Sermon   April 22, 2007     

In the Wake of Violence: Community, Prayer and Silence
The Rev. Susan Goff, St. Christopher’s Church, Springfield, Virginia
Readings:  Acts 9:1-19a, Psalm 33, Revelation 5:6-14; John 21:1-14 

Saul was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” 

             A long time ago, in a world far away, Saul believed that he was being faithful to the religious structure he was sworn to uphold.  He believed that the followers of Jesus were dead wrong in their beliefs and actions, and that he had a God-given duty to cleanse the true faith from their presence and influence.  So, as we heard at the beginning of our first reading today, he went to the high priest and asked for written orders to take to Damascus, so that if he found anyone there, man or woman, following this new Way, he could arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem for execution. 

            Saul was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.”  These words come to us across the millennia with ominous undertones.  Today, less than a week after the horrendous shootings at Virginia Tech, we can hear that breath of threat and murder.  We can feel that breath, and the fear and grief and anguish it breaths, on the backs of our necks and in the depths of our hearts.  For all of us have been touched by the senseless, tragic and violent deaths.  We have been touched directly, or we know someone who was.  Or wounds of tragedy and fear in our own lives, wounds that we thought were healed, have been open all over again.  The hot, deathly stench of threats and murder has blown across our state, our nation, our lives.  We gather here today to do what we can to make sense of the senseless, to fathom the unfathomable, and to respond as Christ does with compassion and hope.

            That is, in fact, what we do every week when we gather to worship.  We come with all the fears, all the hopes, all the joys in our hearts, and we lift them all up to God.  We come from the midst of our real lives with all our anxieties and delights, to try to make sense of them in the light of Christ’s compassion.  We come to offer thanks for the blessings we have received, to pray for those in need, and to seek God’s presence and forgiveness.  Sometimes our coming to church for these reasons feels routine.  Sometimes, in weeks like this one, our search for God’s sense in a seemingly senseless world is like an ache, throbbing and demanding.

            So we come, and that in and of itself is a powerful response to the tragedies and violence we experience. We seek community with God and with one another.  We seek comfort and hope in the presence of others who are looking for the same things. 

            God knows that we need community at times like this and, in fact, at all times in our lives.  God knew that Saul needed community.  Saul encountered the living Christ as he was on his way to Damascus.  Christ appeared to him in a blinding flash and a voice from heaven that asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Saul was struck blind in the encounter.  The men who were traveling with Saul couldn’t figure out what was going on, and they couldn’t offer Saul any help.  But God knew Saul needed community, so God sent Ananias, a follower of Christ who lived in Damascus, to begin to form that community.  That forming began with prayer.  Prayer is one of the most powerful things forces on earth, because prayer changes the world, and prayer changes us, as it changed Ananias. 

            When God asked Ananias to begin forming a new community for Saul, Ananias didn’t want to do it.  He knew all about Saul’s violence.  How could he possibly trust Saul?  How could he even touch Saul?  How could he ask God to restore Saul’s sight when what he surely wanted in his heart of hearts was to see Saul dead?  But God insisted that Ananias pray.  When Ananias did, Saul was healed.  Something like scales fell from his eyes, the story says.  His physical sight was restored.  And his old way of seeing the world through judgment and violence and anger was gone forever.  Saul was changed because of Ananias’s prayers.  And Ananias was changed, too.  Through prayer he moved from fear to courage, from reluctance to willingness, from doubt to assurance.

            Our prayers are powerful today.  During the prayers of the people today, we will pray for the families and friends who lost loved ones at Virginia Tech.  We pray for them out of compassion, out of imagining what their loss is like, or out of knowing something of their loss because of losses of our own.  We pray to give them hope and courage and healing in the midst of unspeakable pain. 

            We also pray for those who died.  We pray for them because we believe that, even though they died, yet they live, and we ask God to bless and strengthen and love them as they grow in his heavenly realm.   We pray for all who died, including the shooter.  For some of us, that may be as hard as it was for Ananias to pray for Saul.  It may feel like a betrayal to pray for a murderer, for one who caused so much suffering.  But he is a child of God, too, a lost, broken soul so achingly in need of healing.  Today we pray for all whose lives have been touched by this tragedy, because prayer is a powerful way for us to participate in God’s work of healing and reconciliation.     

