*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
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