Finding the Hope and Joy in a Tragedy

Finding the Hope and Joy in a Tragedy
Text: Luke 1:46-55
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
December 16, 2012

    The other day Susan Adams, our Liturgist,  e-mailed me and asked which translation she wanted me to use to read the Scripture passage for today.    It is the well known passage called The Magnificat or The Canticle of Mary, her response to the angel of the Lord telling her that she was to be the mother of the Messiah.  The options were the New Revised Standard Version—the translation we most often use, or the King James Version so she could read from her mother’s Bible.  That sounded like a good plan.  Today it sounds like an even better plan.  Hearing ancient words in a very old translation feels right to me.
    Last week I had writer’s block for my sermon.  I had a lot of pieces I had been assembling for the sermon, but hadn’t been able to pull it together.  Actually, there are times when it seems that God is telling me a message and the message this past week was that I couldn’t pull it together for a reason.  There were other, more pressing things to say.  On Friday, the other, more pressing things, became apparent.
    In the Book of Exodus there is a story of a Pharaoh who orders children massacred.  This kind of slaughter of innocent children is heart breaking and heart wrenching.  How could someone do such a thing?  Unbeknownst to the Pharaoh, one baby escapes harm----and God would use that one child to shatter the next Pharaoh’s universe.

    In the Gospel of Matthew there is a new evil King, Herod.  Herod is threatened when he hears the birth of a child has taken place who is going to be the new King of Israel.  Herod is in a jealous rage and sets off soldiers to slaughter innocent children.  The story is again one of horror and despair.  And, like the evil Pharaoh, he misses the one child who will change the world. 
    On Friday the story was repeated.  This time it was not by an evil king, but by a young man who slaughtered innocents and repeated the horror again.     
    The one common denominator in all these kinds of killings there is a desire to smash and destroy hope.  Last Sunday we lit the candle of hope; and today we light the candle of joy, and there are questions: Where is the hope?  Where is the joy?
    Often the hope and even the joy are unseen this close to the event.  The slaughters of the past did not bring hope until decades later.  We don’t know where this one will bring.  It’s too early.  But we have faith, we have hope.  God is a God beyond our comprehension.
    There are things, I suspect that are festering.
    The first big question is why?
    Anyone who can tell you ‘why’ this took place is probably not telling you accurate things. The police may determine what kind of delusional motive the young man may have had.  But the answer ‘why’ remains a mystery.
    In the Book of Job, Job keeps asking God the question, why?  All sorts of terrible things had befallen Job and Job, a good and faithful servant of God, kept asking the question why?  Why me?
    Job’s friends kept telling Job that perhaps Job wasn’t nearly as good as Job thought he was.  Job must have done something wrong.  There HAD to be a rational answer to this question and the rational answer was that Job had sinned.
    I’ve heard several people come to this conclusion about the shootings in Newtown.  Some of them are political some of them are really bad theology, and at their core, they all have one common element.  Like Job’s friends, they point to some sort of sin that God is avenging.
    But God held Job’s friends with contempt.  He banished them as light weighted fools from Job and Job’s sight.
    God’s answer to Job was elaborate and simple----unless you are God who understands all things, you cannot even ask the question why?

    Job was brought to his knees by God’s answer.  It was a lot longer than I have made it out to be.  The reality is, however, the same.  The answer ‘why’ is beyond our comprehension.
    But there are things I believe that are not true.
    This was NOT God’s will.
    God does not will evil.  People often choose to do that which is evil, but God doesn’t will evil.
    We live in an imperfect world filled with imperfect people who do imperfect things.  We can all look within ourselves and at our own lives and know this to be true.  But in this imperfect world there exists evil.  God has given us the ability to make our own choices right and wrong; magnificent and tragic.  Sometimes those choices lead to horror as they are so awful.
    We celebrate the free will we have and often delight in it.  But free will has consequences.  Sometimes those consequences are difficult to bear.  But those consequences are not God’s will.
    We have to be careful about using “God’s will” as an answer to evil as it is, ultimately a cop out.  It means that absolutely everything is God’s will.
    So when we lie, we can say, it’s God’s will.
    When we are cruel to another person, we can say, it’s God’s will.
    When we steal, we can simply say, it’s God’s will.
    So much of life takes place outside God’s will.  In my heart and mind the first heart to break when the hearts of babies stopped beating because of a man gunman was God’s heart.  This level of evil is not the will of God; this kind of evil breaks God’s heart.
    Secondly, to say that this happened because God was not allowed in the school is offensive.  I have seen Facebook posts with shirts and banners that say:
    Dear God,
    Why do you allow so much violence in our schools?
    Signed, A concerned citizen

