A Christian Response to Charleston: "Peace! Be still!"

*This post is taken from my Sunday sermon on June 21, 2015 at Good Shepherd, Asheboro*

"Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:  'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.'"

--Job 38: 1-2, 4

"See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!  

In return--I speak to you as children--open your hearts."

--II Corinthians 6: 2, 13

"They woke him up and said, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace!  Be still!'  Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm."

--Mark 4: 38-39

As y’all have noticed, most of the time I prefer to preach down on the floor, so that I can look y’all in the eye.  It always seems more intimate that way.  And I generally like to start sermons with an anecdote or joke, something that sets the tone and puts things into a perspective that most of us can understand. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I can’t do those things today.  Not after the week that’s past. 

By now you’re all aware of what happened in Charleston, SC on Wednesday.  A young man, Dylan Roof, entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night and joined the congregation for their weekly Bible study.  About an hour into the gathering, he opened fire, killing nine people—6 women and 3 men, including the head pastor of the church.  On Thursday he was apprehended here in North Carolina and now faces 9 charges of murder, along with a possessions charge.  And no doubt, everywhere you have turned this week—social media, tv, newspapers—there is an opinion, there is a desire for explanation, a desire to make sense of all of this. 

What is clear is that the actions of this young man were evil, that they were racially motivated—he was quoted as saying during the shooting, “You (black people) are taking over our country, and you have to go.  I have to do it.”   And, according to his roommate, his goal was to begin a racial war. This was not an attack on the institutional Church--the young man was a faithful member of a local Lutheran congregation. So there is no question about what was going on here:  this was racially-motivated terrorism, a hate crime.  Plain and simple.  Still, in times like these we often look for someone or something to blame.  It’s the gun industry’s fault.  It’s the education system’s fault.  It’s the fault of some sort of imbalance, some kind of unnatural disturbance inside this young man.  It’s white people’s fault.  It’s the media’s fault.  It reminds me of the musical Into the Woods.  In the second act of that play, as the characters’ world is crashing down around them and loved ones have been killed, they sing a number called “Your Fault,” wherein each character blames another one for the troubles that they all face.

Asking ourselves how something like this could have happened is a rather pointless endeavor. Trying to find root causes often does very little, except to create hostility, finger pointing, and even greater division.  So what needs to happen?  How can there truly be healing, and what must our response be as Christians?

The only way to move forward through this, or any crisis, for that matter is through honestly and openness.  Hiding from truth, rather than naming it, never helps.  We can only begin to help and heal when the truth is faced, when we name destructive behaviors, when we admit to the wounds we have inflicted and own the wounds that have been inflicted upon us.  As Brene Brown said:  when we deny the story, it defines us; when we own the story, we can write a brave new ending.  And our story in this country, sadly, is that we have an epidemic of gun violence that is not seen in any other civilized country on the face of the earth.  And we have a racial divide that we pretend has been fixed since 1865 but that is still so very deep and so very wide. We are killing our brothers and sisters.  But let’s not talk about that; let’s find out who is to blame.  Liberals, let’s blame Conservatives.  Conservatives, let’s blame Liberals.  Let’s do everything but actually name what is going on here:  we are killing our brothers and sisters, and our Lord continues to weep every time we do it.  I tell you, if the racial divide or the overwhelming violence is ever to stop, we Christians, who follow the suffering servant named Jesus, must be willing to talk about these issues and cry out for them to come to an end.

I know this is not easy for you to hear.  It’s not easy for me to say.  Believe me, I would much rather have preached on something else, standing down there on the floor, telling a funny story.  But that’s not what being your priest is about. Nor is it what being a Christian is about. It’s not always rainbows and unicorns and songs of joy and feeling happy all the time. Sometimes it’s about going to the difficult places, for you and for me. That’s why I’m preaching from the pulpit today.  I owe it to you, my brothers and sisters, to stand in this pulpit, this symbol of my authority to preach the Good News, and go to that difficult place with you.  And trust me,  I’m right there with you.  But, believe it or not, there IS Good News in all of this.

Sometimes I have to just shake my head at the grace that comes from our lectionary, our pre-selected Sunday readings.  There is tremendous freedom, on my part, to not have to pick readings week after week, but it can be really hard when the lectionary selections don’t offer much on which to preach.  But then there are days like today, when the grace of the lectionary speaks volumes to that difficult place that you and I find ourselves in.  God speaking to Job, who can't take it anymore.  Paul calling the Corinthians, and us, to “open wide your hearts,” reminding them, and us, that “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”  And Jesus calming the storm. 

