Sermon
I am struggling, as I’m sure you are, on a morning when
all of our hearts are heavy, when all of us have been left speechless by the tragedy
at the Sandy Hook Elementary School
In the church calendar, today is called Gaudete
Sunday. Gaudete means “Rejoice,” which
is why the candle we lit this morning is the Joy candle. But I imagine few of us are feeling any joy
right now. How can we feel joy, when a
school, a community, a nation mourns the loss of children. The senseless tragedy seems especially
heinous since the children were so young and innocent. There don’t seem to be any answers, any words
that could possibly heal our grief.
As people of faith, one of the places we turn to is
Scripture. Many seeing the scenes of
distraught parents have been reminded of this story from the gospel of Matthew
(2:13-18):
13Now after the Wise Men had left Bethlehem, an angel
of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and
his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is
about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night,
and went to Egypt
16When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise
men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem
That reading is assigned on the first Sunday after
Christmas, a day called the Feast of the Innocents. The story reminds us the Holy Family, Mary, Joseph
and the infant Jesus became refugees, fleeing for their lives. Herod, in his
paranoia and lust for power, wanted to make sure the child did not escape, and
called for infant boys in and around Bethlehem to be slaughtered. On that Sunday we remember all those innocent
children who have died at the hands of evil in this world. It seems the Feast of the Innocents came
early this year.
Death, whether experienced in a
tragedy like Sandy Hook or in the quiet loss
of a loved one, challenges our faith, our understanding of God.
Most of us who have experienced such a loss can testify
to the turbulent questions of faith that follow in its wake. We turn to God and ask, “Why?” When it involves children we want to know, “Why
should the little ones suffer?” But,
perhaps, the toughest question is whether or not God is to be trusted.
The Gospel writer Matthew invokes Rachel’s voice in the
midst of this story of God-with-us, the birth of a child whose name is a verb: save. God’s salvation may seem far off and
inadequate to the parents who mourn, but the promise is deeper than this moment
in time. The threat of this Herod passes for a time, only to be replaced by
another Herod, yet another ruler without scruples. But when this child of Rachel returns to Jerusalem as an adult, God enters into the fate
of every doomed child and every grieving parent. (http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20071224JJ.shtml)
Jesus knows what suffering and terror are like. God stands with the families who are
mourning, including the family of the shooter.
But in a year in which there has been so much tragedy, so much
suffering, in which people are still staggering from Hurricane Sandy, in which
we have lost loved ones, or have traveled through that first year alone without
our loved one, a time in which the biopsy came back malignant, a time in which
we pray that the radiation will work, that the babies will be ok, that the world
will be healed, we want to say “enough”.
Enough, God. Enough. And we come
to this morning’s reading from the prophet Isaiah:
1The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord
has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the
prisoners; 2to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of
vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; 3to provide for
those who mourn in Zion— to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of
gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.
The Bible is full of truth telling. And the prophet Isaiah, in his message to the
returnees to Jerusalem , is
no different. There is no sugar
coating. They have returned from
exile—and their lives are no better, are, in fact, worse than when they were in
exile. The city is in ruins, the
rebuilding seems impossible, they are faint of heart at the work that stands
before them, and they are ashamed that they cannot restore the city and the Temple to its former glory. All is in ruins.
And God, through the prophet, speaks a word of both truth
and hope. I know you are mourning, says
the speaker. I know you are broken
hearted, I know your sorrow. But there
is comfort for those who mourn, there is good news—even when it seems
incomprehensible, even when we cannot imagine anything except grief and sorrow. For we have in Scripture the testimony of a
people who have witnessed the acts of a God who brings hope and joy and life in
the midst of despair and sorrow and death.
Stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Joseph and his brothers, of Moses and
the Exodus, of the Promised Land, and of return from Exile.
This passage from Isaiah alternates between two voices- a
human speaker, whom we just heard, and God.
The human voice goes on and says:
4They (the people of Israel )
shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. 5Strangers shall stand and feed
your flocks, foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines; 6but
you shall be called priests of the Lord,
you shall be named ministers of our God.
Which is what we are called to do. In this time in-between, between Christ’s
first coming and his return, in a world that is still broken and not yet
healed, a time in which it seems evil and darkness are winning, all of us are
called to be ministers, to be priests, to care for others in their sorrow and
distress, to do exactly what the speaker first said: the share the good news,
to proclaim liberty, to bind up the broken hearted. Those words are associated with Christ. But in our baptism, we are anointed with
God’s Spirit, and we are called, as individuals and the church, to do the same
work. Binding up. Restoring. Healing. Helping people see that God is
indeed involved in human life, that God was not absent on that awful day,
showing the love of God in our words and in our actions. Because God promises us this:
8For I the Lord
love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their
restoration, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
The composer Johannes Brahms, grieving the deaths of his
mother and of his dear friend, Robert Schumann, wrote one of his greatest
works, “A German Requiem.” As part of
the opening movement, he chose the final verses of Psalm 126, which we read
earlier. These verses are, in a way,
both prayer and promise:
“May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall
come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”
God knows our sorrow.
And even though it sometimes feels like we are still living in exile, God
will never leave us, will surely restore us.
This is the word
of the Lord…thanks be to God. Amen.
