John 21:1-19

How do you respond to tragedy?

1. On a Sunday like this after a week like the last, we do well to sit silently in God’s presence with one another, holding each other’s hands as we hold the grieving ones in God’s light. Saint Paul called upon Christians to weep with those who weep. As difficult as it is, our greatest act of hospitality is to welcome into our hearts those who are grieving. When we, as a community of Christ, are able to welcome the wounded into our hearts then we will enter into their suffering even as God enters into our suffering. Such solidarity of love by the Body of Christ may be what brings healing in time.

2. On the one hand the massacre at Virginia Tech is incomprehensible, locked forever in the inner sanctum of a mass murderer, beyond the bounds of our moral imagination. On the other hand, as clues slowly leak out from that inner sanctum, we see a terribly deranged young man in the grip of rage so fierce that it was only a matter of time before this or something worse occurred. Everything is understandable and, at the same time, everything is morally incomprehensible. Living in this paradox is never easy, but it is where I stand with regard to so many things, not only this massacre. It’s the life of faith in the face of uncertainty.

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3. Last weekend, my wife and I were in Tallahassee on the campus of Florida State University where we were undergraduate and graduate students. Thirty years ago, Claudia lived in a house with other roommates called the Christian Campus House. Just a few houses away lived Ted Bundy. The serial killer had paused there after moving around the country in a killing spree. Before he was caught, he murdered students on the FSU campus, and blithely walked back and forth to his apartment right past the Christian Campus House. During the days of trauma when no one knew who was doing the killing, students and faculty were encouraged to do two things immediately: walk in the light and never walk alone. That advice sounds like spiritual discipline doesn’t it? Walk in the light and never walk alone. We were also told to walk down the center of the road where there was less likelihood of being nabbed in the darkness. It was a horrible experience of sadness, fear and vigilance; walking in the light with the full awareness that someone is lurking around waiting to do something wicked beyond comprehension. That is the way life is sometimes.

Ted Bundy never killed another person. He was caught and executed. Books have been written about his life exploring the macabre mind of serial killer, searching for some clue to what would make a person do the utterly unthinkable. None of this – the execution or the books and films – did anything to lesson the grief those whose lost their children friends and classmates that day. Something deeper more substantial would have to be the balm for their grief stricken lives. God is the name of that balm. Christians name this God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Sadly, there were killers before Ted Bundy and after him, including Seung Hui Cho. There will likely be books written about him too, trying to understand the depths of his rage. I hope there is not a movie. Virginia Tech will make necessary changes and other colleges and universities will do the same.

4. We might even have a reasonable discussion about the pervasiveness violence in this country and the availability of guns. I hope so. Do you think it’s possible, even in our divided political culture that we could come together and ask hard questions about guns in the hands of people whose only intent is murder? Maybe the Church could lead that conversation. What do you think? How many episodes must we have of Columbine, Lancaster and the whole list of gruesome massacres all the way up to Blacksburg, where a disturbed college student is able to get 9 millimeters pistols for the sole purpose of killing people? For God’s sake and in honor of all those whose deaths we mourn, can we come to grips with this social insanity and at least have a reasonable conversation to change it? As Joan Rivers, famously said, Can we talk? I hope so, and I hope the Church leads the conversation. What better way could we be instruments of peace just now in our violent culture? The cynics will say nothing will change. Next week some other event will capture the media’s attention and this one that breaks our hearts now will fade, even as Columbine faded. Except, of course, for those who are still grieving.

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5. In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer wrote “with an event like this, consisting of nothing but suffering and tragedy, the only important questions are those of theodicy, of divine justice.” I think there are more questions to be addressed but this one is certainly close to the minds of many. The assumption underneath the question is that God failed. Somehow God should have intervened and not merely allowed such sorrow to befall so many people. These are hard questions that deserve a much longer conversation than is possible today.

Let me begin that conversation by saying when God came among us in the flesh it was with the name Emmanuel, which means God with us. In just this way Jesus lived among us full of grace and truth, offering mercy and compassion. He lived with us, never against us and never above us, but with us. Even suffered the depths of human pain. In Christ we discover human life as God intended: filled with gratitude of all good gifts and turning toward our neighbors in love that reflects God’s love for us.

Human freedom is the human condition. This includes the freedom to do despicable things to one another. Crimes against humanity litter human history right down to Virginia Tech, including murdering the Son of God. Freedom also includes acts of love, like Professor Liviu Librescu who stood between a killer and his students, offering his life to save his students. Could there possibly be any greater irony than a survivor of the holocaust, a Jew, standing in front of a killer’s bullets, offering his life, so that the lives of his students could be saved? That is human freedom, too: the freedom to love and the freedom to give oneself so that others might live.

God is frequently blamed for human woes. I understand this but frankly I believe that human woes are the responsibility of humans. God did not give Sueng Hui Cho a gun. He bought it from a gun dealer, who made a legal profit from the purchase.

I believe we must rid ourselves of every vestige of a utilitarian God, in which God’s part of the bargain is to ensure that we get good stuff as long as we hold up our part by being good people.

The utilitarian understanding of God is the root of so much anguish, bewilderment and anger. This god, who is no god but only a moral banker, is the one rightly rejected by atheists. They do not know another God other than a God who holds up his end of the bargain, either protecting or punishing. This is not the God who meets us in Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God with us.

Let’s think about it. A mother does not want her children to love her merely for the things she will do for them, so that when she no longer give them good stuff or protects them from car accidents, or failed relationships, she is useless. Neither does a father who truly loves his children. Neither does God who, like a mother and a father, desires such a relationship with humanity. The Christian life grounded in faith is about learning to love God for the pure delight of God, not in exchange for something else, but only for joy in the presence of God. As we practice this way through grace, we become human beings who are capable of loving our neighbors.

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6. When the risen Jesus met the disciples by the seashore, they had no clue about their future. All they knew for sure was their past – fishing – and so, dejected and confused, they returned to the old ways of life. The risen Jesus, in an act of pure hospitality toward those who had betrayed him, offers the meal. Pure grace. Emmanuel, God with us.

But there is more and I think this is important for those looking for a way forward in such a time of tragedy. Jesus asked Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, I love you, Peter asserted not once but three times. Each time Jesus gave him a way to practice that love. Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Those of us who desire to love Jesus truly and are seeking for what to do in the face of such suffering, might hear our calling in this story.

After the tragedy of September 11, St. Paul’s Episcopal Chapel became a home for hospitality toward everyone. The priest reflecting on that time said,

"We just got up, day after day, dressed accordingly, and went about the monumental task of trying to make sense out of absurdity, bring order out of chaos, and reclaim humanity from the violence that sought to make human life less human...Ultimately, what began in hatred evolved into, in the words from that great song from the musical Rent, a “season of love.” It was a season in which people of love and goodwill, compassion and generosity, sought to practice the art of radical hospitality.” (The Reverend Lyndon Harris, St. Paul's Chapel at Ground Zero Manhattan)

Practicing faith really is that plain. Care for the fallen. Tend the wounded. Feed the sheep. Let your love be real in the deeds of your life.

Amen.