Marci Weis
July 24, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Let me first say that I had written a different sermon to share with you all today. The sermon I was going to give was on forgiveness and how I approach that word, how I have lived with that word, how I have struggled with that word. But that changed for me yesterday. I woke early to a beautiful sunny Pacific Northwest day and spent the first half hour of that day snuggled with my ten year old daughter on the couch. Today she is going off to Girl Scout resident camp for a week and those moments of holding her were simple and deep treasures. Afterwards she asked if she could make muffins for breakfast and so as she worked very independently in the kitchen, baking, I went to get the morning paper.

It was then that I saw the headline of yesterday's paper. It screamed in big print 'A madman at work; 80 killed at youth camp'. I hadn't heard the news from the night before. I stood frozen in my driveway reading the front page. The enormity of the loss, the death of innocents, the savage way that trust was offered to young people by someone dressed as a police officer who then killed them, the fact that the word 'camp' was in there and I was twenty-four hours away from sending my child away for a week to summer camp, well it all hit me hard, very hard.

Violence is not new to my reality, my guess is to not new to any of our realities. Grief is not new to my reality, my guess is it is not new to any of our realities. Chances are that if we have walked in this world, we have known both. We have seen the cruelty that humanity is capable of, we have felt the pain of both experiencing violence and witnessing it around us. We have watched tragedy on the news, read it in the papers and online. It seems sometimes that it is more a fabric of our lives and our existences than a world should be capable of. 'I saw many dead people' a 15 year old was quoted as saying of the killings this week in Norway, a 15 year old. Those are words that no 15 year old should ever have to say, nothing a 15 year old should have to bear witness to.

So why stop here and give it any energy, any attention. Why scrap my sermon and stand here pointing at it, staring at it. It was horrific, it was violence with no hope of understanding why. Lives were destroyed, families were destroyed, a country that is better known for a peace prize lies wounded and grieving. Why stop and look at it. I will admit that for me, it is easier to turn off the TV, put the paper down, click through those pictures of grief in all of its pain. It is easier to not look.

And trust me, it is easier to leave this particular topic to the Pastor to deal with. Looking into the face of violence and asking 'why God' is something that was far beyond what I intended to do today. It is something that is probably far beyond my training, my education, my studies. To be honest, it is something that I am most likely not qualified to be up here talking about.

And yet here I am, asking the question 'why God'. Why do innocent people die in horrific ways? Why do children witness death and terror? What is the purpose in the terror, the fear, the grief, the sorrow that walks with us in life? My guess is that it is a question each one of us has asked at some point in our lives, either because we have personally experienced violence and grief and sorrow or we have been witness to the violence, the sorrow, the grief through the simple act of reading a newspaper. My guess is that at some point, we have all stood and asked that simple question....'Why God'?

The sermon that I had written and was prepared to give today talked about my own journey of understanding and peacemaking as a Christian. It talked about coming to a place where I could dance and live in the richness and beauty of the Christian message of salvation. It talked about coming to a place where I could stand with authenticity and say, 'Friends believe the good news, in Christ Jesus we are forgiven'. It talked about confronting my deepest fears about 'being good enough' for that gift of salvation and healing. It talked about coming to a place of awe and wonder at looking at that gift of salvation and healing.

My original sermon talked about my own realization that the one and only person who could separate me from God, was myself, no one else. 'Who will separate us from the love of Christ?' Saint Paul asks us today in our reading from Romans. My honest and unflattering answer to myself, was me. That was what I was going to talk about today.

That was until I read the newspaper and saw the pictures of the violence and the horror and read the survivors words from Norway yesterday. And so instead I stand here asking the simple question, 'why God?'

There will be some that will look at this tragedy and explain it away as God's wrath and judgment for our sins. Pat Robertson did this after the earthquake in Haiti. The protestors outside of military funerals do that in the presence of grieving families. Their message is simple, our society is so broken, so sinful, that the violence, the death, the sorrow is God's punishment for our wrong doing. It is a simple answer and I have no doubt that it appeals to some if not many.

