The Third Sunday of Advent
The Second Day after the shootings in Newtown, CT
Several years ago, my daughter Heather was a student at Tulane University. She emailed me one Monday about her
weekend. She had been in the French
Quarter with friends until the wee hours of Sunday morning and had taken the
streetcar back uptown to the campus. Now
the only problem with that statement is that the streetcar doesn’t go anywhere
near the dorms on the Tulane campus.
There is a long stretch of unoccupied classroom buildings to walk
through first and it is not all that well lit.
So you can imagine my reaction.
“What do you think you are doing walking across campus at
3:00 a.m.?? It’s not at all safe!”
Not long after that, another coed did exactly what Heather
had done and was raped and murdered. The
morning after the news broke, I emailed Heather and told her I hoped she was
proud of me for not coming uptown and snatching her home to stay. It was the first thing I thought to do when I
heard the awful news.
I suspect many people wanted to rush to schools and snatch
their children home last Friday. Or got
on the phone just to talk to grown children and see how the grandchildren,
nieces and nephews were. Our first
response to such a tragedy as occurred at Sandy Hook
is to make sure our own are safe. We are
horrified that something like this could happen at all. But, as our president said on Friday, “As a
country, we have been through this too many times.”
So it seems almost obscene to hear words of rejoicing and
safety in the Lord in our first three readings this morning. We want to jump over them all and get to,
“You brood of vipers! Even now the axe
is lying at the root of the trees.” We
want words of vengeance and anger. We
want to interpret the collect –Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might
come among us – as meaning that God will swoop in and devour the evil ones
while we stand by and applaud.
Alas, that is not what the collect is imploring. It is calling on God to instill in us,
despite our sins which sorely hinder us, the strength to be God’s hands. We are asking God’s grace and mercy to help
us and to deliver us from our sins so that we can do the work we have been
given. It is not a prayer for militant
response but one that, when answered, brings joy.
And here’s the interesting thing about John the Baptist’s
diatribe about vipers and raising up sons of Abraham from stones and cutting
down trees that do not produce good fruit.
The people to whom he is speaking do not seem to cower in fear of jeer
this crazy man dressed in ragged furs.
Instead, they ask John, “what, then, should we do?” And John does not tell them that they need to
set out on a great journey, visiting many holy places, slaying dragons and
seeking hidden symbols of power. He
doesn’t tell them to dress in sackcloth and ashes and deprive themselves of
food and drink.
No, John tells them to do things that can be done right that
very minute. “If you have two coats,
give one to someone with none. Share
your food with those who haven’t enough.
John doesn’t tell tax collectors to quit their jobs but says
they should only collect that which is prescribed. Soldiers, too, were told to be satisfied with
their wages and not to intimidate and bully people into giving them extra cash.
If this world were a more equitable place, where we didn’t
talk about the 2% or the 47% but considered how we can make it possible for
everyone to have a chance to have enough, then we will have done what John
asked. As a community, we began that
journey when many of you started cooking and delivering meals for Meals on
Wheels. Feeding the hungry and clothing
the naked continues to be a significant part of our ministry here. And we know that we are called to continue
until there is no longer any need.
We do not have to travel to Newtown, CT
to grieve with the town that lost 27 people to senseless violence last
Friday. There is nothing we can do to
turn back the clock and restore life to those who died and, while some of us
may have the experience to understand what it is like to lose a child, we
really don’t have any words to offer that will ease their hearts. They need only know that we are praying for
them, today and for many months to come.
A letter to the Newtown Bee or to the local Episcopal Church expressing
our love will let them know our continued support in prayer.
But then we must pay attention to the rejoicing in the first
three lessons. Do not think that
rejoicing and sorrow are on different planets.
We cannot have one without the other.
If we never suffered pain and sorrow, we would not know what rejoicing
felt like and the converse is also true – a world of only rejoicing is
meaningless and dull unless we have something to contrast it with. I don’t know why that it is or should be but
I know it to be true. The joy I will
feel at seeing my son out of prison on January 3 is greatly increased by the
fact that he was there in the first place.
It will be a resurrection moment for my family.
There will be resurrection moments for the people of Newtown. I don’t know when or how but I am confident
that God has those people held close and, just as we have been delivered to the
other side of grief and sorrow on many an occasion, so will they. One day, they will again say, “Rejoice in the
Lord always; and again, I say, rejoice.”
