The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for April 22, 2007

Texts: Isaiah 65:17-25/Revelations 21:1-4

Title: “Senseless”

              Words collapse under the weight of grief, despair, and outrage this week’s disaster at Virginia Tech created. But what do we have but words? Tears of course, but little else. Words are the primary medium we use to vent our sorrow, our rage, our anguish.

While you, inundated as I have been, by the flood of words flowing forth from the tragedy may have come here seeking a respite, it is my conviction that the church has an obligation to speak out in response to an event of last Monday’s magnitude.

              Words collapse under the weigh of grief, despair, and outrage this week’s disaster at Virginia Tech created, even when we use words to invoke the name of God. Yet you and I have come to believe that the words you and I use to invoke the name of God are more firmly grounded than the words the general culture at large uses in analyzing and responding to events such as Virginia Tech.  They are more firmly grounded in the sense that the words we use are part of a narrative compiled over generations describing a peoples’ encounter with the triune God who is the Lord of history, whose love for all he created has been reinforced through a series of decisive covenants with us in which he demonstrates that he will not forsake us in our time of distress and need.

              We in the church make bold to claim that the words contained in this book provide an authoritative accounting of God’s deeds in history, and that the words really transcend the time in which they were written, that they are alive and speak to us today. While our specific experiences may not be addressed in the book, we nonetheless believe that what we find in this book gives us unrivaled access into the mind of God.  

              I will acknowledge immediately that some of you have come here primarily to enjoy the music, the fellowship, or the favorite Sunday school class, but it is the word, God’s Word, Holy Scripture, upon which this enterprise called the church is established and sustained.

              Though we are the church, words, even those we use to invoke the name of God, convert no easier to our uses than the words you hear from your favorite radio or television outlet. While God may help the preacher, or someone else who would speak in God’s name, find the right word or words from time to time, our rate of success is probably no higher than the local television anchor.  People like me speaking from the pulpits across America on the subject of Virginia Tech today can, however, draw confidence knowing that God wants very much to be present in our communication.

              To summarize briefly: there are words, and there are words.  What I want to do this morning is bring the words spoken out there in the media, in the coffee shop, in the school classroom under the authority of the words in here. You will say, “That is what I expect my preacher to do every Sunday,” and you are right. But the words out there and the tragedy they attempt to describe, headline in Tuesday’s paper, “Massacre,” headline in Wednesday’s paper, “Inconsolable Grief,” demand, it seems to me, a particular, and, yes, more thoughtful response, from the preacher and the church than we might give more general topics. 

              To repeat what I said earlier, words collapse under the weigh of grief, despair, and outrage this week’s disaster at Virginia Tech created even when we use words to invoke the name of God. The church has no specially sanctified vocabulary it can trot out when it wishes to make a special point, or help heal a wound such the one suffered on Monday.

              Whether we happen to function primarily in the secular world or in the church, we rely on a single vocabulary. Let’s take the word evil.  The word “evil” appears much more frequently in the church’s vocabulary, I know, but our friends in the press have used the word in dissecting the events of Monday.  Evil is an adequate word to sum up the Virginia Tech tragedy.  Synonyms such as “vile,” “despicable,” or “wicked” might work equally well in sorting through last Monday. Evil is likely to be the word we select when we confront murder, genocide, and other such outrages against society and its citizens.

              “Irrational” is a word that has cropped up in describing the tragedy of last Monday.  Irrational, it was an event that defies reason. Synonyms such as “absurd,” or “unbelievable” might work equally well.  Persons like you and I, people in possession of sound minds and moral sensibilities respond to the Virginia Tech tragedy by throwing up our hands in dismay.  What the perpetrator did was off the charts.  It was irrational. The ramblings of the assassin in his video and his writings are the ravings of someone gone mad.

              “Evil” and “irrational,” a third word many have employed when discussing the tragedy was “senseless.” Interesting word, “senseless.”  Without sense.  Containing no sense.  Beyond the grasp of our five functional senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste.

              By my definition “senseless” goes beyond even “irrational,” offending not just our intellect or reason but the basic principles upon which life is ordered.  Synonyms for senseless would be “pointless,” “nonsensical,” or even “crazy.”  