First, the Good News in Job.  We’ve all heard that saying, ‘the patience of Job,’ but what we tend to forget is that Job reached his breaking point.  After so many tragedies had befallen him, Job called out to God and cursed the day he was ever born.  Our reading today is part of God’s response to Job, and while it makes God sound like a self-righteous jerk, the Good News is that deep despair and anguish is something we all face, and it is only in confronting God with his own pain, naming it, rather than trying to cover it up, that Job is eventually brought to wholeness.  That is the Good News from the Old Testament.

In his second letter to Corinth, Paul recounts the pain and frustrations, the persecutions, the beatings, of so many of his fellow Christians.  His words that now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation, reflect his hope that Jesus would return any day now.  And while that hope of his was not realized, those words can speak to us today.  Now IS the acceptable time, the acceptable time for honesty, the acceptable time for our own admission of pain, the acceptable time for forgiveness, the acceptable time for love, the acceptable time for unity in Christ.  That is the Good News from our epistle.

And then there’s Jesus on the Sea of Galilee.  As a storm comes up his disciples are terrified, and yet with three words:  Peace!  Be still! he calms the waters.  These same three words are used by Jesus back in the first chapter of Mark when he cast out his first demon.  Peace!  Be still!  Jesus does not combat the demon, or the forces of nature, with brute force or anger, but with calmness and serenity.  He calms the storms of the disciples’ own fears.  And he is still calming storms.  With gentle words, he is still calming our storms of our own lives, of loved ones killed, of jobs lost, of hearts broken.  He is still calming the storms of our country, of division , of anxiety, of confusion, of torment. He is still calming the storms of Charleston, Columbine, Connecticut, and so many other places.  That is the Good News from our Gospel.

So, brothers and sisters, knowing that there is still Good News--always there is Good News--what is our response?  What do we do now?  We do what we Christians are always called to do: we put everything in the context of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now we stand in the the hope of the Resurrection.  It’s real.  It has to be!  We pray.  We pray for an end to turning a blind eye and blaming, and we pray for accountability and truth-telling.  We pray for the repose of the souls of the nine martyrs of Emanuel--as we did at 10:00 this morning, joining Christians around the country as we rang our bells and prayed for them all by name--and we also pray for Dylan Roof, like them a child of God.  We pray, in the name of the one who said, ‘Father, forgive them,’ that Dylan may know Resurrection.  We come to this table of reconciliation, our own and that of the world, praying not only for solace but for strength, and for the grace to see Jesus in the brokenness of our world, just as he is broken here before our very eyes, and to know him in our own brokenness We acknowledge our own pain and anguish, and, like Job, give it God, even screaming it if we have to, leaving it here at this altar.  Because we understand that our God is not docile and is big enough to hold all of our emotions. And we reach out to our brothers and sisters and name our own short-comings and whatever evil we have done or that has been done on our behalf. They say the Sunday morning church hour is the most segregated hour in America.  I tell you it does not have to be that way.  And in that hope I plan to reach out to local AME and AME Zion congregations and partner with them in the work of Christ’s body for the reconciliation of Christ’s broken world. 

So while this week has been one of tremendous anxiety and pain, do not go from this place discouraged.  Go with the truth of Resurrection.  Go knowing that love always wins over hate, even if we can’t see it. Go having been nourished by Christ so that you may serve our brothers and sisters in Christ beyond these walls.  Continue to pray for Charleston and all areas of unrest, not repaying evil for evil, and not giving in to our human need to place blame or our desire to cry out for vengeance, but by placing all our pain, all our emotion, into the hands of Jesus, who was the first to weep on Wednesday, who reminds us that if we live by the sword, we will surely die by the sword; he who is constantly making all things new, and who is still calming storms. In him is our hope, and we shall never hope in vain. 

May the martyrs of Emanuel pray for us all:
The Rev. Clementa Pinckney
Cynthia Hurd
The Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Tywanza Sanders
Ethel Lance
Susie Jackson
DePayne Middleton Doctor
The Rev. Daniel Simmons
Myra Thompson