Sermon Advent III, December 16, 2012, Year C St. Alban s of Bexley, Ohio Rev. Susan Marie Smith, Ph.D. Zephaniah 3:14-20 Canticle 9 Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:7-18 Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. On Friday, two days before this was preached, a 20-year-old, Adam Lanza, killed his mother, took two guns and opened fire in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, killing 20 children, 6 adults, and then killed himself. The nation has been in pain and grief. Words like slaughter and massacre have been used. President Obama wept in his address for our children and their families. Discussions about gun control have begun already. The nation is stunned. This sermon was preached at the 8 AM service, Rite I, on December 16, 2012. Let us pray together the responsive prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, p. 55. Morning Prayer I, Suffrages A V. O Lord, show thy mercy upon us; R. And grant us thy salvation. V. Endue thy ministers with righteousness; R. And make thy chosen people joyful. V. Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; R. For only in thee can we live in safety. V. Lord, keep this nation under thy care; R. And guide us in the way of justice and truth. V. Let thy way be known upon earth; R. Thy saving health among all nations. V. Let not the needy, O Lord, be forgotten; R. Nor the hope of the poor be taken away. V. Create in us clean hearts, O God; R. And sustain us with your Holy Spirit. Yesterday we heard the horrible news of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Twenty children, six adults at school, Adam Lanza s mother, Adam himself. I ve been to Trinity Episcopal Church, and met Mother Kathie. I have a friend and colleague who was the associate there for several years, and when I went to visit her, we attended New Year s Day services there at the very church that is now filled with mourning for two of its own children who have been killed, and a congregation who is taking its place among other churches to minister to the broken town of Newtown, CT. 1
Murder-suicide. What is this? Over and over. Our own community, our own parish, is not immune from this dis-ease that seems to be plaguing our nation. What do we do with our anguished pain?? I. Blame the Perpetrator One common approach is to blame the perpetrator. The bad guy. The one with the black hat. Torture him. Taunt him. Hate him. Kill him. Separate the bad apple from the rest of us. People like that them who have no values, no self-control, no socialization. And it s true. We do have to stop the perpetrator. But in the long run, only in God can we live in safety. Our safety will never be secure if we spend all our energy stopping perpetrators. Because they keep coming. And they don t seem to understand our concern. Some of you may have seen the documentary film Luther that came out some years ago. There was a single mother with two sons, poor, lived in town. The older son stole some bread to keep the family alive. He stole more than once. Finally, the towns-people banished them and made them move out into the woods, where they had no social contact. There they continued to be poor, cold, and hungry. There was no dad, and the older son didn t know how to hunt. Eventually he killed himself. And because suicide is a sin (murdering oneself), the church wouldn t allow him to be buried in the church-yard. In a compelling scene, Luther himself digs a grave in the churchyard and invites the distraught mother, who s afraid her son will burn in hell, to come; Luther buries him in the churchyard. When questioned, he says, He did murder himself. But why? Who else is a sinner here? What did we do to help them, to give them options, to care for them? We are all implicated in this. He will be buried with the rest of us. In A General Theory of Love, 3 pediatric neural-psychologists study the brain. These scientists show that love is central to being human. Humans are extremely sensitive and fragile, and it takes us a while to become like a human being. The first 5 years are crucial. We are not born human like some of our fellow creatures who pretty much come out ready to hunt and survive on their own. Primates are not like that. If we don t get good parenting, get socialized, experience love and exploration and limits and learning, we well, we grow older, and our bodies form, but we do not become human. We can only be humane with the fullness of love and limits, copying our care-givers, forming social ties, character, and conscience. So we have some humans who are not fully humanized, and we have some who are sinners because of circumstance. Blaming the perpetrator is not always the true and best response. II. Blame the Victim Another common approach to our instinct for blaming and revenge is to blame the victim. We ask, What did they do to deserve this? How did they invite this pain? Victim-blaming is more common than you think. If only s/he hadn t... Even What did s/he do in a past life..? But there can be no victim-blaming with the Sandy Hook tragedy: these were innocent children. III. If blame and revenge are not the answer, then why do we do it? 2
