Tonight, as I write this, my heart…and the heart of the
country…is heavy with the news of yet another senseless act of violence. This time bombs went off in the city of
Boston as residents celebrated the time honored tradition of running of the
Boston Marathon. Three people, including an eight year old, are confirmed dead
with many more injured. The full extent
of this event is only truly beginning to come to light and it may well be
months before we know what triggered this event and who was responsible.
The internet is already beginning to respond. From the vindictive “I hope they find whoever
did this and make them pay,” to the conspiracy theories, “we all know this was
done to please someone’s god….” The politicians lay in wait to see not only who
they can blame, but how they can profit from this terrible crime. People on the left, including Michael Moore,
hope they can pin this on the Tea Party and warmongers on the right are hoping
this can lead to renewed efforts in the War on Terror.
In the midst of this are people who are looking for
answers. How do we begin to understand
this horrific event? How do we explain
the actions of those who are so consumed by hate that they must destroy
life? How can we believe in a God that
would allow such horror?
When events like this happen, the pundits and the counselors
await the verdict of America’s new high priests, dressed in their psychological
vestments to explain away the horror we’ve seen. We await the word on the Newtown shooter, Dr.
Gosnell, the Aurora shooter to see what was wrong with them. When the word comes down they suffered an
illness, or that they were filled with anger, we are relieved. There was something wrong with them and this
alleviates our minds and the world makes sense once again. Until the next time.
Christian theologians are also relieved when they can blame
a mental disorder, or a unique situation, as it seemingly gets God ‘off the
hook’ as it were. We then ignore the
larger and necessary questions of the presence of evil, the absence (or
presence) of God, and the responsibility we all play in events like this. In the days ahead we will hear rehashes of
tired old Christian apologies for the presence of evil in the world.
We want so desperately for the world to make sense, to play
by some rules. We want clear cut
dividers so that those who do right are rewarded and those who do wrong are
punished. We want to live in a world
where we don’t have to explain to our children why an eight year old boy is
dead tonight, or why a doctor could be allowed to butcher babies for thirty
years, or why a man shot up an elementary school, or why…..well, just fill in
the blank.
So we explain and we contort and we try to arrange the world
in a way that makes sense. And I think
we need to stop. I think God wants us to
stop trying to make sense.
Think about it…the things we make ‘sense of’ are things we
are no longer shocked by, things that no longer affect us, and things we no
longer try to rectify.
We make “sense” of homelessness by understanding economic
law. This gets us off the hook and we are not longer passionate about helping
the poor.
We make “sense” of war and we are no longer bothered by the
ethical ramifications of killing people.
We make “sense” of STD’s and sexual behavior so that sex
loses the intimacy it was created for, only to become something to do to occupy
an hour.
We make “sense” out of the cross by reading Pauline theology
and we use big words like ‘substitutionary atonement’ to forget the horror of
the cross and the suffering of Jesus.
When we make sense of a thing like Boston, or like Dr.
Gosnell’s house of horrors we can retreat back into the fantasy of our world.
We can pretend that the world we live in isn’t broken, that there isn’t
something fundamentally wrong.
But the reality is that our world IS broken. There is a violent streak that runs within
people that makes an event like Boston possible. We may see tidbits of it every day in
ourselves: greed, lust, selfishness, anger, and a whole host of evils. We make ‘sense of them’ too and we explain
them away, and say, “I’m only human….” or “I’ve had a long day,” or “It’s not
like I’ve killed somebody…”
When we make sense of it, we grow comfortable with it…and
that is the one thing we cannot be. God does not want us to be comfortable with
it, or to make excuses of it, or to make sense of it.
Psalm 120 is one of my favorite Psalms and it is a Psalm
that I turn to in moments like this. It
is written by a Jewish person, living in exile away from his home. He is among a people whom he considers to be
violent and is never at home with them.
We are told that he lives in Meshech, a place that he considers less
than desirable, because the people who live there are violent and nasty. This place is not his home and he knows
it. He is reminded of this on a daily
basis and we can hear the lament in his words, “woe to me that I sojourn in
Meshech.
At the end of the
psalm he writes of the great disparity that he has, “I am for peace….but they
are for war” (v. 7). The psalm leaves
you hanging. There is no explanation of why these people are for war, and there
is no ‘making sense’ of it. Rather, you
are left with a rather unsatisfactory ending.
You are left with the psalmist, yearning for peace and never at home
with your neighbors.
There is no ‘pat’ answers when it comes to evil and
suffering in this world. Even our
greatest theological constructions should cause us to reflect again on the
world. God does this on purpose, so that
we don’t grow comfortable with the values of this world.
We live in a violent world, as today’s events have
demonstrated. We live in a world in
which people are intent on hurting one another and profiting off of that hurt.
We cannot allow ourselves to excuse this type of behavior or to grow
comfortable with it. As God’s people, we
must strive to live out God’s virtues: to care for everybody, to be a beacon of
nonviolence, and to offer people a true sanctity of human life.
We mourn these actions tonight because we know this is not
how life is meant to be. Tomorrow we
begin to rebuild once again the broken pieces of this world in a never ending
construction project. Some of us may be
tempted to give up and walk away. Others
will be fervent in trying to make sure the pieces never fall again. Both attempts are wrong. We will strive as
hard as we can, never growing comfortable, but knowing that God is with us to
help us pick up the pieces once again.
Too long we have all lived in Mescech…and today is a
reminder of this.
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