            Today we also respond to this tragedy by entering into the mystery of evil and into the richer mystery of Christ’s love.  We enter into great mystery beyond words.  In the face of the unspeakable, we usually want to want to speak.  We want to fill the emptiness with words.  We want to alleviate our own discomfort with platitudes.   But we often end up saying foolish, perhaps even hurtful things to those who have suffered great loss.  As Christians, we do believe that those who have died have gone to a better place – we believe that with every fiber of our being.  But telling the parent of a 19 year old that her son is in a better place might not be comforting when that son hardly had fair taste of this place.  Saying that God loved them so much that God came to take them home can portray God not as loving, but as cruel and arbitrary.  So many of the platitudes we speak to ease our own anxiety come across as meaningless or even cruel.  We gather in community and in prayer not to speak platitudes, not to give pat answers to the most difficult questions, not to try to make sense of the senseless with useless words, but to enter into silence, into mystery, into the simplicity of presence with those who suffer.  We admit that we don’t have the answers.  And we kneel humbly before God, trusting that God does.              When Saul became a follower of Christ, he entered into the fullness of the mystery of Christ’s love.  The former persecutor eventually became the persecuted.  The one who would kill others to destroy the faith in Christ was himself killed because of that faith.  To proclaim Christ is to proclaim the one who was crucified.  It is to enter into the mystery of death.  And to proclaim Christ is to enter into the mystery of life.  What I am about to say now makes no sense at all, no logical sense whatsoever – God raised Christ from death and, through the power of the resurrection, destroyed the power of death once and for all.  These words make no logical sense.  But they are the epitome of mystery, the mystery that allows us to just be present with those who suffer, without trying to explain it.   

            In times of suffering, in times when senselessness and violence prevail, we do what generations of the faithful have done before us.  We gather to find strength in community.  We gather to pray.  We gather to enter into mystery beyond words.  These actions don’t take away the violence of the world.  They don’t even make sense of it.  But they help us make a faithful response so that we can be instruments of God’s compassion in a broken, confusing world.

            Amen.

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Acts 9:1-19a

Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do." The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Ananias." He answered, "Here I am, Lord." The Lord said to him, "Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight." But Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name." But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name." So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit." And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength.

Psalm 33 or 33:1-11 Page 626, BCP

Exultate, justi

 

 

1

Rejoice in the LORD, you righteous; *
it is good for the just to sing praises.

 

2

Praise the LORD with the harp; *
play to him upon the psaltery and lyre.

 

3

Sing for him a new song; *
sound a fanfare with all your skill upon the trumpet.

 

4

For the word of the LORD is right, *
and all his works are sure.

 

5

He loves righteousness and justice; *
the loving-kindness of the LORD fills the whole earth.

 

6

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, *
by the breath of his mouth all the heavenly hosts.

 

7

He gathers up the waters of the ocean as in a water-skin *
and stores up the depths of the sea.

 

8

Let all the earth fear the LORD; *
let all who dwell in the world stand in awe of him.

 

9

For he spoke, and it came to pass; *
he commanded, and it stood fast.

 

10

The LORD brings the will of the nations to naught; *
he thwarts the designs of the peoples.

 

11

But the LORD'S will stands fast for ever, *
and the designs of his heart from age to age.

 

12

Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD! *
happy the people he has chosen to be his own!

 

13

The LORD looks down from heaven, *
and beholds all the people in the world.

 

14

From where he sits enthroned he turns his gaze *
on all who dwell on the earth.

 

15

He fashions all the hearts of them *
and understands all their works.

 

16

There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army;
a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.

 

17

The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; *
for all its strength it cannot save.

 

18

Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him, *
on those who wait upon his love,

 

19

To pluck their lives from death, *
and to feed them in time of famine.

 

20

Our soul waits for the LORD; *
he is our help and our shield.

 

21

Indeed, our heart rejoices in him, *
for in his holy Name we put our trust.

 

22

Let your loving-kindness, O LORD, be upon us, *
as we have put our trust in you.

 

 

Revelation 5:6-14

Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song:

"You are worthy to take the scroll

and to open its seals,

for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God

saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;

you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,

and they will reign on earth."

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice,

"Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

and honor and glory and blessing!"

Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing,

"To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb

be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!"

And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" And the elders fell down and worshiped.

John 21:1-14

Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.