Questions Asked; Answers Lived

Today is the third Sunday in Eastertide, and all of the scripture passages suggested by the lectionary are visions of resurrection. The reading from John’s Gospel tells us about that strange breakfast on the lakeshore, when Peter and the other disciples became guests of the risen Christ. The story in Acts recounts Paul’s encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus, the meeting that led to Paul’s transformation from persecutor to evangelist. And the last reading, the passage from the Revelation to John, depicts the Lamb seated on the throne in the new Jerusalem – the Crucified One, risen and regal.

Each of these passages deserves its own sermon – several sermons, in fact -- but I am going to depart from the usual formula this morning. I don’t want to us to ignore these passages; I want them to be ringing in our ears as we take up a heart-wrenching subject: last week’s murders in Blacksburg, Virginia.

We all know the bare facts. A young man named Cho Seung-Hui murdered 33 people, most of them students and professors, on the campus of Virginia Tech. This is the worst shooting of its kind in the history of the United States, and all week long people have been asking me, "What will you say on Sunday?" Some of the people who have asked are Christian believers looking for God in the midst of all this pain and anguish. Some are non-believers who see this brutal event as further proof that God either doesn’t care or never existed in the first place. Others are simply heartsick and confused, hoping for answers anywhere they can find them.

I do not have all the answers. I would be suspicious of anyone who claimed to have all the answers. All I can do is to invite you to wrestle with me with some of the questions – questions laden with tears, anger, frustration, and faith.

The first question I have been asked is this: Are these murders the will of God? There are those who have said that they are. These tend to be the same people who say that auto accidents are God’s will, or hurricanes, or the HIV/AIDS pandemic. One FSU student was quoted in the local paper saying that "everything happens for a reason." The implication of that statement is that behind every event, good or evil, you will find God tugging at the puppet strings, manipulating human events.

Let me say very clearly that I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the God revealed in Jesus Christ decided last week (or from the foundation of the universe) that on April 16, 2007, one of God’s beloved children should slaughter thirty-three other of God’s beloved children.

I don’t believe God works that way. If I did, I would be the first to say that a deity who would will such a thing is no God at all, but a cosmic monster. A god like that would be worthy of our loathing, but never our worship.

No, this tragedy was not God’s will – if my "will" you mean "intention." Back in the 1940’s, during the London blitz, Leslie Weatherhead preached a series of sermons that were published as little book entitled The Will of God. In those sermons he drew distinctions between the intentional will of God, the circumstantial will of God, and the ultimate will of God. I read that book back in college, and I still find those categories helpful.

Basically, Dr. Weatherhead said that things like wars, famines, and auto crashes are not God’s intention. It’s true, God did make the universe to run along certain lines. If a car weighing two tons hits a child weighing twenty pounds, the child’s body will give way to the car. If a bullet fired from an automatic pistol hits human flesh, the flesh will give way to the bullet. Those are the laws of physics, the way the universe works. I suppose, in that sense, everything that happens in the physical world is God’s will.

But God did not intend for us to make cars and drive them recklessly, or to make guns and sell them to the mentally ill. You and I bear the responsibility for these things. We’re the ones who drive without caution. We’re ones obsessed with hand guns. We’re the people who made it so easy for Cho Seung-Hui to walk into a gun shop and walk out a few minutes later with the means of massacre.

Don’t blame God for that. That’s on us.

No, this wasn’t God’s will.

These murders do prompt other questions, however – questions straight out of scripture. Cain asks the Lord God, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" The lawyer asks Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"

To Cain’s question the answer seems to be a resounding, "Yes, you are your brother’s keeper." Your brother was a boy born in South Korea and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D. C. Your brother was a shy kid of slight stature who became the regular target of schoolyard bullies and bigots. Long before he became a university student, Cho Seung-Hui showed signs of serious mental illness. Apparently, some of his classmates tried to connect with him. Some tried at least to speak to him, but no one broke through the shell he had erected around himself. No one tapped the rage that was building up inside him

Who knows if anyone could have altered the course of our brother’s mental illness, but the answer to Cain’s question is still "Yes." We are connected. We are called to live in community. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

Social isolation is a rising problem in our country. For decades psychologists and social philosophers have been warning us that the social web that used to connect Americans to each other has been growing more and more tenuous. People aren’t taking part in voluntary associations the way they used to. As Robert Putnam famously observed, people aren’t joining bowling leagues. They’re bowling alone. They’re sitting at home in front of the TV screen or the computer monitor. They’re joining chat rooms where they can pretend to be anybody but themselves.

Are we our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers? Of course we are. Though no single person can be blamed for the deadly estrangement Cho Seung-Hui seems to have felt, we all bear responsibility for the isolation that undermines community.

And what about the lawyer’s question to Jesus: "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus replied with a story about a man on his way to Jericho who fell among thieves. Perhaps today he would tell us about a man who became psychotic while others passed by on the other side.

The safety net in this country for neighbors with mental illness – in the extent to which it existed at all – disappeared long ago. It started to fade back in the 1970’s when we emptied mental institutions and promised ourselves we’d build community-based treatment facilities to take their place.

Guess what? That community care never materialized. Back in the 70’s, civil libertarians fretted about neighbors wasting away at Chattahoochee, and worked to set them free. Now those same neighbors are wasting away on our streets and sleeping at the homeless shelter on Tennessee Street.

We have learned to recognize the face of Cho Seung-Hui because we’ve seen it in the newspaper so often, but there are thousands of faces we don’t see because we turn away from them. These are the neighbors whose mental illness is less severe than his, but severe enough to make their lives a misery.

It can take as long as 18 months for a poor person without insurance in our community to get an appointment with a mental health physician. On the list of our community’s priorities, care for the mentally ill is somewhere near the bottom. Cho Seung-Hui was an exceptional case in many ways, but in other ways, his name was Legion.

Was this God’s will? No. Are we our brother’s keeper? Yes. Are the mentally ill really our neighbors? We know the answer.

And one last question – Where can we find God in this tragedy?

Certainly, not behind the wizard’s curtain, manipulating the actors. Not up in heaven, gazing down with hands tied. If Jesus is our model for God’s presence, then we will find God in the anguish of parents who have lost their children, amongst roommates who have lost their closest friends, and in the agony of administrators who must review snap decisions made without having enough information. God is in the candlelight vigils, in the spontaneous embraces, and in the cries of dereliction.

Christians understand that God does not turn away when we assail heaven with our curses, or when our questions remain unanswered. Where is God? God is with us. God is in Christ, and Christ is alive with hands that still bear the marks of the nails and a heart that, not for the first time, is breaking.

I’m not suggesting we stop looking for answers. I am suggesting that if it’s God we’re looking for, we won’t find him in abstractions. God is among us, reconciling the world from the inside out.

In times like this, words are never enough. Words must become embodied, made flesh. That’s what the gospel is all about. God is with us in the flesh, not giving us answers, but giving us God’s own self. This is the good news that brings life out of death. Let us live and let us love in it.