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The Rev. Frank Logue
Joy Comes in the Morning Life can change quickly. This past Monday morning very few people were thinking of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. By Friday morning, we were a Hokie nation. The schools that didn’t close for mourning were filled with more than the usual amounts of maroon and orange. Businesses were as well and church bells tolled for the dead. Early Monday, few people noticed Seung-Hui Cho. Before the week was out, we all knew too much information—his mental health history, his problems in school, everything. Those who wanted to watch saw and heard him lash out in a verbal tirade clearly designed to link him to the Columbine High School tragedy. Described as a silent stranger, lonely, angry, mentally unstable, desperate, uncommunicative, Cho was disconnected from others in some very significant ways. The poor troubled young man wanted to be a martyr in the cause of righting the inequities of school life for the unpopular and unnoticed. Later Monday, the ripples went out from West Ambler Johnston and Norris Halls revealing the connections that already existed between Virginia Tech and the rest of the world. Students and faculty from around the country the world had been injured and killed sending waves of grief rolled out as we all wondered how and why such a thing could happen. There was the inevitable effort to name heroes and villains. There was the inevitable effort to find someone to blame. By Friday, the massacre in Virginia had not been reduced to black and white, but to maroon and orange. Showing how we are connected and how we stand alongside those in grief mattered more than creating scapegoats and throwing stones. And now it is Sunday. The Third Sunday of Easter. We gather to celebrate Jesus’ conquering death by means of his resurrection. Among the 900 million Christians around the world who share the Revised Common Lectionary (or a similar pattern of reading scripture), we read Psalm 30 with the words, “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30 tells of a time when it looks as if God has hidden his face. God is no where to be found and fear takes hold. But God is shown to have been present all along and wailing is turned to dancing and one clothed in sack-cloth—a sign of repentance and mourning—is clothed instead with joy. Life changes quickly, but it may be too soon to move from maroon and orange—the colors of mourning this week—to clothing ourselves with joy. For even if we try to wash over the massacre in Virginia, there were five times as many who died in Iraq this week, and if we cast our eyes about the news, there is death and tragedy all around. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. And as we come to Church for comfort and to make sense of a world changing too quickly, we get our first reading beginning, “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord….” This week, we know all too well what that looks like. Still breathing threats and murder. Saul is the man who God will rename Paul. He stood by while the first Christian martyr was stoned to death. Saul held the cloaks of those who threw stones while Stephen died. Now he is still breathing threats and murder. Not exactly the Good News I was hoping for this Sunday. But Jesus intervenes. And in the only resurrection appearance we know to have happened to someone Jesus did not already know before his crucifixion, Saul encounters the risen Jesus in a blinding flash of light from heaven. He falls to the ground and is struck blind. Saul hears Jesus speaking to him. Saul does as Jesus tells him. He goes to Damascus, the very town he was en route to in order to persecute Christians. There a Christian man named Ananias comes to him, prays for him. Saul has the scales fall from his eyes. He sees clearly, is baptized, eats a little food and regains his strength. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. This is the way I want the world to work. Why couldn’t Seung-Hui Cho have been struck down on his way to commit murder this past Monday? Why didn’t Jesus intervene with a blinding light and a commanding voice to set things right? Here is where you usually get a preacher making excuses for God. Here is where I am to fill in and make it OK that God allowed this massacre to take place even though it was the opposite of what God wanted. But instead I want to let you in on a not so little secret—God very rarely breaks into human history in such dramatic ways. Almost never. Earlier this year, we had a reading from Luke’s Gospel in which Jesus made it all too clear that even in Bible times not everyone had God break in to theirs lives with big supernatural acts. Jesus said, The truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian. (Luke 4:24-25) The people in Nazareth were angered that not only had God been stingy with the miracles, but that the only ones Jesus named were foreigners, not Israelites. They wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. But now we have been through Holy Week and the scales should have fallen from our eyes. If even Jesus was put to death, then why should we think God will stop all human tragedies before they happen? Stephen has been stoned to death for proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God. Stephen was not protected from death. Instead scripture tells us that Stephen felt God’s presence in his death. We are told that Stephen said of those who were stoning him, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. We are also told that Saul approved of the stoning and his immediate reaction was to lead a group going house to house dragging off both men and women who were following Jesus and had them committed to prison. In this morning’s reading, Saul is still breathing threats and murder. The world still works so that people have free will and can use that free will to create unspeakable suffering. This was not a problem confined to Jerusalem and Damascus and it is not a problem confined to Virginia Tech. Even in breaking in to Saul’s life with special effects does not take away the possibility that Saul will reject the vision of Jesus, reject Ananias’ prayers on his behalf and continue breathing threats and murder. But Saul accepts the vision, accepts the prayers and comes to see clearly. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. In John’s Gospel, the disciples spent a fruitless night out on the Sea of Galilee. The skilled fishermen have empty nets to show for a night of hard work. Just after daybreak they see a man on the beach standing by a charcoal fire. He calls out for them to cast the net on the right side of the boat and they will find fish. And though they still don’t know who it is, the disciples do just that and in so doing catch more fish than they can bring into the boat. The scales fall off Peter’s eyes and he cries out “It is the Lord!” and in typical Peter fashion he jumps in the after and swims for shore. And after the meal and the cozy morning by the fire with the risen Jesus, Simon Peter is taken to the side for a chat. Though Jesus has already appeared twice to his disciples, Peter and Jesus haven’t had a chance to talk since Peter denied that he even knew his teacher and Lord. And after the three-fold “Do you love me?” scene which is a sermon unto itself, Jesus prophesies that Peter will have his arms stretched out for him and will be taken where he doesn’t want to go. Peter will in fact die for his faith in Jesus. And it is only after this prophecy about his death that Jesus commands Peter to follow him. Not a question. A command. And Peter does follow. This has to be the ultimate truth-in-advertising statement. Jesus does not promise Peter a wonderful life of luxury and ease. Jesus promises that the world will treat Peter as it treated him. Jesus promises suffering. But in telling him to follow, Jesus also promises that he will be present in and through the suffering. And while it would be too much to so glorify the actions of this week with a voice from heaven calling out over the pops of gunfire in Norris Hall, it is not too much to say that Jesus was present in those halls and in those classrooms. Jesus does not break into human history all the time with blinding light and an audible voice. Instead our loving God works in the hearts of those who will listen, giving them the strength to face the tragedy with faith rather than fear. Monday is coming once again to Virginia tech and the nation. The return to the classrooms will be painful, unspeakably difficult for some. Fear and anxiety will be easy to find. And yet there are other voices speaking: Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. We can find the joy again. We can find the joy at daybreak where Peter found his forgiveness and Saul saw the scales fall off his eyes. We find the joy in discovering that Jesus has not abandoned his disciples. To those who respond to his command, “Follow Me” we find our Lord is always present. Jesus did not promise that following him would lead to a pain-free life, but that it would lead to an awareness that he is present with us and through us in every tragedy we face. Life can change quickly. We find that wailing can be turned into dancing and sack-cloth can be put off to be clothed in joy. Not because we put on blinders to keep us from seeing the suffering in this world, but because we allow the scales to fall from our eyes. We allow ourselves to see that the world is shot full with God’s presence. We come to see how we can bear this presence of God, this light of Christ that is in us to all the dark corners of our own lives and to the lives of those we meet. We open ourselves up to the redemption of the world that Jesus is bringing about as we acknowledge, Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. Amen.
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