Reflections on Newtown

Reflections on Newtown

It’s such a heart-wrenching tragedy.  We can’t get our heads around it.  Our hearts just break.  Twenty children murdered.  Seven adults murdered.  A disturbed gunman killed.  It’s all too much.  We reel.  We cry.  We grieve.  We explode in anger that such a thing could happen.  We can’t understand, we can only mourn the unjust death and scream our rage at the senseless, brutal, murderous thing that has happened among us.  It’s happened before, and it (or something far too much like it) will certainly happen again.  But that doesn’t help.  It doesn’t make it OK.  It doesn’t take away the tragedy of it.  It doesn’t take away our grief.  It doesn’t take away our anger.  It’s such a heart-wrenching tragedy.  We can’t get our heads around it.  Our hearts just break.

And there has been so much utter nonsense written about it.  It happened because we don’t force children in school to pray, we’re told.  It happened because we have made abortion and gay marriage legal, we’re told.  It happened because God is punishing us for not being socially reactionary enough, we’re told; and we know that that’s all totally and completely absurd.  It’s nothing but irresponsible sputtering uttered as though it came from God.  It didn’t happen because we don’t force children to pray in school.  It didn’t happen because we have made abortion and gay marriage legal, to the limited extent that we have.  God isn’t punishing us.  God doesn’t punish, God loves.  It’s a total perversion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to lay the Newtown unjust and premature deaths at God’s feet and say you did it.  God didn’t do it, a young man did it.  We don’t know why, but we know who; and it wasn’t God.  Yes, our society contributed to what happened.  It contributed by making guns and ammunition way too easily available to way too many people.  It contributed by making mental health services too scarce and too expensive, but our society didn’t kill those people.  God didn’t kill those people.  One young man killed those people, and he did it for reasons we probably will never know.

Which of course leaves us with one huge, burning, nearly overwhelming question:  Where was God?  Where was God when that young man shot his way into that school with murderous intent?  Where was God as that young man mowed down those innocent people, both children and adults?  Was God absent?  Had God fled from that school, or just left so that young man could do this terrible thing?  Or had God never been there in the first place?  It’s easy enough to answer all or at least some of those questions yes.  It’s easy, but it’s wrong.  It’s wrong, and the foundational story of our Christian faith tells us that it’s wrong.  What is that foundational story that tells us those things are wrong?  It is that God came to us in human form in Jesus of Nazareth, suffered unjustly, died unjustly, then rose again.  He was murdered by the imperial power of his day, Rome.  God didn't stop it.  God didn't prevent it.  God didn't intervene to save even God’s Son Jesus from unjust suffering and death.  Rather, in Jesus God entered into unjust human suffering and death, bore it, grieved it, and brought new life out of it.  Where was God when Jesus was tortured and murdered?  In Jesus.  With Jesus. Bearing it all with Jesus.  Where was God when that disturbed young man blasted his way into those classrooms and started killing children?  With the children.,  In the children.  Bearing it all with them and with us.  That’s where God was.  That’s where the story of Jesus Christ tells us God was.  That’s the only place we can really imagine God being.  It’s the only possible answer.  Where was God?  With the victims.  God is always with the victims.

God is always with the victims, and God has a way of bringing new life out of even senseless tragedy.  We don’t yet know what that new life will be that is to come out of the tragedy of Newtown.  Perhaps gun control.  We can pray for gun control.  Perhaps better public mental health services.  We can pray for better public mental health services.  We don’t know.  Perhaps the new life to come out of Newtown won’t come quickly.  Perhaps it won’t come for a very long time.  Perhaps it will not be all that we pray for, but in Christ Jesus we have at least the hope that new life will come.  Not for those killed of course, not in this life at least.  Yet it may still come for us.  It may still come for God’s world.  That today is our prayer.  That today is our hope.

So let’s be done with the utter nonsense.  Let’s stop blaming God for what God didn’t do.  Let’s stop blaming our society for refusing to adopt even more ignorant and discriminatory social policies than most of it already has.  Those things have nothing to do with what happened.  A human being snapped.  That’s what happened.  Pure and simple.  A human being snapped.  Where was God?  With the victims of course.  Our task isn’t to use the tragedy of Newtown for narrow political purposes that have nothing to do with what happened.  Our task is to look for new life beyond Newtown and to work for a new life beyond Newtown.  If we can do that we will be living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a Gospel that never makes God violent or vindictive but that makes God, and we pray us, peaceful, loving citizens of God’s world.