Make a Mighty Ruckus

A Meditation on Matthew 1:18-25: The Third Sunday in Advent. 

1.

I wonder if I might spend a few moments this morning, reading the names of the twenty-eight who died in Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday morning.  There are no words for the grief that community knows this weekend; and there is no sense to be made of such unimaginable violence.  But we can and we will remember their names.  We can and we will hold their families, their friends in our prayers.  Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.  After I’ve read these twenty-eight names, I hope you’ll spend a moment in silent prayer.  And ask God for courage.  Ask God for peace.  For all who’ve died and for their families. 

The prayer I’ll offer after reading these names was sent to us Friday by our friends in the Connecticut Conference of our United Church of Christ. 

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy.

 
1. Charlotte Bacon, born 2006, 6 years old.
2. Daniel Barden, born 2005, 7 years old.
3. Rachel Davino, born 1983, 29 years old.
4. Olivia Engel, born 2006, 6 years old.
5. Josephine Gay, born 2005, 7 years old.
6. Ana Marquez-Greene, born 2006, 6 years old.
7. Dylan Hockley, born 2006, 6 years old.
8. Dawn Hocksprung, born 1965, 47 years old.
9. Madeleine Hsu, born 2006, 6 years old.
10. Catherine Hubbard, born 2006, 6 years old.
11. Chase Kowalski, born 2005, 7 years old.
12. Adam Lanza, born 1992, 20 years old.
13. Nancy Lanza, born 1960, 52 years old.
14. Jesse Lewis, born 2006, 6 years old.
15. James Mattioli, born 2006, 6 years old.
16. Grace McDonnell, born 2005, 7 years old.
17. Anne Marie Murphy, born 1960, 52 years old. 
18. Emilie Parker, born 2006, 6 years old.
19. Jack Pinto, born 2006, 6 years old.
20. Noah Pozner, born 2006, 6 years old.
21. Caroline Previdi, born 2006, 6 years old.
22. Jessica Rekos, born 2006, 6 years old.
23. Avielle Richman, born 2006, 6 years old.
24. Lauren Russeau, born 1982, 30 years old. 

25. Mary Sherlach, born 1956, 56 years old.

               26. Victoria Soto, born 1985, 27 years old.
               27. Benjamin Wheeler, born 2006, 6 years old.
               28. Allison Wyatt, born 2006, 6 years old.

“Our voices rise as from Ramah.  We cry out for our children.  God, who will comfort us?  With stunned tears, we watch and listen and wait as word of horrors comes to us.  With frozen minds, we ask how, once again, such terrible violence has erupted among us.  With aching hearts, we anticipate the grieving cries: Rachels upon Rachels, Isaacs upon Isaacs, weeping for their children.

The days will come when we can ask why and have some hope of answering the question, O God.  We pray your guidance then, when we can labor to prevent these tears.  Until then, to our aching hearts, for our frozen minds, amidst our streaming tears, bring tender comfort and unshakable love.  Amen.”  That prayer, again, from our sisters and brothers in the Connecticut Conference of the United Church.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.  Lord, have mercy. 

2.

The great French novelist, Albert Camus, speaking at a Dominican monastery in 1948 said this: “Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.” Camus then insisted on our human responsibility “if not to reduce evil, at least not to add to it” and beyond that “to refuse to consent to conditions which torture innocents.”  Does that make sense this weekend?  As we grieve these unimaginable losses.  That it’s our human responsibility (and indeed our Christian obligation) “to refuse to consent to conditions which torture innocents”?

The great American activist, Marian Wright Edelman (President of the Children’s Defense Fund), wrote these words early Friday evening: “Each and all of us must do more to stop this intolerable and wanton epidemic of gun violence and demand that our political leaders do more. We can’t just talk about it after every mass shooting,” she wrote, “then do nothing until the next mass shooting—when we profess shock and talk about it again. The latest terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School is no fluke. It is a result of the senseless, immoral neglect of all of us as a nation to protect children instead of guns and to speak out against the pervasive culture of violence and proliferation of guns in our nation. It is up to us to stop these preventable tragedies.”  Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Last night, I attended two very different, and two exuberant holiday performances: the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, of course, right here at FCC and my own daughters’ December dance recital at Santa Cruz High.  Is there anything better, anything more glorious than watching your kids make music or watching them dance?  And I’m watching my two daughters dance, and I’m looking around a crowded auditorium at hundreds of moms and hundreds of dads, and I’m feeling that combustible joy I feel when I watch these kids pirouette and leap and delight in the movement of their bodies. And I’m thinking: There are dozens of parents in Connecticut tonight who will never see their little one dance.  Who will never know that combustible joy.   

 

Marian Wright Edelman sounds an urgent, prophetic call this weekend.  Really she’s been sounding this call for decades.  But I urge us, I plead with our neighbors and friends, to listen now.  “The latest terrible tragedy,” she says, “is no fluke.”  But the result of the immoral neglect of all of us as a nation to protect children instead of guns and to speak out against the pervasive culture of violence and proliferation of guns in our nation. "It is up to us,” she says, “to stop these preventable tragedies.”

