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A sermon presented on April 22, 2007 by Rev. Eugene C. Buie DMin.
Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19
This past week has been filled with the pain of death, injury, and emotional distress. I'm not sure who is most responsible for the enormity of it all. Was it the Virginia Tech student who brutally murdered thirty-two unsuspecting people last Monday, or was it the news media that descended on Virginia Tech in a feeding frenzy, repeating "ad nauseam" details of the killings and the hate-filled clips from the killer's home videos? The living victims in this tragic drama stood around in shock and disbelief as breathless interviewers asked, "How do you feel?" Only blank stares were their initial reply.
We reach out with our prayers and expressions of sympathy to these who lost loved ones and friends, who were shot and survive never to forget looking death in the face, and the family of a young man who violently took the lives of his fellow students and teachers with cold detachment, an Asian family that has "lost too much face" to remain in America. As we reach out to all of these, let us remain mindful that we all share a measure of responsibility either by what we have done or by what we have not done in a society and culture where such things occur with increasing regularity.
In the last twenty years, communities like Columbine, Paducah, Jonesboro, Savannah, Red Lake, Lancaster, Long Island, Killeen, and Jacksonville, to name only a few, have suffered mass shootings. These shootings were perpetrated not by aliens but by American, home-grown killers. And, every time, the media has obsessed over the slaughter with little more compassion than the killers themselves.
Personally, I have had enough of sick and dysfunctional individuals who have been encouraged by certain segments in American society to exercise their so-called "right to freedom of expression," often at the cost of the lives of others. My patience has been exhausted with a therapeutic society, a judicial system, and a news media that encourage and approve of unrestrained, violent behavior toward others, and who profit from the murderous outcomes. All are expressions of emotional regression that grips American society, pulling us into a downward spiral of reactivity and creating a culture of death.
First, there is a sociopath whose murderous rampage is enabled by a society that has lost its way and cannot protect its people. Secondly, there is an asocial reaction among self-absorbed news people and public authorities who have little or no regard for a social code that has itself given way to an abnormal, amoral environment. Thanks to the media, the anxiety caused by the mental and emotional imbalance of one person has now been transmitted, not only throughout a college campus, but throughout our nation and, indeed, into other parts of the world.
Aaron Buck, a Virginia Tech sophomore who lives in the killer's dorm, said this: "I think it [the news coverage] is disgusting. It is one thing to hear about it. Then, when he is dead and gone, he comes back with such hatred out of those videos and still pictures. It is just not something I wanted to see." And neither did the rest of us.
How, in such an atmosphere, can healing begin? How can a sense of balance be restored to young lives? But then we must ask, "What is balance?" A psychotherapist once said, "Balance is the illusion that you are actually in control of your life." If, indeed, balance is an illusion, it is an illusion that most people seek. Most of us get up each morning believing we are in control of our lives. It does not occur to us that we have among us a resident evil that seeks to destroy us. Thanks to a permissive society, this resident evil can snatch away our sense of balance and our lives at any moment. But, what is truly absurd is that we allow and even enable that evil to take control of our lives. We allow ourselves to be made vulnerable and open to that evil, and for that we pay dearly.
Last Monday, there was at least one person who knew he was not in control of his life. He was Liviu Librescu, the 76 year-old professor, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, who sacrificed himself so that his students could escape and live. He used his body to blockade the classroom door while his students escaped through the windows. When the killer finally forced the door open, he shot the professor in the head.
I'm sorry, but I have to wonder why the young men in that class did not come to the aid of their teacher as he struggled to hold the door closed. What has become of the courage and integrity that once characterized the people of America? Certainly, we have lost something vital and necessary to our survival as a people. Professor Librescu, however, demonstrated that real balance is achieved, not by selfishly taking control of your life, as those did who fled the classroom, but by giving your life that others might live.
Of course, that is what Easter is all about….a life given, that others can live. What greater gift can one person give to another? Why did the killer react with such vicious malevolence toward Professor Librescu? Because the professor's selfless act robbed the killer of his deadly power over others. The world's power lies in its culture of death. The spirit of Easter, that is, Jesus' redemptive death on the cross, ends this power and upsets the world. Jesus' resurrection was God's testimony to the end of that evil power.
