Our choir is presenting its Christmas program tomorrow (Sunday) and I do not usually speak on such occasions. However, the shooting in Newtown compelled me to offer some thoughts to my congregation. I hope they are comforting but, if not, know they reflect my real feelings.
Friday evening I was thinking of the
tragic mass shootings over the past few years.
They have taken place at schools, at theaters, at shopping malls, in
churches, in synagogues, on military bases.
almost anywhere you can name. The
inevitable conclusion most of would reach in the face of this record is that
there doesn’t appear to be anyplace that is really safe.
But our focus right now is on the
deaths of 20 children and 6 adults at an elementary school in Connecticut. Already we are hearing of the heroic acts of
supervisors and teachers and seeing the pictures of some of the children who
were killed. As we listen to the
stories, we inevitably ask “Why?”
I wish I could offer an answer that
makes clear the reason for this sad event.
We will hear people say that it
happened because it is too easy to buy guns in this country. I have no intention of presenting the pros and
cons of stronger gun-control but the simple truth is Adam Lanza could not have
done what he did had he not had access to the weaponry his mother had
purchased. But it is equally true that
millions of Americans own guns and have never even pointed them at another
human being.
This brings us to the issue of
mental illness. We are already hearing
suggestions that Lanza had some kind of emotional or psychological disorder. I claim no expertise but I doubt this fully
accounts for his actions. Certainly, it does not excuse what he
did. I believe we need to take mental illness
seriously but it can‘t become the first place we visit to explain the
unexplainable. We do need to make sure
the mentally ill get help; sadly, several years ago legislators with the best
of intentions made it very difficult to have a person committed so they could
be evaluated. I don’t know about
Connecticut but I do know Ohio lags behind other states in providing services
for the mentally ill. I know it seems we
are taxed piteously but I hope you weigh carefully any levy that seeks
appropriations for mental health services.
There may even be some who explain
the events in Newtown as God’s doing.
They will tell us God is punishing America for embracing homosexuality,
allowing abortion, or choosing the wrong president. Some of these folks may even be
Baptists. I don’t know what to say
except to remind you that Baptists are among the most innovative and creative
of Christian groups in modern history.
But even we have been unable to find any way to filter out such foolishness.
Having said that, there is one
explanation that needs to be mentioned and unless you listen carefully you may
confuse what I am about to say with the groups I’ve just condemned. The shootings in Newtown reflect the presence
of sin in the human race. We are broken,
estranged from God; in fact, we are in rebellion against him. And rebels often find ways to justify the most
horrific acts, acts that can only be described as evil.
What’s the difference in the two
explanations? According to the first,
God initiates the act to punish us—even if that means killing kindergartners
and first-graders. In the second, the
act is born in some human heart that is filled with anger, selfishness, hate,
and bitterness. The fact that so many of
us welcome and nurture these feelings is a symptom of our brokenness.
When we hear of what happened in
Newtown or some other such act of violence against the innocent, we sometimes
say, “This never used to happen.” To a
degree that’s true, yet in small war torn countries thousands of miles from
here, two dozen deaths would hardly capture anyone’s attention. But that is war; it is not a single
individual taking out his anger on people he has perceived to be somehow
contributing to his pain and troubles.
As I thought about how a single
human heart could harbor such evil, I thought of another incident some
two-thousand years ago. It is part of
the Christmas story yet I’ve seldom mentioned it in a sermon, never seen it
portrayed in a Christmas pageant, and am sure it finds no place in any carol
I’ve ever heard sung.
It is part of the aftermath of the
visit of the wise men. The wise men had
planned to tell Herod they had been successful in their search for the infant "born King of the Jews,” but warning dreams prompted them to return to their
homeland another way. Joseph also had a
dream telling him to take his family to safety in Egypt. Matthew tells what happened next.
Herod was furious when he realized that the
wise men had outwitted him. He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around
Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of
the star’s first appearance.
The sin that gives birth to the
fury demonstrated in Connecticut is not new to the world. The paranoid king Herod had no problem
ordering the deaths of children. Notice,
too, is soldiers had no compunctions about obeying his wicked order. Bible scholars and historians believe about
thirty male children would have died to relieve Herod’s paranoia.
It’s interesting that there are no
independent accounts of what has been called “the slaughter of the
innocents.” Yet, this really poses no
problem. The act fits what is known of
Herod’s character and it reflects the fact that, outside the world of the devout Jews, children were not especially prized in the first-century
world. The Romans often ordered such
mass killings to reduce the population of groups they feared were growing too
numerous. The sorrow and grief Americans
feel at the deaths in Newtown is, in part, a reflection of what Christ has done
for the world. He taught us to see
children in a new way.
Then, too, the reality of the
world’s sin and the presence of real evil remind us of the why of Christmas we
sometimes forget. Jesus came to free us
from the power of sin and to give us hope in the face of death. May that hope shape our prayers as we
remember those grieving parents this Christmas.
As we remind them that most schools
are safe, may that hope help us to calm the fears of our own children and
grandchildren.