              To my mind senseless works as well or better than any word I can think of describing what occurred on Monday.  “Evil,” certainly.  “Irrational,” certainly.  “Senseless,” brings our whole ordered and rational way of looking at things and reacting into question.  “Senseless,” it is so out of the orbit bizarre that all the possible explanations we might offer miss the target.

              The words senseless and violence, and senseless and killing are perfect pairing when describing the murders at Virginia Tech, or the drug induced violence and killing we see here in New Orleans, or the work of the suicide bomber on the streets of Baghdad. 

              “Senseless” is the word I would choose in summing up last Monday’s tragedy. But the capacity of the word to carry meaning is only truly revealed when used in reference to the death of a specific person. Then and only then does the word really and truly communicate its true meaning.

              One of victims, Ross Alameddine, from Saugus, Massachusetts, a Virginia Tech sophomore, described as “an intelligent, funny, easygoing guy,” was killed in a classroom building. He got up Monday morning just as we did, expecting to go to class, study, and perhaps later meet with up with friends. Wrong place, wrong time.  Senseless. 

            German Instructor, Christopher James Bishop, known as “Jamie,” worked as a freelance graphic artist.  He enjoyed “working with and researching digital photography.”

Good teacher, related well with students who were not much younger than he.  Bright. Talented. Tons of potential. Shot. Senseless

              Engineering and mathematics lecturer, Liviu Librescu, 76 year old, Holocaust survivor. “Thirsting for freedom” came to the United States from his native Romania. The chair of his department stated that “he was a giant as a scholar.”  Shot attempting to prevent the shooter from entering his classroom. Survived the Holocaust, the communist tyranny in Romania, only be shot dead in the “land of the free.” Senseless.

              Lauren McCain, sophomore from Hampton, Va., was an international studies major.  Her pastor was quoted as saying, “you meet a lot of young people in your life, but not a lot will make the impression that Lauren did.”  On her internet webpage she said that “Jesus Christ is the love of my life.”  Shot and killed on Monday afternoon. Senseless

              Only when you see those faces looking out from the page, all killed on Monday,  and read a little bit about the extraordinary gifts they possessed and the affection in which they were held by family and friends, do we truly grasp what the word “senseless” means. 

              The word “Senseless,” has been used by the media to describe the events in Blacksburg, VA last Monday. There are no methods or strategies available to us to make sense of the senseless, yet we feel compelled to DO something in response to the senseless.  The governor of Virginia has impaneled a commission to study the campus police response, gun control advocates are active again to make access to firearms more difficult, and colleges are reviewing emergency response procedures.

              The word “senseless,” has been used by the media to describe the events on Monday.  It seems to me that the word is equally applicable in the realm of religious faith.  There is no making sense of what Seung-hui Cho did by using the tools the faith gives us.  When we bring sense, logic, even logic informed by the religious faith, to the question of the Blacksburg murders, we might without fear of rebuttal, say the murders fit somehow into God’s plan. If God is, in fact, the omniscient and omnipotent God we claim him to be, we cannot exclude any event as being outside the realm of God’s authority, but what about his plan?

              Does this tragic event fit into God’s plan?  We are repelled by the thought that tragedies like this could somehow be part of God’s plan. But if it isn’t, aren’t we forced to concede that there is another power at work in the world, a power of sufficient might, to alter or deface God’s plan? The church affirms that there once existed such a power, the power of sin, but the that power was vanquished in the resurrection of Christ.      

               The power of sin was vanquished, but if so it doesn’t logically follow that tragedies the like of Monday should happen, that the lives of women and men, all brimming with wonderful possibilities, were so tragically wasted in the space of a couple of hours one spring day.  None of this makes sense, not if we believe sin and death have been defeated.

              There is no making sense out of the senseless. God alone can do that, but, and I need to be clear, in making sense of the senseless we are not saying that God is the author of, permits, or is complicit in the senseless. The God we worship is steadfastly opposed to the senseless as I have been using the term.

