To Be ... Or Not

April 22, 2007

Texts: Acts 9:1-6; John 21:1-19

The question is not simply, as Hamlet would have us believe, to be or not to be, whether tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … and so on, but rather this: are we to be who we are called to be or are we content merely to be according to the dictates of culture, fashion and situation?

As I mentioned last Sunday, we are going to spend the next several weeks circling around that question together. Of course, when I introduced this theme a week ago, none of us knew that the intervening days would be marked with violence striking close to home.

I don’t want to bring together this morning things that ought not be brought together, and if I wind up there, please forgive me, but I feel it only decent and respectful to acknowledge the awful tragedy in our state this past week. I have no answers or particular insights, but was mindful this week that six years ago this month I preached a sermon two days after a member of the congregation I was serving committed a rampage murder that claimed the lives of five people in the Pittsburgh area.

That April Sunday, one week after Easter in 2000, to the gathered community and members of the press who came to hear what the church would say after one of its members had killed five people, I said, “God is not the author of our pain.” I believed that then, and I believe it now. That morning I said, “there is a balm in Gilead.” I believed that then, and I believe it now. That morning I said, “God is at work in the world redeeming history.” I believed that then, and I believe it now.

That morning and again today I affirm this core belief: We believe in the God who created us, sustains us, and redeems us.

Such a God is not the author of our pain. God did not will these shootings at Virginia Tech any more than God wills the ongoing daily violence in Baghdad, where 157 people where killed on the same day that the Post profiled the 32 people who died in Blacksburg. Indeed, the first heart broken last week in Blacksburg and in Baghdad was the oft-broken heart of God.

Such heart-breaking events, whether on a quiet college campus or in the streets of a war-torn city, defy easy understanding. As Nikki Giovanni said at the memorial convocation last week in Blacksburg, “We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.”

God weeps at human tragedy. Scripture tells us that Jesus wept at the death of a friend. Jesus wept again last week as the children of God killed and died, just as Jesus weeps whenever and wherever the image of God is violated in us and through us by the violence that erupts when human brokenness and suffering lead to rage.

Of course, while this unfathomable tragedy at Virginia Tech is deeply troubling, it does not strike quite so close to home – for me – as did the one in Pittsburgh. Perhaps because of that distance, perhaps because I am somewhat familiar with the terrain, I am willing to consider, perhaps too quickly, what this event, and others like it, have to do with who God is, who we are and with how we are to be who we have been called to be.

While I tend to be somewhat of a “process theologian” and understand God dynamically and relationally, there are aspects of God that remain constant. What I said a half dozen years ago, in similar circumstances, remains true today. “God reigns over all of history. God is working still in the world to redeem history. We trust that even in the midst of our worst brokenness, God can work again to redeem us and to make us whole.”

Yes! To all of that, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

“God created the world and called it ‘good.’ God created human beings and called us ‘good’ as well. And so you and I, we bear within us the image of God.” We are, just like the innocents gunned down in the halls of academia and the streets of Baghdad, children of a loving God. Yes to that, of course. But also to this: the suicide bombers in Baghdad are children of God; Seung Hui Cho is a child of God – scarred and broken and lying dead in an academic building after killing so many other children of God, but still a child of God.

God is the one who is merciful and loving when human beings are not. God is the one who desires reconciliation while we scream for revenge. God is the one who loves when all the world cries out with hatred. God weeps tears of sorrow when we cry tears of rage.

For God knows that each of us is scarred and broken; the Good Friday story tells us that God has borne those scars and that brokenness. The Good Friday story tells us that, in our brokenness, we human beings are capable of horrific acts of terror and evil. The Good Friday story tells us that God is in the midst of suffering.

