A Voice Was Heard in Ramah: some words about the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut
The Rev. Laurie Ann Kraus, Director, Covenant Network of PresbyteriansRiviera Presbyterian Church, Miami, FL
We are in the midst of Advent, approaching the Sunday of Gaudete, the pink-candled moment for the theological “lightening” of the long days of reflection and prayer; but the longest night is still before us, and this day, as we watch the news from Newtown, Connecticut, unfold, it is hard to imagine exactly how and when the light will shine in darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. I have just returned to my Miami congregation for our Christmas music and church dinner this Sunday. Last week, in northwestern Pennsylvania, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance allowed me the privilege of accompanying a pastor and small congregation while they lived through the aftermath of last week’s shooting death of their organist and choir director during Advent Sunday worship, as she played the opening hymn: My Lord, What a Morning. As the pastor and I shared stories of our backgrounds and participation in the PCUSA, I learned that she was a friend of Covenant Network and of More Light Presbyterians, that she had been at GA in Pittsburgh with many of us. When I told her I had been there as well, she asked me if I knew a young man she had met after the marriage equality vote failed, a young man whom she comforted as he wept for the harsh words spoken during that hard debate. Had I met Danny Morales? Tears filled my eyes as I told her: I not only know him, he is a member of my congregation and a seminarian under care of our congregation. The reason I can be here with you this week is because that young man, Danny, is preaching for me this Sunday. When my colleague and I came to 1st United Presbyterian Church, we were welcomed as friends by this strong, small community of faith, their leaders and neighbors, and witnessed at closer hand the shattering devastation shooting violence brings to our towns, schools, and communities of faith. Now today, we are sending prayers of love and support to three more team colleagues who are packing their bags and flying to Connecticut to stand with the neighbors, churches, and communities enduring the horror and sorrow of this morning’s shooting in Newtown, where, regardless of our theological or social witness differences, we are one people of faith, united in prayer, sorrow, and service to a kinder, more just world for all our children.How can we be here—so soon again!—with sorrow too deep for human utterance, beginning this vigil of witness for the children and staff of the Sandy Hook Elementary School? At this moment, there are perhaps twenty children, our little ones between the ages of five and ten, dead—twenty families who will not pick up their daughter from ballet, or attend their son’s holiday music pageant, who will not light a Chanukah candle for the survival of their people, nor stand around an Advent wreath this Sunday watching light conquer darkness as the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in his wings. There are more adults lost to the world, as well: teachers who dedicated their lives to nurturing the dreams of children, administrators who created and maintained a learning environment bright with hope. Many lives, including the lives of the family of the young shooter, will be shattered from this day forward, and all of us who bear witness to tragedy know we are changed, as well.As this terrible story begins to unfold, part of my deepest sorrow rises from the realization that there is very little surprise or shock left within me, even when such horrifying events collide with the sacred space and promised peace of the Advent season. So frequently now do these violent catastrophes assault us, and our grief overwhelms us: for the movie theaters no longer safe for recreation, the malls no longer a pleasant haven for retail therapy, our schools violated by angry and alienated young men, the churches and mosques and temples whose implicit promise of sanctuary and holiness is ripped, like the curtain in the Temple of Jerusalem on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, from top to bottom.We are saddened, we are outraged, we are brokenhearted. . . but, to our sorrow and shame, we are no longer surprised.After the story of the birth of Jesus was accomplished, the shepherds returned to their flocks, the angels to heaven, and the Magi home another way, the Christmas narrative in the gospel of Matthew tells another, a darker tale: one very much like the story we are hearing from that little town in Connecticut. Matthew tells us: when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under…then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: “a voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more. (Matthew 2:16-18).For thoughtful, attentive people of faith, these stories, too, must be acknowledged as a part of Christmas, as hard as it is for us to bear. The world is a harsh and violent place, especially for the most vulnerable among us. Like Rachel, we must refuse to be consoled; refuse to become numbed to the unspeakable, breathtaking ordinariness of gun violence, which in addition to these too-public massacres, recurs day after day in the hard neighborhoods of our great cities. Our rage at this careless disregard for the sanctity of the gift of life must exceed Herod’s and that of his angry, alienated progeny who we call “the shooter”: our rage must be prophetic, and it must fuel our passion for healing the brokenhearted and working for tikkun olam, the wholeness and transformation of the world, so that the whispered promise of the incarnation might yet be heard, by us and by those whose lives we touch: the light has shined in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.In Connecticut, in Pennsylvania, in Colorado and Wisconsin and our cities, there are lights shining in the darkness. The first responders, the brave teachers who placed themselves in harm’s way to save the lives of children, the pastors, rabbis, imams and community leaders who pour themselves out for the healing of their people and justice for the silenced. I am deeply grateful, and so proud, that the volunteers of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance are among those lights kindling hope out of chaos.This evening as night falls again, I will, like all of us, pray with tears and hope: lighting Advent candles to the memory of those lost, for their grieving survivors, and for those who walk alongside in hope, with healing in their wings. My prayer will be one I first heard long ago as a voice from the people of Guatemala: When it is necessary to drink so much pain, when a river of anguish drowns us, when we have wept many tears and they flow like rivers from our sad eyes, only then does the deep hidden sigh of our neighbor become our own. [1]
[1] Maren and Tirabassi, Celebrations and Sacraments