Yet, because that evil remains in residence in the world, Easter continues to be a scandalous truth. Having survived the Holocaust, I believe Professor Librescu understood death. His son described him as fearless, a quality that comes only from being a child of God, whether Jew or Gentile. Easter is more than something that just happened to Jesus. It is something with cosmic as well as political implications. Have you ever wondered why America's secular culture is so eager to exclude Christianity from the public arena? It's because secularism fears the political implications of the Christian claim that "Jesus is Lord" over the earth, its kingdoms, and its political parties.
I have said that North American society is regressing. Let me illustrate. In 1940, teachers in California were polled to find out the most troublesome problems they faced in their classrooms. They named talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of line, wearing improper clothing, and not putting paper in the wastebasket. California teachers were polled again in 1990, and their answers were drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault. There are some among us who call this progress, but I call it regression. It is social regression that cannot be denied by any reasonable person. It takes no imagination to see that this regression has been manifested in society today and not just among our school children.
The primary manifestations of regression in a chronically anxious society are: (1) loss of self-regulation, expressed through reactivity and exemplified in this case by both the Virginia Tech killer and the media; (2) adaptation to weakness, such as the way our therapeutic society adapts to the most dysfunctional among us, including inaction that allows a killer to continue his slaughter unchallenged; (3) blame displacement and loss of accountability, such as the way the killer blamed others for his public slaughter and elements of the media are blaming gun control; and (4) adopting a quick-fix mentality, as seen when public authorities focus on relieving symptoms rather than on solving the problem itself, the solution for which is usually more painful and requiring of greater maturity.
These patterns of social and emotional regression must be reversed, if the America we have known and loved is to continue upon the earth. Do you not understand why so many Christians in Europe migrated to the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? It was because Reformation Christianity was a challenge to the empires of Europe and, consequently, was being oppressed just as it was in the days of Paul and Peter. Christianity outside of Christendom (the partnership between the church and social governance) was a destabilizing political force, primarily because the Risen Christ put all other rulers "under his feet." If a political system could be formed where people were free and where Christ was indeed Lord, then a new way of life could also be born. And so it was, with the drafting of the American Declaration of Independence. But what has become of our freedom today when fear stalks our streets? What has become of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news that alone proclaims all people to be equal and free as children of the Sovereign God? It is, after all, the rule of the Sovereign of the universe that makes people free and equal, and not the power of death that characterizes human rule in the world.
The world, however, goes to great lengths to suppress or supplant the Easter message that Jesus is Lord, particularly in the political context of modern America. Today, the world's false idea of success can be seen in the regressive tendencies of American society. As this occurs, we see the power of death increase around us. So, what are we to do?
Early Christians saw the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the decisive victory in a cosmic war that God declared on the forces of death and evil. The ultimate defeat of the power of death, a defeat that was secured by the resurrection of Jesus on that first Easter morning, will be brought to a grand conclusion one day in the future. Then, Jesus will bind all the powers that derive their control from dealing in death. He will hand creation and all within it over to the Father. This is the promise of our faith, the basis of the code by which we live as Christians.
You and I live in this world, a world that is being transformed by the power of life manifested in the risen Christ. This Christ is working through us, who also have been raised to newness of a life that is eternal. And that, my friends, is the real caveat: Christ working through us. We each have a vital part and a responsibility in the outcome of God's plan for redeeming the world from its resident evil. Jesus is the Christ, raised not only from the dead, but made Lord of all. His Spirit resides in each of us; therefore, the One who is within us is greater than the one who is in the world. Because of this, we do not fear. Neither are we overcome with the anxiety promoted by the world. This is what you must remember when you confront and resist the power of death in the world, for this is our task.
Let us leave here this morning determined to live every day on the basis of this scandalous knowledge that is so offensive to the world: "Jesus is Lord." We battle ultimately not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, the resident evil that we know will be defeated by the Lord of life. We are the soldiers in this fight, and this fight must be engaged today and each day in every aspect of our lives. Amen!