Where was God last week as tragic events unfolded down in Blacksburg and over in Baghdad? In the short story Night, Elie Wiesel’s holocaust memoir, he recounts the hanging of a small child at Auschwitz. The Nazi guards forced the prisoners to line up and watch the execution, and as the child was hanged, one of the prisoners asked, “where is God? Where is God, now?” Wiesel writes, “And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows. …”

God with us. Emmanuel. That is the name we call the God we worship. Even in the midst of our worst suffering, in the midst of our greatest fear, God is with us. There is a balm in Gilead. God is there, hanging on the gallows.

But the story does not end there.

We know that God has created us. We know that God is with us. The prophet Isaiah puts it this way: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” We know that God sustains us even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

But the story does not end in the shadows. The Easter story tells us that terror and evil, that hatred and violence, that death itself does not have the last word. God redeems us. The stone is rolled away; the tomb is bare and the cross stands empty to the sky.

And that brings us to us – it brings us face to face with ourselves, because we are called to be an Easter people in a Good Friday world.
We are called to live resurrected lives in a world still entombed by fear and hatred and violence.

We are called to be a community of Godly worship in a world that worships power, money and success.

We are called to be a community of compassion and forgiveness in a culture of malice and punishment.

We are called to be a community of reconciliation in a world that cries out for revenge.

We are called to be a community of peacemakers in a culture of violence.
We are called to be a community of hope in a world marked by deep cynicism.

We are called to be a community of faith in a culture of disbelief.

We are called to be a community of love in a world torn by ancient hatred and tribal division.
This common calling means nothing, amounts to nothing, transforms nothing if it does not lead to concrete actions by real people in the world. In other words, you and me, called to be this community, marked and shaped by these values, acting out of them day by day for the healing of the world.

Are we to be, or not to be, this community?

In the face of each instance of brokenness, are we to be a community of restoration?

Last week I heard someone suggest that schools would be safer if all of the faculty were armed and trained. My initial response was to think back on my junior high band leader, Mr. Francis, who was known to throw his baton straight through the sheet music of offending young musicians. Any weapon more deadly than that … well.

But my more reasoned response is this: we are called as a community to witness to and practice more faithful strategies of security based upon our deepest values of compassion, generosity and love, rather than out of fear. We are called to be a community that trusts in the one who said, “love your enemies;” not folks who place their trust in weapons and guns.

As the Confession of ’67 urged, we must commend the pursuit of peace to the nations even at the risk of national security; likewise, we must commend and practice the pursuit of peace in our personal lives even at the risk of our own security.

That means speaking out for forgiveness and reconciliation even when all around you cry for blood. That means seeking restoration as well as restitution. That means trusting that, just as God turned Paul around on the road to Damascus, broken human beings in our time can be healed and restored. This means living as if we believe that even the one who denied Jesus three times can be called to tend Jesus’ flock. That means that justice and love walk arm in arm, and neither advances a single step without the other.

The miracle in Acts is not that Paul saw the light, but rather that God chose Paul. The miracle at the end of John’s gospel comes when Jesus seeks Peter’s love three times after Peter had said, three times, “I don’t know him.”

Through these miracles, God is calling us; Jesus is teaching us. If we would but listen, perhaps we would learn that we cannot arm ourselves with violent weapons to overcome a culture of violence; for in both word and dead only peace can overcome violence. We cannot blanket fear with fear and expect anything but fear, for only love casts out fear. We cannot speak words of hate in the face of hate, for in word and deed only love can overcome hate.

The question before us today is simply this: shall we be the community of generosity, compassion, faith, hope and love that we are called by God to be, or shall we huddle alone in our fear trusting whatever security apparatus we can construct instead of trusting in the God of resurrection?

God places before us, in moments such as this, the choice between death-dealing cynicism or life-giving hope. To be or not to be the community of compassion, the commonwealth of the beloved. Choose this day whom you shall serve; whom you shall trust.

As for me and my household, we shall trust the God of resurrection hope and receive each day as a gift filled with the promise of new and abundant life. And we shall serve that God with faith, hope and love every step of the journey. Amen.