Sermon from Sunday, December 16, 2012

This sciatica, and the pain in my leg has kept me from being able to play with Eliot and Naomi for a month now. They are getting frustrated with me, saying, “Daddy, when are you going to get your leg fixed?” It is hard not to be able to be active, to feel horrible pain with every step I take or every shift I make when I am sitting down. It is even harder to watch Eliot and Naomi play in the snow and know that I can’t run and jump and throw them around right now.

But on Friday, that unfortunate feeling in my soul was one that I found myself being grateful for. Because there is no way I could imagine the pain of a parent who had just lost their child in the way that 20 families lost their own children in Connecticut.  I am still numb, I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a young man walked into a school and killed 20 children and 7 adults. It just doesn’t make sense.

Why would someone do that? Why? I don’t have the answer, and I sure as heck know that our television stations, our 24 hour news programs will have no answer, all they will have is vitriolic reaction and unhelpful debates and blame and shame for anyone willing to put up with that kind of drivel on a television set. No matter how I look at it, I can’t bring myself to understand, to comprehend why something like this could happen, would happen.

So I turned to what I always turn to in these situations. I did it after 9/11, after Columbine, after Katrina, after Sandy. I turned to the scriptures, what do they say, and particularly what do they say today, this third Sunday in Advent. Scripture often is a comfort in times of personal challenge, in times of personal difficulty, why would this time be any different.

It was different; it was different because it reminded me again of why it is we call ourselves Christians. Why it is our scriptures, when allowed to speak to us as unfiltered as possible, speaking to our emotional, our spiritual selves, scripture always has something unexpected to say. And today, the scriptures we have say something unexpected, they say something we would not really expect or see ourselves doing in a time like this. They tell us to rejoice.

Zephaniah opens with, “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!” Paul, in his letter to the Philippians writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!” What is this, why is this, how can we rejoice, how can we celebrate in the aftermath of something so horrific and so terrible as what we witnessed on Friday? What I want to do is crawl under a rock and disappear for a little while, with my kids, so I can be sure they are as safe as possible, they last thing on my mind is singing.

Of course, that isn’t totally true, because during these horrific national crises, I do sing, I really do sing, I sing a song that helps remember that I have hope for a better future. I sing a song that helps me to see and know that God is present; God has not been removed from our schools, taken from our tables, or pulled from our public places, doing those thigns is impossible. Rather God is here, the song sings, God is present, now and always, and as Bonhoeffer said in his prison cell, “Bidden or unbidden, God is always near.”

That song I sing is Enya’s tune of the song, “How can I keep from singing.”

It goes like this:

My life flows on in endless song; / Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn / That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife / I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul— / How can I keep from singing?

We are called to sing, we are called to rejoice, even in the midst of death, in the midst of horror we are called to rejoice because it gives us hope, it strengthens our faith. But singing isn’t enough. It might make us feel better, but that is not the purpose of rejoicing. Feeling better about ourselves is not the purpose of rejoicing in in our Lord God. The purpose of rejoicing is to celebrate a new Kingdom, the indwelling of the Kingdom of God; the coming of Jesus is why we celebrate, why we sing.

No, singing is not enough, making ourselves feel better is not something that is important in this line of thinking. Justice, righteousness and mercy are what is important. Valuing the lives of the people who died and using that value, that understanding that their lives were more precious than the data that is tossed around to defend our rights to bear arms is what we are called to do. This is no longer a rational debate, this is an emergency of the utmost importance, and arming every man woman and child with some sort of weapon is not the answer. More guns will only lead to more deaths, more violence and more hurt.

Listening to the talk shows babble on and on these past couple of days, it occurred to me that we, as a country, have decided to embrace the same culture that was present when Jesus was alive. A culture that says clearly, if you have money, you are worth something, if you do not, then you are not worth a damn. A culture that says if you are healthy and strong, then you are blessed, if you are unhealthy and weak, then you clearly are not worth a damn. A culture that says you have to have accomplished something in your life, if you are young, and have not accomplished anything of note, then you are not worth a damn.

This is where we live, and singing won’t change a thing, what will change the world is how we understand every human being as having the same integrity and dignity and value as the next person. Like Jo Anderson used to always say to her kids, keep your head held high, you’re no better than anyone else, but you are as valuable as everyone else. Until we can see everyone in this world as having the same value as you and me, until we can believe that God has invested God’s self as fully in every other human being on this planet as you and me, until we can understand that, this culture of division, of hate, or judgment will rule and continue to destroy who we are as Christians, as humans. Then it will not be long before there will no longer be any singing at all.