I tend to divide my life into compartments in order to get
things done, especially at this busy time of year. In order to work efficiently
or to attempt to live in the moment, I often shut off my mind from thinking of
anything but the task at hand. I will carefully decide what tasks will occupy
my attention and when; I will hold back my heart from thoughts of absent loved
ones when they are far away; I will even try to push God into a box on my
calendar with specific prayer and worship times. With a strong will and good
powers of concentration, I usually succeed in living a very efficient and
orderly life. But sometimes, something will happen that causes the nice
compartments in my head and heart to snap open, and my thoughts will seep
through the carefully-arranged partitions like blood leaking from a wound.
Usually, I can indulge in watching a
happy Christmas musical, for example, without any fear or unpleasantness
invading my cozy thoughts. Yesterday, however, as I sat with parishioners at
Derby Dinner Playhouse, I heard about the school shooting hundreds of miles
away in Newtown, and I could no longer concentrate on the play. As I
watched, Christmas joy, relaxed contentment, heart-wrenching sadness, and
flaming anger all formed a swirling mass within me. I kept imagining the cute,
probably eight-year-old actress in the play, lying dead in her schoolroom,
while she really danced and sang, full of joy, on the stage. It was as if all
of the world’s troublesome layers, so carefully filed away in my mind, came rushing
in on me at once. It was a chaotic and unpleasant feeling, a cracked and
unprotected openness, not just to the tragedy facing the families in Newtown,
but to all the tragedy of the world, a tragedy that mixes badly with “decking
the halls” and baking Christmas cookies.
When I talked
about the shooting with my daughter last night, she, who works every day as a
therapist with children at risk, pointed out to me that in some parts of the
world, and even in parts of our cities in this country, innocent young children
are routinely and randomly shot at home and at play and even at school, yet we pay little
attention to these deaths. They often don’t even make the news. When we do hear
about them, we file them away in our minds to the outer layers of tragedy, to
those compartments labeled “to be prayed for later.” How often things on which
I am expected to take a stand as a Christian—poverty, guns, inequality, environmental
tragedy, war—end up in the “I’ll do something about this later” pile or in the
“this is hopeless stuff” bin.
Today’s
collect took on new meaning for me yesterday. Did you notice it at the
beginning of today’s service? “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might
come among us, and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your
bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.” We can pray this
timely collect, not just for the families in Newtown, begging God to come among
them in their unfathomable grief, but also for ourselves and our community, as
well. We who are far removed from the tragedy have the possibility of welcoming
the unwelcome wound of Sandy Hook Elementary into our carefully-kept lives, into
our joyful pre-Christmas preparations, as an Advent wake-up call, like the voice
of John the Baptist, crying out in the wilderness. We can let it knock down our
carefully-built partitions and burst through our often sinfully-ordered
compartmentalizing. We can pray that it will burst open a space for God’s
powerful stirring to take place. It can remind us that our Christmas story is
not all about sweetness and light, no matter what the Hallmark cards say. Our story
breaks partitions of class and sensibility and practicality: Our God is born to
a young, poor, tired unwed mother in a dirty barn. Joseph has to rethink his
entire theology and value system to welcome Mary’s child. Dirty and disheveled
shepherds follow a strange star. Jesus’ birth even leads a power-hungry King
Herod to kill thousands of innocent baby boys. In one Advent sermon, Rowan Williams calls the
baby Jesus himself, “the Burning Babe, who has come to
cast fire upon the earth.”[1]
Even though
that fire burns only with love and justice, rather than hatred and violence, it is a
divine fire that we should kindle in our own lives, not manage with walls and tame
with partitions. It is a fire that could care less about the way that we have
always done things. It is a fire that could care less about human-made
categories and social constructs. It is a fire that can love a mass murderer and
purify us as we sit in comfortable oblivion. It is a fire that can spread miraculous
chaos into all of our lives, burning in love for the deliverance of the world.
As the choir will
sing during Communion [at 10 a.m. on Sunday]
“By your own Spirit, give your church a clear voice; in this world’s
violence, help us make a new choice. Help us to witness to the joy your peace brings,
Until your world sings.”[2]
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.
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