             Indeed, God, without explaining why senseless acts of violence continue to stain the fabric of our individual lives, and societies---how could he explain something so very contrary to his nature---[without explaining] God has disclosed his aims and motives in a story that you and I are living right now.  The evil, irrational and senseless are part of that story, how and why they got in there, and remain there, we don’t know.  He has words to grieve what the evil, irrational, and senseless create, but God hasn’t given us words to explain why the innocent must mourn and suffer. We affirm with our words that Christ triumphed over sin and death in his resurrection, and thus we triumphed, but God hasn’t given us words to explain why, despite that triumph, sin and death are so real and compelling in everyday experience. What we DO know is that scripture is insistently looking forward to that day when God’s will will be manifest.  In the faith God confers we await that day, confident that God is trustworthy.

                 Yes, God has a plan, and it is a good plan.  The evil, irrational and senseless are not part of that plan.  Oh, they may insist upon being recognized, but as the prophet Isaiah informs us, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered.”

                  That promise is renewed every day we are given to live on this earth, so too the promise that “former things---evil, the irrational, and the senseless---shall not be remembered.”  The senseless event of Monday will be seared in our memories and our consciousness for days and years to come, we will grieve, we must grieve.  We hold that grief in common with the families and friends who have been impacted most directly by the tragedy, but we hold on and hold out against the senseless.  And why do we hold out? We hold out for we have faith in the one who, in ways that do no register on our senses, is today creating, amid our sorrow and rage over the murders, a beautiful and everlasting tribute to those whose lives on Monday were so senselessly taken.  And what beautiful and everlasting tribute is he creating? He is creating a tribute no alien power shall ever deface. He is creating a new heaven and a new earth.

PRAYER

                  O Lord, who from nothing created all that is, we worship you as the Lord of history, but also as one who thrives for intimacy with each child of your creating. High and lifted up you are, yet you are never out of range of the human voice.  You are present with us to hear our prayers, to brace us when temptation strikes, to console us when our hearts have been broken. It is consolation and strength we seek today on behalf of those whose lives were shattered by the events of last Monday. Be with the forlorn and despairing, and all those who have reached out to them in solidarity. 

                    We pray, O God, for the students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech University, that the anguish they are experiencing may respond to your healing touch. Abide with those who minister to the wounded today, that the counsel they offer may bring relief and comfort. Be with those to whom questions are directed regarding the university’s first response as the tragedy unfolded. O God, even as the nation, indeed the world, comes to grips with the magnitude of the disaster, may new approaches be found in responding to the needs of the emotionally and mentally unbalanced. Be with those in the mental health community as they labor to find ways to treat and support the mentally and emotional impaired.

                    Lord, even as we mourn the senseless killing of thirty-two people in Virginia, we acknowledge that new life springs forth everyday.  We lift up Burnell, a child of your creating, who will be baptized today.  As we welcome him into the covenant household of faith, O God, we pray that the journey he begins today may be enriched by the support of loving parents, a community of support in the church, and foremost, by the guidance of your Holy Spirit. Support Burnell’s parents, Burnell and Michelle, that in their words and  example he may find direction and encouragement in living a godly life.

                   O God, we pray for those who live under repressive regimes, those who are denied justice and human rights. We pray for the people of Darfur who are subjected to genocide, praying that the nations of the world may arise to put down their persecutors.  We pray for the oppressed of Zimbabwe. We pray for those who have no means to feed their families, educator their children, or aspire to more than another day’s ration of pain and suffering.  Even as we pray for the oppressed and the marginalized we give thanks for those who make common cause with them by providing medical care, education, and expertise in other forms.

                We pray for our sister churches in New Orleans, praying especially for our friends at St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church as they rededicate their sanctuary today. May your Spirit attend them in their celebration.    

We are grateful for the progress being made on our church and day school facilities, and thank you for the opportunity we had to open our doors to the greater community on Friday evening.  We thank you for the efforts of Caroline and others who secured the opportunity for us.

                 O God, our God, you know us as we are.  You know our inmost thoughts.  Forgive the many ways we have excluded you from our lives, and help us to live fully into the new life that our Savior Jesus came to model, this we pray in the name of our Savior, praying…