Title: Two Stories Meet (The Gospel & News from Vir. Tech.)
Date:
Text: Acts 9: 1-10
By: Kendall Brown
This past week,
I have had two stories before me with every passing moment. The first story is the tragic news from
The second story
that has been before me all week is found in the Scriptures – specifically, the
stories of Jesus and his disciples on the shore and the story of Paul on the
road to Damascus, and in general, the story of the Gospel – the good news of
Jesus Christ. This morning, the task
before me is to bring those two stories together.
I want to
state plainly my goal today. My goal is
rooted firmly in my own faith and how my faith processes news of wars,
tragedies and calamities that are constantly before us. First, I share with you a few things that I
am not going to do this morning.
In no way,
am I going to assert that my faith can make sense of what happened at Virginia
Tech. There is no sense to made or found
in that murderous act. Faith does not
enable me to make sense of events that are beyond comprehension. Faith gives me
the strength, courage and insight to keep from becoming mired in the events and
to push beyond them towards the future. By definition, the act of entering a
classroom or dormitory to take life from innocent students is totally
senseless. There is no sense to be found
in it.
I’ve
shuddered this week as I have watched grown-up, experienced, prominent and
allegedly mature news casters interview classmates, relatives and friends of
the slain and ask them about making sense of what they have experienced. What an incredibly cruel and insensitive
question to ask of our children or other people close to the victims. There is no sense to be found in the
insanity of what happened from any angle - be the angle philosophical, ethical,
theological or through the eyes of faith.
Why ask someone in the throes of pain to do the impossible – make sense
of the senseless – and thereby rub salt in the deep and fresh spiritual wounds?
As a person
who thinks theologically and who strives and struggles to teach and lead others
to think theologically, there is one lesson I refuse to find or teach in the
terror of last Monday. I hear people say
that it is God’s will in response to inexplicable event. Those words are used to make sense of the
senseless. Those words are used to
comfort the bereaved, when spiritually all those words do is throw someone
deeper into the flames of hell. I hear
those words often, and every time I hear them, it is all that I can do to
contain my anger.
In January
of 1983, tragedy came to the family of William Sloan Coffin, Jr., then the
pastor of Riverside Drive Church in NYC.
His son, a first year college student, was killed in a senseless car
accident in Boston. A few months later,
Coffin wrote an article, entitled, “My Son Beat Me to the Grave,” which was
published in the UCC magazine/journal “AD.”
One person
tried to comfort Coffin at a gathering before the funeral with the words, “Surely,
it is god’s will that Alex died?” As a
parent who has just lost a child, isn’t that just exactly what you want to
hear? For the record, not this parent.
Can you imagine saying that to any of the parents of the Virginia Tech slain
students? If you can imagine saying
that, I beg of you to at least consider holding your tongue.
William
Coffin was unable to contain himself and said to the lady with considerable
emotion attached to the words, “Do you think that it was the will of God that
Alex never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he probably was
driving too fast in such a storm, that he probably had had a couple of ‘frosties’ too many?
Do you really think that it is god’s will that there are no streetlights
along that stretch of road, and no guardrail separating the road and Boston
Harbor?” (AD June 1983, p. 26)
Coffin wrote
about his grief in the article with the following: (these words speak deeply to
us today in our grief for the on-campus
tragedy this week)
“For some reason,
nothing so infuriates me as the incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to
get it through their heads that God doesn’t go around this world with his
finger on triggers, his fist around knives, his hands on steering wheels. God
is dead set against all unnatural deaths.
And Christ spent an inordinate amount of time delivering people from
paralysis, insanity, leprosy and muteness.
Which is not to say that there are no natural caused deaths, deaths that
are untimely, slow and pain-ridden….The one thing that should never be said is,
“It is the will of God.”
…My own
consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die; that
when the waves closed over the sinking car, (when the thunder of bullets broke the quiet of a campus morning)
God’s heart was the first to of all our hearts to break. …
….And
finally I know that when Alex beat me to the grave, the finish line was not
Boston Harbor in the middle of the night.
If a lamp went out, it was because, for him at least, the Dawn had
come. So I shall – so let us all – seek
consolation in that love which never dies, and find peace in the dazzling grace
that always is.”
