The link to the video is here: http://www.whitememorial.org/pages/page.asp?page_id=168214&programId=140090
Sermons change names over time
This sermon was first called: “Meditation for Music Sunday.”
Then, this title became “Gloriously” because we are singing
glorious music in church today and the Isaiah text says that God acts
gloriously. “Gloriously,” which is much
more inspiriting, is printed in your bulletins.
But that was all before Wednesday, the day when we learned
of the death of a child of our church, only in his mid-twenties. We fulfilled our Baptismal promise to him and
to his family as we celebrated his memory, and testified to the strength of the
resurrection. That was Wednesday.
And then Friday came.
I have a child in kindergarten.
So small, trusting, and innocent.
A friend of mine who teaches at the law school in Chapel
Hill wrote me that she did not envy me trying to make sense of what we saw in
Connecticut on Friday. But that it is true
of all of us. This is hard to take much
sense from….
So if I could retitle this sermon this morning, it might be
– “really, again, really?” Really we
have to bury one in this community too young to have to bury? Again we have to hear the story of another
killer who wages a personal war on the innocent?
Today, the third Sunday of Advent is joy Sunday, so these
remarks were supposed to be about joy for its own sake: joy, glorious joy! Joy which gloriously allows and inspires the
people of God to let joy, joy, joy, joy, joy get down into their hearts (just
like the children’s song echoes).
But then last week happened.
Then we heard a chaplain in Connecticut talk about how there
are families there who have had joy ripped away from them. How do we share joyfulness and talk about Christmas
in the face of such terror, where nothing seems unsafe?
Because it is hard to feel very safe anywhere when the
safest place in the world, kindergarten is no longer a haven. As a father of children their very ages, I
don’t want to imagine a day in our nation when the curriculum for our little
ones includes survival skills training.
The lessons in kindergarten are about milk and cookies, about letters
and numbers, about stories and sharing.
Terror and death are supposed to be kept far, far away.
Today I lend my voice to the rising chorus of voices, many
of us religious leaders, who are calling us, each of us, to look deeply at our
own lives, our own community standards, and our own national practices and ask
“what is wrong?” I lend my voice to
those who declare it is time we examined our relationship to the myth of
redemptive violence, and I decry acts of violence against those who are weakest
among us.
Each time I baptize a child, I say in the words of one of my
mentors, “we are called to build a city and make a society which is safe for
all of God’s children” – and so I have to wonder if that is what we are doing? Are we building a safe world for the kids?
I am not in a position to offer solutions today, and I do
not want to demagogue when the grief is still so very raw, but I will say
this: whatever it is that we are (or are
not) doing isn’t working.
A society that cannot keep its children safe is one that has
no hope for a future.
Even more so, it is impossible to imagine much joy in the
world, it is hard to imagine much glorious rejoicing in any society until the
children are safe and they are whole and healthy.
So, today’s sermon was supposed to be about joy, joy for its
own sake. But as soon as the headlines
broke, and the governor of Connecticut said what we all knew, that his people
had been visited by evil, this sermon and this worship became a vigil for the presence
of God in all goodness and a moment to proclaim joy in the face of evil itself. I realized this yesterday as I was leading a
Witness to the Resurrection service, a memorial service, and we were singing
the great hymn by Martin Luther, A Mighty
Fortress is Our God. The third
stanza caught my soul off guard, and I began to weep as we sang:
“And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.”
Should threaten to undo us;
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us.”
We have no choice as a people of hope and joy, but to
proclaim God’s truth and gifts even in the face of unimaginable evil. No matter how great the evil confronting us,
we must press on because if we don’t then evil wins.
And no matter how dark the darkness gets we are the people
who proclaim the light that overcomes all darkness. It is a light of hope. It is one of peace. It is one of joy. Yes joy.
And wherever there is joy, evil cannot be present. This point is made by C. S. Lewis in his book The Screwtape Letters – in the book
Lewis reminds us that the devil, the personification of evil itself, has many
tools at its disposal: envy, shame,
spite, malice, anger. But the devil can’t
use joy, evil cannot employ it…joy is one of the nine fruits of the Holy
Spirit, which means that joy belongs to God!
I do not know what evil dwells in the hearts and minds of men who do violent
things. I only know that I think their
lives must be devoid of joy. It is hard
to be evil when one is joyful. It is
hard to hurt someone else when there is joy in the heart.
Joy is a spiritual antidote to scorn and shame, to despair and lament, to
the very things that fuel evil’s fire.
My friend, we know joy comes from God, and as
God’s children we are called to pay witness to it. We are called to know, who and whose we are
as children of God, as creatures made for joy, wherever and whenever we experience
beauty. To let joy come and go without
acknowledging that it is a divine gift is a mistake too great to make.
In 2007, following the terror at Virginia Tech,
the editors at the magazine the Christian Century offered these profound words–
“In the story of Jesus Christ …the two mysteries of good and evil converge in
the deepest way. Jesus Christ is the One
who engages evil at its worst and can be trusted in any event, no matter how
terrible.”
“For in the
story of Jesus,” they wrote, “we find a story about how God’s son engaged evil
and found a way through to where we can find our own story.”
So we must stand by the prophet Isaiah, whose own
people knew something of terror and shame and evil – a people exiled and
suffering – we must stand by Isaiah and gloriously proclaim:
With joy
you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
And you will say on that day:
Give thanks to the Lord,
call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations;
proclaim that his name is exalted.
Give thanks to the Lord,
call on his name;
make known his deeds among the nations;
proclaim that his name is exalted.
So we must give ear to the apostle Paul who though imprisoned, could
write the great hymn of joy of the New Testament in Philippians 4. We must listen to him, lean in close, and
drink in the words of praise:
Keep on doing the things that you have
learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be
with you.
In the promise of
Christmas we have a cause for joy. No it
is not a joy that will bring back those lost in Connecticut, nor will it bring
back our innocence (whatever is left of it).
It will not allow our illusion that our smallest children live outside
the bounds of adult things like pistols and rifles, or adult problems like
mental illness. No it won’t do
that. But the joy we proclaim today can
give the tears we cry a purpose and it can remind our hearts that we are NOT built
for fear or evil, but we ARE built for faith and joy.
A longing for joy in
the wake of evil will allow our hearts to hear the choir in a few moments as
they sing in the next anthem,
Ageless the holy promise, God’s word will
come to pass,
Fleeting is human nature, like withered,
fading grass.
Ageless the holy promise, God’s word will
come to pass.
And with a shepherd’s arms, God gathers and
sustains us
Close to God’s heart so vast.
On the front of your
bulletin is a remnant image – a stump with one branch going out. Our Christian story is one that says from
this remnant hope the world can be changed.
So we hold onto joy today, even if it is a remnant. Yes, we hold on, even if a remnant is all
that remains.
And what of those
who feel no joy today, whose loss is too deep?
Well, then those of us one step removed from the most intense pain, we must
keep joy. We who possess the remnant
must preserve it for them. We must
hold onto joy for them until they can find it and be held by it again.
Joy is a miracle. And
we need a miracle. And I am ready for a
glorious miracle. I am gloriously ready
for the miracle of joy. I really, really
am. So again we are called to seek the
manger and behold God’s miraculous joy there.
Joy that the Savior comes to give to people.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