'Why God' we ask in the face of sorrow and tragedy? The simple answer offered up by some is punishment for our sins, individually and collectively. I reject this, strongly. I don't know much but in my deepest of hearts, I know that my God is a God of love and not of hate. God's gift of love is the central theme of our sacred scripture. It was the central theme of Jesus' ministry. It is my truth and I rest peacefully in my own testimony that I stand with and in a God of Love.

There will be some that will look at this tragedy, at all tragedy and explain it away as 'part of God's plan'. They will say that there is meaning in sorrow, that in some way that sorrow, tragedy and pain redeem us. They will say that God has a purpose and a master plan that is beyond our human comprehension. This was what was told to me when I was nineteen and struggling to understand the purpose of sorrow in my life, the purpose of violence. I was told by a Catholic priest that God had designed my life to include those elements and that I was inappropriately questioning God's plan for me. That made no sense to me at nineteen and it continues to make no sense to me today.

Theologians have grappled with the question of 'why' for centuries. I am far enough into my theological studies to have a sense of the enormity of study and thought that has gone into this question over the centuries, but not far enough to be able to synthesize it all for you. I cannot in good faith stand here and give you a theological answer to that question, 'why God'.

And so if the question of 'why' is beyond me, I turn instead to the question of 'how'. 'How do I grieve this tragedy of innocents, how do I walk in sorrow seeing the violence that sometimes surrounds us?' My answer to that question of 'how' is not born of theology or years of preaching. It is born of walking with grief and sorrow in my own life and being as you all are, a witness to tragedy and violence in this world. It is an answer from my heart.

My answer to 'how to walk with sorrow and grief' comes from a day dream. It is my own dream of God and what I think may be God's reaction to sorrow and tragedy. It is born of my heart's imagination. What my heart tells me is that when those young people died, God wept, in a way that is beyond my knowing. My heart tells me that God wept when those families were destroyed. My heart tells me that God wept when that wave of fear descended on those people in Norway. My heart tells me that God wept when I experienced sorrow, grief and violence. God wept, again not in a way that I can understand or visualize, but God weeps when each of us walk with sorrow and tragedy. God weeps when each of us grieves. God weeps with us.

That is the gift that I am coming to realize when I stand here and say 'In Christ Jesus we are Forgiven'. I am coming to believe that if I want to know God, that I can look to Jesus and see God in who and what Jesus was in life and in death. I am coming to believe that in the death of Jesus, that act of crucifixion, the time of his death, I can find the answer not to the question of 'why God' but instead to the other question of 'in the face of sorrow and violence, who do we stand with?' In the face of tragedy and sorrow, 'in whose arms do we find comfort?'

At the end of his life, Jesus experienced all that makes life terrifying and tragic; severe physical pain, radical injustice, hatred, mockery, failure of a life's mission, betrayal by loved ones, abandonment by friends and by God and sheer powerlessness. It was a gruesome civil execution. Jesus suffered, of that there can be no question. He knew violence and tragedy. He knew sorrow.

Jesus' death is, for me, God among us, even in sorrow, even in despair, even in pain and even in abandonment. Jesus' radical commitment to the kingdom of God, up to his suffering death given freely on the cross, shows me a pathway for all of our human suffering to be taken into the very being of God. I have heard it best described as not God in Auschwitz but instead Auschwitz taken into the very being of God. It is healing and salvation through the realization that God is radically among us, not distant from suffering but deeply and intimately involved and present in our suffering. It is God weeping with us in tragedy and sorrow.

That is not an answer to 'why God' but it is instead where I find a salve to the soul and the heart as we bear witness to the violence and sorrow in this world. It is my confession, it is my heart speaking its truth and that truth is this....in the face of tragedy, we are never alone. In the face of fear, we are never alone. In the face of grief and sorrow, we are never alone. My truth is this, none of us ever weeps alone.