Easter 3C April 22, 2007 

In light of what happened at Virginia Tech this last Monday, with the deaths of 33 teachers and students, I feel that we should spend some extra time in silence and prayer during our prayers later in the service.  I realize that there are people in this community who have been directly touched by this tragedy, who have experienced it at a deeply personal level.  Many of us have been touched by this.  As a family united through Jesus, we share each others joys and grieving, and it would be good to come together once more in prayer over this.   

We read in Acts today that when the followers of Jesus are persecuted, so is Jesus himself.  And I believe that it goes farther than this.  We read in the beginning of John that Jesus is the Word which called all life into being, which birthed the cosmos, the Earth and its creatures.  When threats and murder touch any part of humanity, any part of the creation, Jesus is persecuted.  Jesus has been persecuted in VA this week in a horrendous tragedy, a horrifying act of violence.  For many of us this is the tragedy that comes closest to our own hearts and lives.   

This one act is heart wrenching enough.  And yet we know that Jesus has been persecuted in other ways this week as well.  In three days of fighting this week in Somalia at least 113 people were killed. Hundreds have been injured and thousands displaced.  In Darfur, Sudan an air strike destroyed an entire village.  This week has seen uncountable numbers of men, women, and children murdered in Iraq by factions there and by the United States.  On this Wednesday alone, 233 people were killed or found dead across Iraq.  This week the Ugandan government continued formalizing plans to cut about 10,000 hectares of forest preserve for biofuel sugar production, and protesters against this plan have been shot and beaten by government troops.   

It is impossible for me, I imagine for all of us, to really take in even these few accounts.  And yet our God takes it all in and more.  God embodied this suffering creation through Jesus, and is intimately close to our pain, suffering with us in our heartbreak, in the midst of these tragedies.  God suffered at Virgina Tech this Monday and grieves still with those affected.  For some here, the tragedy touches us because we can identify with the place or people affected.  For some in the ASN community, the tragedy affects us in a very deep way through the more direct connections that we have to the place and people whose lives have been ended or forever changed.  Through Jesus, God has experienced firsthand our aching, our longing, our grieving.  God is not observing this pain from the outside.  God weeps with us.   

God is with us, personally, individually.  And the whole of humanity and the created order is wrapped within God’s universal love.  The spilt blood at Virginia Tech cries out to our Creator.  As well, in the Ecuadorian Amazon, God suffers as communities are violated and the land is stripped and polluted.  In the United States, God suffers as we poison Native and Black communities with our corporate toxins.  God weeps as we, and especially our most powerful and affluent groups, continue to exploit and pollute the Earth.   

Can we recognize this, not in shame or self-pity, but humbly and honestly, laying ourselves once more on the limitless grace of God?  As God’s people, we are led onto paths where we can begin to feel as God feels; where as God’s community we can recognize and minister to these realities, to this sorrow, to this pain.  And from what I understand, right here is a community that is ministering to these realities.  One concrete example is how Quito’s children of the street, God’s little ones, are being welcomed, embraced and cared for right in your midst.  Your witness encourages me and it really challenges me as well. 

I think that the Scripture readings can speak to us today as we think about, as we mourn, the realities which surround us.  Today I hear the Scriptures speaking of the limitless grace of God and the incredible hope we have through Jesus.  I am thinking about the reinstallation of Peter.  After Peter’s cowardice, after his repeated deceit and his heart wrenching denial, Peter is embraced and restored.  Peter recognizes the risen Lord, and something new is opened up for Peter as he breaks bread with Jesus. 

Today we also read about the conversion of Paul.  Paul, who was breathing threats and murder against the disciples, against Jesus himself.  Paul, who Ananias feared because of how much evil Paul had done to the saints in Jerusalem.  Jesus touched Paul in the midst of his aggression, his brutality, his murder.  The light of Jesus breaks through what seems like an impossible situation of violence and Paul is converted, opening up within him new desires, new purposes, new life.  The experience of Jesus redirects Paul’s life towards the Reign of God.   

As if spoken by Peter or Paul, we heard the Psalmist today praise God in gratitude for healing, for restoration, for joy. In the midst of weeping, anger, and brokenness, the Psalmist’s experience of God opened up new possibilities for restoration and life.   

And in Revelation we see John in what would seem to be a hopeless situation.  John in his old age has been exiled by an empire, a power hostile to God’s Reign in the world, persecuting God’s people and exploiting God’s creation.  Although this would suggest the triumph of this political and economic domination, John instead witnesses to a greater authority.  John recognizes the power of God which proclaims new life and new creation.  Even more, in his vision John sees the whole creation praising the Lamb that was slain.  He sees the conversion of the whole cosmos to the Reign of God, the New Creation birthed from domination and decay.  John, in exile on Patmos, witnesses to the hope and power of the Resurrection in the midst of an incredibly violent and tragic situation. 

Through these Scripture readings we see something else as well.  This power of God, which enters into brokenness and death and opens up from within them new possibilities and transformed life, does not work in a vacuum.  It depends upon relationship.  We see Peter with Jesus, with the other disciples.  We see Paul being led by the hand to Damascus. We read about Ananias going to Paul, laying his hands on him, speaking with him.  Later, Paul stays with the disciples in Damascus.  We see the necessity and power of relationship to heal, to guide, to create places where new life can be born.   

Most of us can point to times when we have experienced this ourselves.  In the face of the world’s violence and our own, we need relationship in our pursuit of the Reign of God, in our pursuit of peace and wholeness.  We need each other; to be encouraged in our pilgrimage, to live out the good news.  God’s grace works through relationship to continue to transform us, to create new and renewed ways of being. Within community we recognize the hope of the Resurrection.   

I think that we especially feel this need for relationship when tragedy touches us, when we feel the pain of violence marking our own lives, like it has to so many in the events in Virginia.  In this way our prayers today are particularly necessary.  That God would work through the relationships here, in the community of ASN; in our prayers, in our silence, in our grieving and in our joy.  That this life shared together would be an expression of the Resurrection hope that sustains us in our life in Christ, our life in this world.