School shootings - part of Christmas

Be near me, Lord Jesus I ask thee to stay,
close by me forever and love me I pray.
Bless all thy dear children in thy tender care,
and take us to heaven to live with thee there.

The sweet song echoes with a dreary prayer, a tearful prayer, a desperate prayer for many mothers and fathers and indeed an onlooking nation. The season of hope, joy, peace, and love has been filled with a different air today. Many pastors and parishioners struggle with the book of Job, well today it feels like we have a classroom full of Jobs - a classroom full of families that have suddenly gone from blessing to curse. And so we struggle.

And like in that book, the temptation is to find out what has caused this horrible tragedy. Why did God allow this to happen, or for the more direct folks why did God do this? My answer is simple: I don't know and truth be told it makes no difference. One of the things that makes Job so tough a book for its readers is in fact we know a bit more than Job does, we're cued in to this conversation in the heavenly courts and it almost feels like God and Satan had some awful bet at Job's expense. The opening does not cure the reader's trouble with Job's encounter and story, if anything it makes it worse. And when Job finally gets his divine audience, he doesn't even get the info we as readers receive. And had he, would that have made it better? What possible explanation for God's action/inaction makes any of today any better?

There is a very depressing moment in Matthew's birth narrative of Jesus. Herod, upon hearing of the young Messiah's birth, for fear of losing his throne, unleashes a terrible massacre throughout the city of Bethlehem. Babies and young boys are all killed. It's a story we usually leave out of our Christmas plays and Christmas morning readings, we don't sing hymns about it. When people talk of the "spirit of Christmas" the deaths of children usually isn't included. But try as we might, we cannot remove from the narrative of Christ's birth the reality that he came to. The tragic shootings that have felt like they are happening with greater frequency, even the deaths of young children; this is the reality that Jesus came to. The times when no one doubts the presence of evil or the power of death, this is the world Jesus came into. The threat of death, the ability to be massacred - this is what God came into. There are two powerful things about this story: for one is Matthew pauses to speak about the grief that comes with such a tragedy - turning to Jeremiah, "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." How true do these words give expression to the slaying of children: The refusal to be comforted, the great weeping. Matthew names tragedy within Jesus' coming. But also it is not just that Matthew acknowledges tragedy, but he puts it within a story about Jesus, a story that ultimately is about his death and resurrection. It is not only incredibly honest to acknowledge the pain but incredibly theological to join such tragedy with the narrative of Christ's death. As a professor of mine once said, when everything is written by hand, copied by hand, when paper is an asset - every word counts. No story is put in Matthew for the heck of it, they are there because they matter to the story told. Many reasons can be given as to why this story is included, be it from the importance of the Jeremiah prophecy, to some comparison of rulers of this world's exercise of power from Christ's, to a history very similar to Moses', in any case, it matters to understanding Christ. And today we hear anew what that speaks of Christ, when we feel the hopelessness and the loss, the evil and the grief, and we see Christ come into that.

There is no explanation that satisfies why God let this happen. But the Gospel tells us that God did not do nothing. In fact days such as this one are placed right in the story of the One who came to die for us, from those we deem the most innocent to those we deem the most evil. For the Herods and shooters, for the children of Bethlehem of Judea and Newtown, CT. That is the world he entered into, that is the sin and death that had to be defeated. The presence of such things is not a tale that God is absent but it is the narrative of Immanuel - God with us. People die, even children die, Christ even when he escaped the killing in Bethlehem only prolonged the inevitable mortal end of the cross.

But God raised him from the dead. The inevitable end is conquered by a compassionate new morn. He took the sins of the world, and poured out his righteousness. It means to the places of greatest evil, where we could no longer stand in denial of sin righteousness could be proclaimed, could shine, could forensically become the reality. It means in a world full of death we could dare be baptized into Christ's death and be raised to new life. It means even in death, things are being made new. Many families are as Job today, robbed of their loved ones, as under a curse, futures lost. It doesn't matter if those children were going to be cancer curers or grow up to struggle to hold down a job, they all had futures that would touch lives. They all already touched lives. The teachers and principle touched lives. And all those futures are lost. We can wail and weep and mourn that. The gospel is not the great fix-it making it all sunshine and hummingbirds, the gospel is the promise that shines in the midst of the darkness, and that cannot be put out by it. The gospel is what endures - the grass withers and the flowers fade, but not the Word of the Lord. Many families have lost like Job, but no family has lost Christ - no bullet can rob us or the dead of Christ. Like the disciples who could not prevent the little children at Christ's command none have the power to prevent his own from coming to him. Not even death. For Christ was raised from the dead. When we live we live to the Lord, when we die we die to the Lord, so (as the Apostle says) whether we live or die we are the Lord's.

Futures are lost. The world has changed. Grief and tears pervade. It is tragic and there is no simple quick-fix, but Christ came to this reality, what it cannot do is cannot separate us from him. And where Christ is there is the yes to the promises of God. Why is it among questions of how the wicked prosper or the righteous suffer God so says "The righteous shall live by faith" (Hab. 2.4)? Because faith holds firm to what cannot be lost: the One who is not only present but has in fact done something for us, no matter who we are in the story. A light that shines in the darkness we are in, and though we still see the darkness, it cannot overcome the light. It cannot take away the life found in the light, for that life looks to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. There is a beautiful prayer in the funeral liturgy that reads, "Help us in times we cannot understand to believe and trust in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting." Help us to live by faith, when we have no words to justify what happened, when no words can justify what happened. I can't say why God let a man walk into a room and start shooting, but I can tell you that he came for such as these. It's part of his story. In the same book of Christ's cross we read of the tears of Rachel, and we read "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

Bless all thy dear children in thy tender care,
and take us to heaven to live with thee there.