This sermon was preached on Thursday, October 5, 2017 for Introduction to Homiletics. The texts for this sermon were: Sirach 38:1-4,6-10,12-1, 2 Timothy 4:5-13, Luke 4:14-21, and Psalm 147 or 147:1-7.
"God counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names."
Are you exhausted yet, by the ordinariness of atrocity?
The stark familiarity of the mass shooting liturgical dance.
I feel as though I know every move,
every step back and forth across the pockmarked floor.
Here is the post about thoughts and prayers,
here the article about how they are not enough.
Here is the diatribe about the sickness of white men,
here is the collage of broken lives.
Interrupted stories,
stolen voices.
Here, another familiar waltz shudders into motion.
You’ve heard it before, haven’t you, the push and pull over whether to uncover the story of the killer.
Here, a commentator equates reflecting on his life with excusing his actions, or affording him white privilege.
Here, a prophetic psychologist warns us that any attention paid to the perpetrator will glorify and immortalize the terrorist, leading copycat shootings and high-score seekers.
Here, Facebook posters defiantly tell and retell the stories of the victims, refusing to utter his name.
I am afraid they will be forgotten, the posts say.
The way the one who did this deserves to be.
It is impossible to know why any person takes their own life and the lives of others.
But we do know this:
Of the one hundred and twenty one people that will die by suicide today, eighty-four will be white and male.
Half will be by gun.
Their names will not be repeated on every channel, their obituaries will omit the cause of death.
If you want to leave this world anyway, society tells the isolated white man, atrocity is the price of being remembered.
I hear in the psychologists’ predictions,
and all those posts,
echoes of a sinister fear.
The fear of being forgotten.
The fear that to be forgotten is to die, that to forget is to kill,
all over again.
Unless our faith can speak into that fear,
it has nothing to say to those who would tear us apart,
again and again.
Here, in this letter,
an imprisoned Paul draws from this faith the face of his coming death.
But underneath his last request to his friend I hear it,
this fear.
Bring my cloak, Timothy,
also the books,
and above all the parchments.
The parchments.
What Luke the Evangelist will use to transcribe Paul’s life and witness.
Books.
The technology that ensure his story will not sink down into the
forgotten past, unlike so many other silent witnesses to Christ—the illiterate, the poor, the women and the slaves.
Untold stories,
stolen voices.
And yet,
God counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names.
The human attention span is short, and finicky, and prejudiced.
The media only more so.
And yet,
God does not forget.
One day,
every story will be recounted.
One day,
every wound,
even the ones we inflict on ourselves,
on each other,
will be bound up.
One day,
after all the fights are fought,
and the races are run,
we will be fully known.
That longing I feel, Paul?
It’s not for a crown of righteousness.
It’s for the coming of better world.
One that remembers.
"God counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names."
Are you exhausted yet, by the ordinariness of atrocity?
The stark familiarity of the mass shooting liturgical dance.
I feel as though I know every move,
every step back and forth across the pockmarked floor.
Here is the post about thoughts and prayers,
here the article about how they are not enough.
Here is the diatribe about the sickness of white men,
here is the collage of broken lives.
Interrupted stories,
stolen voices.
Here, another familiar waltz shudders into motion.
You’ve heard it before, haven’t you, the push and pull over whether to uncover the story of the killer.
Here, a commentator equates reflecting on his life with excusing his actions, or affording him white privilege.
Here, a prophetic psychologist warns us that any attention paid to the perpetrator will glorify and immortalize the terrorist, leading copycat shootings and high-score seekers.
Here, Facebook posters defiantly tell and retell the stories of the victims, refusing to utter his name.
I am afraid they will be forgotten, the posts say.
The way the one who did this deserves to be.
It is impossible to know why any person takes their own life and the lives of others.
But we do know this:
Of the one hundred and twenty one people that will die by suicide today, eighty-four will be white and male.
Half will be by gun.
Their names will not be repeated on every channel, their obituaries will omit the cause of death.
If you want to leave this world anyway, society tells the isolated white man, atrocity is the price of being remembered.
I hear in the psychologists’ predictions,
and all those posts,
echoes of a sinister fear.
The fear of being forgotten.
The fear that to be forgotten is to die, that to forget is to kill,
all over again.
Unless our faith can speak into that fear,
it has nothing to say to those who would tear us apart,
again and again.
Here, in this letter,
an imprisoned Paul draws from this faith the face of his coming death.
But underneath his last request to his friend I hear it,
this fear.
Bring my cloak, Timothy,
also the books,
and above all the parchments.
The parchments.
What Luke the Evangelist will use to transcribe Paul’s life and witness.
Books.
The technology that ensure his story will not sink down into the
forgotten past, unlike so many other silent witnesses to Christ—the illiterate, the poor, the women and the slaves.
Untold stories,
stolen voices.
And yet,
God counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names.
The human attention span is short, and finicky, and prejudiced.
The media only more so.
And yet,
God does not forget.
One day,
every story will be recounted.
One day,
every wound,
even the ones we inflict on ourselves,
on each other,
will be bound up.
One day,
after all the fights are fought,
and the races are run,
we will be fully known.
That longing I feel, Paul?
It’s not for a crown of righteousness.
It’s for the coming of better world.
One that remembers.
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