EDITOR'S NOTE: In October 2017 I began a new venture as a synodically authorized minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. The ride over the past 2.5 years has been an amazing journey of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. Here is the first sermon that I ever preached at FLC. It took place on Oct. 4, 2017.
It was a clear, crisp autumn morning that fateful Tuesday that irrevocably changed the life of anyone over a certain age.
I was brushing my teeth in our upstairs bathroom, just having finished getting our then 3-year-old son ready for daycare. I was on daddy duty because working at a daily newspaper our morning generally didn’t start until later. It was, after all, the pre-Internet days, and we didn’t have to worry about getting the news out until the next morning’s paper.
Our house phone rang, which seemed peculiar at that time of the morning, and my best friend from college was on the other end: “Did you hear what happened?” he asked breathlessly. “No,” I said, a rare day when I hadn’t started my day with the news. “You’d better turn on the TV,” he said.
The details of those first few moments on Sept. 11, 2001, will be forever sealed in my memory.
After having finished getting both of us ready, I drove to drop off my son at his daycare with a pit in my stomach. Was I doing the right thing by dropping him off? … Well, of course I was. I was a journalist. And after all, I had a job to do for our readers. I took off for work and that’s where I remained for the next 48 hours. … For two days straight, our small staff dialed the phones until our fingers were numbed, and pounded the computer keyboards and worked to keep our community informed. Finally after exhaustion overtook us all, we set up a round-the-clock rotation so that some of us could get home for a few hours and clean up and sleep. And this is the scheduled we kept for the next two weeks. A relentless schedule that kept us mired deep into reporting on the most unthinkable and depraved act to happen on this continent since probably World War II.
I wrote thousands of words and dozens of stories in the weeks following 9/11. I suppose in equal proportions, I wanted to inform our community, but I also wanted answers. I felt that if I did one more interview, talked to one more official, heard one more localized connection to the tragedy that at some point it would all begin to make sense to me. … I, of course, would find out that I was wrong. There was no making sense of 9/11.
That was the first of many tragedies I’ve now covered or witnessed in the past 20-plus years of a journalism career. There’s been catastrophic events on a mass scale and unthinkable crimes on a personal level. … That’s the funny thing about journalism. Most folks recognize the many other professions that are traumatized by horrific acts of violence, but they forget about the journalists who are knee-deep in the tragedies day after day after day. … But not for the glory or the fame as most believe they are. … Most often reporters are just average people whose passion to keep their community informed fuels their obligation to stick out the ugliness and bear the hurt and pain way deep down inside.
And most often we do it because we -- just as the public -- want to know why. … Why, dear God, do tragedies such as this happen? … It’s an age-old question for us faithful, isn’t it? … Well, that is exactly the same question that has fueled a career that has made me a front row spectator to tragedy after tragedy.
And that same, old sick feeling reared it’s ugly head again this past Monday morning. Coincidentally, I was again brushing my teeth, getting ready for work with my wife and one of our children getting ready for school in the kitchen. I popped on my MPR radio app and I heard the words, “... And we’re going to the scene live …” No news report that ever leads with those words is good. … Ever. … And that is how I learned about the most recent mass attack in Las Vegas.
And there again was that ever-familiar question with which we Christians have to struggle: Why? … I know I’m not the only one. Millions of people across the world, not even just Americans, have joined me this week in asking why. … Dear Lord, why? … Why all of the senseless murder and violence? What have we wrought upon ourselves?
As I studied this week’s scriptures, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to today’s gospel. You’ve already heard it. A landowner buys up some land, plants a vineyard, leases it to some others and moves away. At harvest time, when he sends three slaves to collect his produce, the tenants decide instead to beat one, kill the second and stone the third. … There is the question again: Why, dear Lord, why? … Undeterred, the landowner sends more slaves, and all are treated the same way. … Why, dear Lord, why? … Finally, the landowner sends his son, and the ultimate result is the same: They kill the son. … Oh why, dear Lord, why!
As with so many of Jesus’ parables, the subtlety here shouldn’t be lost on any of us. God’s creation, our very earth is often referred to in scripture as a vineyard. And in this case, God is most certainly our landlord, and yet time after time when he sends his people to collect his produce at harvest, what do we do? We beat them. Or we stone them. Or we kill them. … Did Jesus not even foretell of his own death when he tells of the landowner sending his son to collect from the tenants? … And what did we do? The parable tells it all. … Why, dear Lord, why?
