|
|
CONTENTS
--Housing --People Christian Education --PYC
|
Meditation at a Service of Lament and Remembrance for the Harvey Family, murdered on January 1, 2006
Psalm 139, Psalm 55, Romans 8, and Matthew 2:17-18
Tomorrow the holy universal church all across the earth will celebrate Epiphany, a feast in which we rejoice, because God revealed his child to outsiders, to gentiles, to the Magi, astrologers from the East. I begin with a reference to the dark side of that story, and to the Scriptures’ recognition of great suffering in the world that God made and loves. Rachel wept for her children. And we are people, we are a city filled with weeping, with wailing and loud lamentation, weeping not only for two children, but for a family that were deeply loved and highly regarded by a multitude. The Harveys gave of themselves; they were joyful; they were faithful to the tasks they set for themselves. They filled many lives with gladness. So a first response to these horrific deaths is silence. Even if you work knee deep in words every day – as preachers and teachers do – the first response is silence, to stand mute before something so terrible, so violent and vengeful, so heart breaking. There are no appropriate words. Yet into that silence may also come – not a human word – but a word from God, found in the words of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. God acknowledges the suffering of human life from which none of us escapes. Scripture also speaks of God’s heart breaking, of Jesus weeping over a city, and of a God who makes promises that will not be broken. Whatever faith the Harvey family had or did not have (and most of you know that better than I) their lives exhibited the very delight God wrote into the created world – exuberance, laughter, playfulness, and joy. They were people of music and mirth – and brought into the lives of those who loved them, and who worked alongside them – the very gladness that this universe demonstrates: stars twinkling on a winter night, the delicate fingers of an infant’s hand, the thunder of planets in rotation, the crash of the waves upon the shore, the twittering of birds, the gamboling of dolphins; and sunlight reflected on a pond in autumn. All of these things mirror what God loves and rejoices in, as well as in the gifts of creativity and energy possessed by the Harveys. One of the great strengths of our faith traditions is that we confess in scripture and in song – that all goodness and healing everywhere on earth is from the hand of God. Goodness and joy are in all people, all cultures, all races, all religions – whether you believe or don’t believe. If you are human and are filled with creative energy that benefits your neighbor: it is the gift of God. In that we rejoice and give thanks. Yet scripture also testifies, and we declare without qualification that God this day sets his face against violence, against evil, and God promises us that such tragedy and sadness as we have seen are never His intention. Rather this evil in human life will one day be destroyed, when heaven and earth, the entire universe, and all creatures reflect the glory God intends for them. In spite of what some misguided Christians say (and they give the church and Christian faith a bad reputation) God does not delight in punishment; God does not send natural disasters to punish people. At the very least such tragedies makes us claim our human solidarity and vulnerability. And we may also declare, as Scripture testifies, that God is broken hearted by all of it. Jesus is weeping for us and for all children. God and Jesus love us with an everlasting love, without any shadow cast by turning, without any darkness. Even in the darkness; in spite of the darkness, Jesus loves us. Never believe otherwise, no matter what some people say who claim to speak for Jesus. What then shall we say? Where is God to be found in this? Forty years ago as an assistant minister in Scotland, I was in a small Bible study group, and somehow we got to talking about the Holocaust. A Greek woman who had married a Scot during the war was a member of the group, and she posed the plaintive question, where was God? Where was God – in the concentration camp, in the gas chambers, in the ovens? Where? And quick as a wink one man answered, “Ach, lassie, in the ovens with the people, where else could God have been in such a tragedy?”* When we ask where God is, where Jesus is, in the face of this, we have only one answer: “In the basement.” On that fateful New Year’s Day, God was in the basement with a family of his heart. Jesus was there beside them. Never forget. Jesus loves us with an everlasting love, without any shadow cast by turning. Thanks be to God.
O. Benjamin Sparks Pastor Second Presbyterian Church Richmond, Virginia January 5, 2006
*This is similar to what Elie Weisel wrote in Night, his story of the concentration camp, Buna, where, as he and other prisoners watched the execution of a young boy, someone cried out, “Where is God?” And the reply was, “He is hanging here on this gallows.” I do not know whether the man who answered the woman had read Night in 1966 when re replied.
.
|