Now we’ve been talking a bit about ‘teshuvah’ during this Advent season, about a practice of repentance that turns our hearts, our relationships, our choices toward God in anticipation of Christmas.  We trim these magnificent trees.  We deck the halls.  But will we make our hearts ready for the coming of the Christ child?  ‘Teshuvah’ begins with an honest accounting, a brave naming (if you like) of our sin and our silence. 

Don’t you think Marian Wright Edelman has it right?  Don’t you think it’s time, collectively, to name our silence in the midst of a devastating culture of violence across this land?  Don’t you think it’s time, collectively, to name our attraction to war and weaponry and even the grizzly video games that glorify mayhem and brutality and bloody warfare for teens and young adults?  Maybe it’s time, sisters, brothers, maybe it’s time that we refuse to consent to conditions which torture innocents.

3.

What strikes me in this morning’s gospel, what moves me here, is Joseph’s refusal—in the end—his refusal to abandon Mary, his refusal to abandon her child.  This is why stories still matter.  This is why the gospel still preaches.  What moves me here, right here in the Christmas story, is Joseph’s refusal to consent to conditions which might endanger and terrorize a mother and her son.

And Joseph knows what he’s doing is culturally suspect and legally questionable and biblically wrong.  In his own moral universe—the moral universe he’s inherited from his family and tradition—men like him would turn women like her away.  They’d do this quietly perhaps, showing restraint, even concern.  But they’d leave Mary and her bastard child to fate.  And probably worse.

   

Joseph knows all that.  He knows his tradition, he says his prayers, he follows the rules.  But the story says that he trusts the word he hears at night.  The angel that comes after dark.  The compassion that rises like the sun in his heart.  Joseph takes a deep breath.  And he raises the child as his own, names him Jesus as the angel instructed, and takes Mary as his wife.

A couple of things I want to say about this story.

First, maybe faith is about trust more than memorization.  Maybe faith is about opening your heart more than making up your mind.  Something radically new is happening in Joseph’s life—and in his community as well.  He’s being challenged to imagine family in a whole new way.  He’s being challenged to imagine his future in a whole new way.  And faith means opening his heart to God, making himself vulnerable to God’s desires, in a radically new way.  Faith means trust.  And that’s something probably every one of us could practice and risk and learn this Christmas time.  To trust God in a radically new way.  To open our hearts to God and make our whole lives available to God.  Like Joseph does.  Without knowing, necessarily, how it’ll all turn out.

And the second thing I want to say is about making commitments to children that are not our own, to families who seem far away and somebody else’s business.  I’m watching the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus last night and I’m just blown away by the love and generosity and beauty in these men’s faces and voices.  A hundred and twenty of them in fact.  Beautiful Christmas carols.  Unrestrained joy.  And uninhibited (to say the least) humor.  And I’m thinking of all the families, all the friends, all the teachers, all the priests and rabbis and pastors who’ve encouraged these one hundred and twenty men.  All the people who’ve protected them from hatred and harm.  All the friends who’ve laughed them through coming out and growing up.  All the lovers who’ve loved them through seasons of discovery and joy and grief and worse.  You see, it really does take a village.  And watching those men sing last night, it strikes me that it takes a huge village, a lively village, a deep and compassionate village.  We are indeed our brothers’ keepers, you see.  We are our sisters’ keepers in the end.

And if that’s true, I want to suggest this morning that we were also supposed to be there for Adam Lanza.  He was the young man who walked into a school on Friday morning with more guns than a human being should see in a lifetime—and started shooting into classrooms of kids.  I believe that our culture let Adam Lanza down.  He was twenty years old.  He was just a kid.  There’s no way Adam Lanza should have had access to all those guns.  There’s no way Adam Lanza’s sadness should have escaped the notice of neighbors and family and schools and churches.  I want to suggest this morning that this young twenty-year-old was another innocent whose life was destroyed, tragically on Friday: and that a piece of what destroyed him was this thing Marian Wright Edelman calls a “pervasive culture of violence” in our land.  Today I hear Joseph calling us to repentance.  Today I hear Mary calling us to repentance.  Today I hear Jesus calling us to turn from violence toward mercy, to turn from weaponry toward trust, to turn from bitterness toward compassion.  You see, we are indeed our brothers’ keepers.  And it truly does take a village.

Here, again, are the words of the great Civil Rights activist, Marian Wright Edelman: “We have so much work to do to build safe communities for our children; and we need leaders at all levels of government who will stand up against the NRA and for every child’s right to live and learn free of gun violence. But that will not happen until mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and neighbors and faith leaders and everybody who believes that children have a right to grow up safely stand up together and make a mighty ruckus as long as necessary to break the gun lobby’s veto on common sense gun policy. Our laws and not the NRA must control who can obtain firearms.”

 

Friends, I want to join Marian’s “mighty ruckus.”  I want our congregation to join this “mighty ruckus.”  Through COPA’s Public Safety Team.  Through the Diversity Center’s violence prevention programs.  Through the Resource Center for Nonviolence.  Through our collaboration with Temple Beth El and Chadeish Yameinu.  I want our congregation to join this “mighty ruckus” until our children and their teachers are safe from the kind of madness that erupted in Connecticut this week.  Until there is peace in the valley, and peace upon the hill tops.  Across this land.  Amen.