    The response:
    I’m not allowed in schools.
    Signed, God.

    Let me be incredibly blunt.  I find this to be offensive.  I find this to be very offensive.  I can’t even put into words how offended I am by this.
    First, it is not true.  There are, of course, legal limitations to the practice of religion in school.  There are no limitations, however, to people quietly reading their Bible, talking about God to one another, and praying.  People do it all the time and it’s not a big deal.
    But the bigger reason is this.  Someone said recently that God was not in the school because God is a gentleman and gentlemen don’t go where they are not wanted.  I’m trying to figure out which God they are referring to.  Here is what I know.  This is not the same God we Worship at St. Marks.
    We Worship a God who existed before time existed and who will exist long after the universe we are in is gone.  This is a God who is powerful beyond power and loving beyond loving.  
    And if the Bible teaches us anything about God it is that God does what God does.  God does not ask permission or seek approval.   If people believe that God is limited by human understanding and human laws and human wants and desires, we have grievously failed to reveal God to the world.

    God WAS present in the school.  As people died at the hands of violence, God was there, in the midst of the horror and the terror comforting and embracing, and taking the spirits of those children with him. 
    God was also present in others.   Diane Sawyer interviewed a teacher, Kaitlin Roig, a First Grade teacher.  She crunched her entire class into a tiny restroom in her classroom to protect them and gently talked to them telling them how much she loved them.  If people cannot believe that God was present with her, then their God is not the same as my God.  Vicki Soto hid her class and took a bullet to protect the children.  The principal of the school ran down the hallway knowing she would be killed in order to alert others of the nation.  God was very present in that building.
    Okay, it as not God’s will and God was present.  But there is more.
    In this Canticle of Mary, this song, it is a song of hope and joy.  It has been revealed to her that the Messiah is coming and even beyond that, is present in her belly.
    And she is filled with hope and joy.
    Interesting thing, though.  Mary would have been around the age of a middle school girl of our era, probably 13 or 14 years old.  Maybe and 8th grader or a 9th grader.  She was engaged to a many her father had chosen for her.  She had no way of knowing if Joseph was going to be a good man or an evil man or if they would even ever love one another.
    She was now pregnant and not married.  She had no rights.  She belonged to a religion that gave her no rights.  She lived under a paranoid and evil king who would one day slaughter babies.  She also lived under an Empire based in Rome that saw her as little more than a bug on their dinner.
    Her life would be difficult.  The Messiah’s coming into the world was not going to make her life better in any way.  In reality, it was going to cause her hardship and pain.
    But she stops and shares a song of hope and joy.  In the context of things it almost sounds absurd----but it demonstrates an amazing faith in God.  Those first words, so remarkably elegant in Old English:
     My For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
    She is a girl of ‘low estate,’ yet all generations will called her blessed.  The hope and joy she has is not for herself, but for all those who follow.  In short, there may not be much hope and joy now, but it will come.
    This song is the consummate song of Advent.  It is a season of expectation.  It is a season of long dark nights and short days.  It is a season that is sometimes painful and difficult.  And this year, for many, more painful and more difficult than ever.  Hope and joy seem far away.
    But out of a slaughter, 3200 years ago, came a person who would lead people to freedom.
    Out of a slaughter 2000 years ago came the Messiah.
    Out of the slaughter of 2012, no one knows.  But God is present and when God is present, there is always hope and love beyond our understanding.