Light in the Darkness of Newtown

Light in the Darkness.                          The Dover Church
December 30, 2012 - 1st Sunday of Christmas.    John 1

I have been thinking about the massacre in Newtown a lot this Christmas. My heart has been very heavy indeed. Being a father of a 5 and 8 year old, this hits very close to home. Our Christmas Pageant was particularly difficult, coming just a couple of days afterwards. The incongruity of our happiness, peace and joy in this meeting house, and what the people of Newtown must have been experiencing at the same time in their homes, churches, synagogues, coffee shops, street corners. I felt that my hands were tied, that I ought to have some wisdom to offer this gathering of God's people, while being mindful of the children present the last few weeks and not wanting to force this terrible tragedy before people who might well be shielding their children from the horror as Marie-Laure and I have been trying to do.
I think about those little, innocent children, of their fear and pain. I think of their lives cut so short and what they might have become, the joy and new life they never knew.
I think about the parents, getting the phone call, going to claim their child. It makes me shudder. I wonder which couples will survive the tragedy and which ones will be understandably unable to go on together with so much loss in the middle of their life.
I think about the siblings who will have to live the rest of their lives with those ghosts, that story.
I think about those brave administrators and teachers who did their best and were still laid low, and all the life and love still before them.
I think about the police officers who were unable to save and protect lives, and could just tape off the crime scene for the detectives.
I think about the kids and teachers in the other classes and how they will manage to go back to their school.
I think about the town, forever carrying the shadow of this obscenity.
I think about the pastors, priest, rabbis and counselors, being looked to for words of hope and comfort and how inadequate they must have felt and feel.
I think about all the unopened Christmas presents, the end of semester art work, pictures and other things our boys brought home from the Chickering School in their backpacks that day, and what has become of it all. So much giftedness. So much light and wonder.
I think about the killer and what madness could have possibly lead him to do this thing.
I think about his father and brother who have to live with this.
I think about the President and his predecessors, having to go to yet another ordinary American town to be the mourner in chief.
I think about our society, why we of all societies do this sort of thing, what makes us so prone to violence, of our fatalistic acceptance of this sort of violence, of our fear of the next insane murderer ready to attack and why we won't move beyond this cycle.
I think about Wayne LaPierre, spokesman for the NRA, when he says that this is not a gun problem but a mental health problem. I find it hard to believe that he really thinks that. When he says that the problem is that the teachers were unarmed, that we need armed guards at every school. I don't want my children going to that kind of school.
I think about all the Congressmen and Senators who have come out saying that tighter gun regulations are not an option, who fear for their political careers and act accordingly rather than lead, how a small minority can dominate the vast majority in our country because of astute lobbying and pressure.
I think about all the folks in the gun lobby who are on edge as our nation faces yet another one of these incidents, Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood Texas, Tucson, the list goes on and now Sandy Neck. They say, that's not us, we're law abiding citizens and we need our guns for just this sort of thing, to protect ourselves from madmen like this one. They go out and buy ever greater stockpiles of heavy weapons and large capacity magazines, which only causes me more fear. Because the next killer is, right now, a law abiding citizen just like them, exercising his constitutional right to bear arms, until he crosses the line and walks into a school. And then it is too late, again.
I think about the unique American idolatry of guns, our idolatry of personal liberty when it comes to possessing the tools to do this sort of thing, of the idolatry of individualism which would seem to prefer an even more heavily armed population, an Iraq or Afghanistan sort of environment in which everyone is armed, where everyone is both the first and last line in defense, ultimately individually responsible for our safety.
I think about the talking heads on TV and radio spouting platitudes about personal liberty, the Second Ammendment and wonder what they would think if they got real for a change and went into the Newtown school that morning. I think that talk is cheap and that some of the most ardent pacificists I have met are people who actually know what they're talking about, combat veterans.
I think about all the people who have done these things, mostly twenty something, white men, loners, lashing out at a society that rejected them. I wonder what we are doing as a society to create them and what we might do as a society to redirect or restrain them.
As a fisherman and as someone who occasionally enjoys both skeet shooting and target practice, although I do not own a gun, I know how delightful a sport shooting is. Hunting is too much for me, but having killed both fish and animals for food I think all meat eaters ought to do so just to understand the enormity of what taking another life feels like. I was a member of the NRA when it was a firearms instruction and safety organization.
 I think about the implications for us as disciples of the imagery of Christ as an unquenchable light in a hostile darkness in our lesson this morning. It is one of the most compelling images from the Gospel of John. John is clearly reaching back to the first chapter of Genesis, to the very beginning of Creation, to capture something essential about Christ that has always been from the beginning but which became incarnate, embodied, in the person of Jesus.
I think about the nature of light and how it requires darkness to give it substance, to define it, to make it apparent, visible, remarkable. A candle burning in a brightly lit room will look unlit unless observed up close. Entire ranges of the spectrum of candle light will disappear in the midst of bright light. The shadows potentially cast by the candle will be erased by the surrounding light. We can only truly see and gain a fuller appreciation of a light when it is encompassed by darkness.
Well, we have darkness and to spare right now. So what are we to think? What are we to do? If are to be true to our Lord, if we are to take our faith seriously, as the prime motivator and informer of our life actions, direction and decisions, we cannot just try to forget and move on. If we are honest with ourselves, there isn't a whole lot we can do for those children, those teachers, those parents, that community. Empty gestures. Platitudes of the safe and secure to the bereft. Unless we do something to move our country in a direction in which this sort of thing doesn't happen the way it does now, change our culture, our mindset, our values. That would be the only possible positive to come out of Newtown.
If we are going to take this thing seriously, we have to ask ourselves what our Lord would have us do. For one thing, Jesus the light in the darkness calls us to be light in the darkness, the Body of Christ. We cannot give in to the fear or take the path of political expediency. When Jesus was being arrested, one of his followers attacked an assailant with a sword in self defense, and Jesus said, "put away your sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." I think we have seen the truth of Jesus' words. We cannot support unregulated ownership of these kinds of weapons in our society. Guns may not kill people, but people with guns in their hands do.
 Jesus certainly knew about killing fish and animals for food and ritual sacrifice. But automatic rifles and thirty shot pistols? They are designed for one purpose and it is not food. They are for killing people and Jesus was clear about that.
Jesus also said, "let the little children come unto me for to such belongs the Kingdom of God"...and he took them in his arms and blessed them. We cannot tolerate this sort of thing happening to any child.
As I said, we can take our faith seriously and begin acting accordingly, transforming our culture of violence into a culture of community and removing unnecessary opportunities for individual outrage. I am confident we will get there as we have come so far as a country. After Oklahoma City, I believe it was President Bush who outlawed large purchases of ammonium nitrate and there haven't been any more truck bombs. Our founding fathers condoned slavery and the vote for only white, property owning men, but we have moved on even though  civil rights as know them today were very passionately opposed in their day. Even if you dislike President Obama, he is an African-American and the day will come soon when a woman is President.
So what are we to do? As you can surely gather from what I have said thus far, we have a lot of hard work before us if we hope to follow in the way of our Lord. The one thing we have do in times like this is see the light in the darkness, not just the darkness. We cannot allow fear, apathy or obstructionism to drive us far from our faith. Our society desperately needs voices of light in our civic discourse, people of faithful courage who insist that we as a society do what needs to be done rather than what is politically expedient. We must not scapegoat individuals or groups of people. Jesus was killed as a scapegoat. We must shoulder the blame and responsibility with all of our citizens and find a way together towards a more perfect union.