It turns out BLAME is actually not helpful. God came as a human. Humanity is created with holiness at the center. Humans are deeply sensitive, poetic, with spirits that are fragile in a certain way. We can be tempered, as we said last week but carefully, lest we break. Then why are we inclined to do it? Part of why we blame is to help ourselves contain the pain. If it s his fault or her fault, that at least limits the cause. It feels immediately satisfying in a certain sense. Blame and revenge do release a certain terrible tension when humans must face the in-human: it can create an eye for an eye kind of justice. Paul Ricoeur calls the instinctive desire to do to them what they did to us mimesis. We unconsciously imitate the perpetrator, or the one we blame, ostracizing, labeling them non-human, scape-goating them or others like them. The problem then is that the wrong-doer has become our reference-point. We re watching with horror yet then imitating, hopefully on a lesser scale. But every time we do that, we give away a part of our own humanity, and we make ourselves more like the perpetrator. Our own moral compass, our own humanity, is vulnerable at times like this. For example, the U.S. military has always had a strong tradition of honor. We have been committed to the Geneva Conventions in our behavior. But our guys were tortured in Vietnam. And here, years later, in Guantanamo Bay, we had become the torturers even though it is not morally defensible, it is inhuman, it is beneath us. But if we aren t vigilant, we can find ourselves imitating the wrong-doer, unconsciously. IV. If not blame, then what? Then WHAT DO WE DO with our PAIN? Our Fear? Our empathy? Our survivors guilt? We may try to stick with blaming: if not the perpetrator, then the victim; if neither of them, we might A). Blame God. Or we might B). Blame ourselves. But there are at least two other responses that are far more valuable than blame, though they can be counter-intuitive. It is the two things our Scripture points to this day. These two things are less immediately satisfying: but in fact, they are what saves us, both in the near term, and in the long run. A. THE FIRST IS PRAISE OF GOD and TRUST IN GOD. This is part of HOPE. Now I remember one of my early mentors saying to me, pray on your own time. Let s get to work. But my more recent mentor has taught me something different. I m still not very good at it: but it s this. Work is good. But if we do not stop periodically and turn to the One who made us, the Only One who can save us, by whose Spirit the whole earth operates, and motivates, and unifies, then, my brothers and sisters, WE ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Rather, we are called to trust God. Listen again to Zephaniah: The LORD has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. 3
The king of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The LORD, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home,... At every funeral, we say, Even at the grave we sing our alleluia! It is not easy to praise God when our faces are tear-stained and our hearts our thumping wildly, anguished for those who lost their children, and fearful for ourselves, and imagining how our own lives would seem ended if it happened to us. But in the midst of that agony is the very time we must praise God: Thank him proleptically for the fact that we will be able to praise him later, even though it s really hard to do now. I did everything to save my marriage. I stayed in it too long. I endured such suffering as I would not describe in a sermon. And then it was over, a failure; when I met with him and his new soon-to-be bride, when my heart was utterly broken, my soul in pain, my life in shambles, I remember praying, Lord, I know the day will come when I will be able to thank you for all this. But you know that day is not today. (That day did come, several years later.) I ve wondered since how I knew to remind myself before the Lord where I was headed: to thanks and praise. It took a while. But knowing on some deep level what would eventually come, helped me be open to it when it happened. And in Paul s letter to the Philippians today, we heard, Rejoice in the Lord, always. [and in case you don t feel like rejoicing just now,] again let me say it: REJOICE. D A R E to E X P E R I E N C E J O Y. Dare. Have courage. HOPE. B. And the second thing, besides turning to God, trusting that God is making things right, is working to redeem even this the second thing comes from the Gospel. 4
John the Baptist reminds us that justice will come from the Lord.: Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." JUSTICE IS GETTING WHAT WE DESERVE. God is in charge of this. But MERCY IS GETTING WHAT WE DON T DESERVE. This is God s gift to us. Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Therefore, our focus must be on turning our lives around, on focusing on our own families, on paying attention to our spiritual lives and those of our children and parents and neighbors. Take this is a WAKE-UP CALL. Be Alert. And the crowds asked John, What then should we do? In reply he said to them, Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise. And the people of St. Alban s Church in Bexley asked him, What should we do? And the one who was preparing the way for the Christ-child said to us, Be honest. Be merciful. For only in being merciful will you be prepared to receive the Mercy Christ is ready to give you. What else should we do? Take time to pray with your children, every day, at meal time and at bed-time. Pray with your spouse. Listen to those in your family and find ways to care for them. Read you Bible at night, just a little, but every single day. Teacher, what else must we do? Apologize when needed; ask for forgiveness. Forgive each other. Notice when someone is hurt, and find a way to help their healing. Make reconciliation one with another, even if you don t feel worthy, even if it s not your job. Keep your gaze not on wrong-doers, but on the Lord. Let God be our center. Gandhi said, if I did not feel the presence of God within me, I see so much of misery and disappointment every day that I would be a raving maniac and my destination would be the Hoogli River. 1 Feeling the presence of God within him is what kept Gandhi from suicide. This we must practice. So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people. And the Angel of the Lord said, Do not be afraid, for God is with you. V. Give peace, O Lord, in all the world; R. For only in you can we live in safety. V. Lord, keep this nation under your care; R. And guide us in the way of justice and truth and mercy. V. O Lord, let your way be known upon earth. And the people who walked in darkness shall see a great light; and the darkness shall not overcome it. Amen. 1 David McI. Gracie, ed. Gandhi and Charlie: The Story of a Friendship (Cambridge, Mass.: Cowley, 1989), 176. 5