As it is in our scriptures, it is here on earth. Unexplained tragedy after unexplained tragedy, and through it all we keep coming back to the same, old question: Why? … Why does God let atrocities such as the Las Vegas shooting happen? Why doesn’t he step in to prevent such acts? If God already knows the designs of everything, then what kind of God would allow 58 people to be mowed down at a country concert?
Why, dear Lord … why?
But, perhaps, because we can’t find the answer, an answer far too big for our earthly minds to grasp … maybe, instead, especially in times so close to such an atrocious act as the Las Vegas shooting ... instead of asking ourselves why it is that God allows such an act to happen, we need to ask what it is that God does to help us recover, to cope, to move on.
What does he do to allow us, in the face of utter exasperation and despair, to get up one more day and face a world whose aim at time seems only our destruction. After all, it was not God who climbed 32 stories in a hotel with dozens of violent weapons, break out a window and start firing on an unsuspecting crowd. … No, that was not God. … That was obviously a deranged man, infected by earthly sin and whom we might never understand. … But that act was not what God allowed.
Quite the contrary, God on that evening allowed a courageous security guard to be in the position of evacuating the floor that the shooter occupied even though it ultimately ended with him being shot. … And God acted through the many, many brave police officers and EMT and other emergency personnel who responded in minutes to an active battlefield. … And God was at work in the hands of the medical personnel who poured into the only Level 1 trauma center in Las Vegas and immediately set to saving lives. … And, finally, God was there, alongside every single civilian at that concert who helped shield another person, or lead another person away to safety, or who in the middle of the ongoing barrage of bullets helped carry away an injured fellow concert-goer. … Oh yes, God was there that night, even if in ways we’ll never understand.
But after having spent 20-plus years in a journalism career, and now several years in seminary, seeking the answer to the same question, what I’m learning is that we just tend to ask the wrong question in times of tragedy. What we need to comprehend is that a better question than “Why, dear Lord, why?” might be “Where in this time of need is God?” …
And the simple answer is: Right alongside us. … After all, it is not God who is the cause of this unspeakable evil. But it is God who, after the evil has preyed upon us, is the one who picks us up and makes it possible to open our eyes to another day and to live on in hope.
The answer is there for us. It’s just the answer to a different question. .... And that answer is that God here, there … everywhere with us. Helping us to continue to live in his promise, even in the most difficult of times. And, so during these most difficult of times for our nation … no, for our world, I would challenge you to begin asking not “Why, dear Lord,why?” but instead start asking “Where in this time of need do I see God at work?” … I am willing to bet the answer is: Just about everywhere.
Some of you most likely have already heard this quote. It’s been used often in times of national tragedy. But, asked one time about what Mr. Rogers would say to help people cope during a tragedy, he said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” … And I would confidently state that this is also where you will see God. … In the helpers. The countless numbers of helpers. …
And that is a good start. … Because when you become a helper yourself, you become God’s hands and feet in action, and you help shine a big, bright light to the rest of the world that we as God’s faithful won’t back down in the face of unspeakable evil. But rather, with God by our side, we will boldly awake each day and act to help to restore God’s wonderful creation. Rather than letting these acts of senseless violence -- big and small -- make us feel helpless, we instead will choose to act boldly through our Lord to do his will here on earth.
My wife and I have a favorite cartoon. It’s main means of distribution is through social media, and maybe some of you have heard of it. It’s called the “Awkward Yeti.” … I won’t go into details about the premise of the cartoon series, but this week my wife shared with me the most recent cartoon. It’s a drawing of a heart talking to a brain, and it says: “I’m going to bed. Wake me when the world is fixed.” … And the brain says back to the heart: “Sorry, heart. The world needs you.”
Now, more than maybe ever, the world needs us. The world needs us Christians, and non-Christians, our family members, our friends, everyone one of us. The world needs their hearts, our hearts … everyone’s hearts. … And so I beseech you to stir up your hearts. Don’t let them sleep now. They are needed more than ever. After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, so elegantly stated for us: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Please, be a heart. … Be a light. … Amen.
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