We try to
make sense of the senseless by speaking of God’s will, which does not make any
sense to any thinking Christian at all and never will.
Another
attempt to make sense of the senseless is found in efforts to turn to a handful
of verses in the Scriptures and let those verses, disconnected from any other
verses or any other Biblically based system of truth, explain it all. When bad things happen, some are tempted to
extract from the Scriptures verses that come from a variety of Apocalyptical traditions and that are entwined into the Biblical
stories.
For example,
Jesus’ saying that there will be war and rumors of war and all sorts of
horrible things. Basically these verses
form a miniscule piece in the teachings and work of Jesus and hardly reflect
the core of who he is or what he teaches.
Turning to theses verses to make sense of senseless events misses the
point of reading the Bible completely.
Yes, the
Bible is a treasure chest. The treasure
to be found in the Bible is the Good News of Jesus Christ, (his birth, his life
on earth and teachings, his death, his resurrection and his community that
springs forth from him). That is the
Gospel – the Good news – the treasure and the secret (and there are no other
secrets)– to be found in the Scriptures.
The treasure
in the Bible is not some secret terrible game plan that God has for this planet
which is revealed to those who can find the secret code, if you will – whatever
that code may be. The only revelation
offered to us through the Scriptures is the revelation of God’s self of love
and grace for all humanity. Looking for
any other revelation beyond that one big revealing is a senseless wild goose
chase for secrets that are not there.
There are no
secrets in the Bible, even secrets about signs predicting the end of the
world. What is in the Bible is
mystery. The mystery is that of a God of
love at the center of it all. That
mystery is enough to leave us in awe and wonder for our entire lives; without
ever having to add to it, one single little secret which might be found in some
secluded Scriptural verse.
I will add
here that being made in the image of God, there is a mystery in humanity as
there is in God. There is a part of who
we are that is a mystery. We will never
know completely who we are or all that we contain as potential. I believe this past Monday, as we watched the
events in Virginia we were also looking into the mystery of ourselves, where
there is as much potential for evil as there is good, and about which we will
never be able to contain the mystery in a framework that gives it sense. That is the mystery of our own divinity.
Another
response to the Virginia tragedy is to attempt gathering all the learning and
all the information possible about what happened thinking that we can put it
all together and find ways to guarantee that it
will never happen again. Without
a doubt there is much to be learned in reflection and study of the campus
carnage. But we will never be able to
guarantee that it won’t happen again.
Greater control of the sale of firearms might help. I find it incredible that this young man was
able to purchase the weaponry that he had obtained without any question. But gun control itself will not guarantee the
absence of such events from our future – anymore than closer psychological
screening of students will solve all the problems.
What we as
Christians can do that might contribute to a better world in the future is not
lose in the face of mystery our ability to trust. We are spiritual beings, not human
beings. It is our spirit that makes us
and defines us. The danger in events
like the Virginia Tech massacre is for us to become less spiritual in our being
by living out of the fear within us instead of out of the divine within
us.
At the heart
of spiritual living is trust, which opens the heart to goodness both today and
tomorrow, as well as sadness that sometimes floods the heart with its
tears. But as spiritual beings we let
our trust push out the tears in our hearts and allow our hearts to return to
our maker. We live and move and have our being in God, not in our tears and
fears.
Two stories
have been before me this week - one from the world and one from the
Scriptures. As important as the
Scriptures are to me, they do not make sense of the senseless. A part of living in faith is living with the
senseless and with a trust that pushes beyond the senseless.
The relationship
between the two stories is not about one making sense of the other or about one
eradicating any sense that might be found in the other. For some in this world, the tragic events of
war, senseless carnage, and disasters of nature render useless any sense that
the Bible or faith might have to offer.
The relationship between the two stories is not found in the Biblical
story in some way making sense of the tragedy.
I have had
two stories in front of me all week long as a consequence of my work being a
preacher. Now you have two stories in
front of you as a result of your living in the world and its unavoidable
stories, and being here this morning where before you is another story – the
story of the Gospel as found in Scriptures.
The
relationship between those two stories for each of us as persons of faith is a
matter of choice and size. The news from
Something
happened to Paul on the road to