lord understands
us, that our Lord, better than we can ever truly know and far better than any
commercial, gets us. All the stories
about His Incarnation instruct us that He became one of us, He enfleshed
Himself among us. Among other things,
those stories should comfort us because He experienced the same life as many of
us. He lived under oppression. He
experienced the suffering of others.
Heck, as we reminded ourselves just this past Sunday, He experienced the
deaths of those whom He loved. And we
know those deaths caused deep sadness and anger, because death was not part of
His plan. And even though He knew death
was not the final barrier, He was still moved.
And now, thanks to His faithfulness, hits sits at the right hand of the
Father making intercessions on our behalf, resulting in our own empowerment to
glorify God in our lives.
My friends,
I cannot begin to know how God will redeem this mess. I cannot begin to know how He wants to use
each one of us in the darkness outside this sanctuary. But the God who rescued His people from
slavery, who called His people home from Exile, who has time and time again
rescued and strengthened His people will do the same for us. Some of us may be called to mourn with those
who mourn. Some of us may be called to
walk with those who are rightly angered and frustrated. Some of us may be called to minister to those
who are only just now hearing the Gospel in a new, meaningful way. Some of us may be called to challenge our
leadership to honor the God in whom they claim to believe. The possibilities are as different as each one
of us gathered here and online. But as a
gathered people, as a gathered community of disciples of Christ Jesus, you and
I are reminded of the One whom we each serve.
And reminded of His love for all of us and of His purposes for us, we
are the fit priests sent out into that darkness, confidant in the dawn that He promises,
and the eventual life where all these tears, all these hurts, all these fears
are wiped away, and that we will one Day bask in and share His glory!
In His Peace,
Brian†
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