Kids bring us together. The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, leaves us all strongly aware of this. Yesterday our congregation joined with folks around the globe, believers and non-believers alike, in praying for comfort and peace, an end to such violence, for the families in Newtown.
I feel almost a duty to write about the horror of school shootings, the absolute horror of a shooting in an elementary school. This violence, with an altogether new terror and repulsion, tugs at a deep place in my heart. I remember walking my high school hallways in the days after Columbine. I cannot fully tell my own story without recounting how the televised news of that violence changed me.
But these stories and laments were in part displaced yesterday by the implacable church calendar: The Sunday School Christmas pageant was scheduled for yesterday morning. We had given the hour of our worship service to the kids to tell us the good news story of Jesus' birth.
Part of me sees a difficult irony in this. Kids sharing good news in the midst of so much tragic news about children. But hope often sounds difficult and ironic in our ears (no one foregrounds the interplay of hope and irony better than John the Evangelist).
The kids of our congregation toddled in their homemade shepherd's costumes, some with stuffed lambs clutched in one hand. Mary and Joseph stood silent and wide-eyed before their grandparents and parents in the pews, uttering a barely audible "Oh, okay" when the angel delivered news of Jesus' impending birth. King (or, in our case, Queen) Herod gave directions to magi who were not quite on stage yet.
In short, their Christmas program had all the dear details, the amateur earnestness, that fill adults' hearts with comfort and joy during this season. When we sang our closing hymn, "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus," I was certain those in the pews had heard good news as surely as if the angel Gabriel himself had appeared in our midst. Parents beamed, directors and stagehands laughed with relief, children jumped up and down in excitement as they received their Christmas treat bags from their Sunday School teachers.
I stood back and smiled. The kids had brought good news to us: "A savior is born to bring peace to all people."
But, Oh, that we lived in that peace now. Through Advent we've sang a simple song, "Come, Lord, and Bring Hope." Each verse substitutes a new word for hope: peace, joy, love, life. In some ways, our God has already answered our congregational prayer: Jesus has come, Jesus was born, Jesus lived and loved, healed and taught, Jesus submitted to death, Jesus has even risen once more to life! Like the more traditional Advent carol, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," our songs in this season are in no small part a re-enactment, a remembering of longings our God has already filled.
But as I watched the kids' program from the sound booth, I had the dark realization that we do not have more than twenty kids in our Sunday School program. Most of the kids are elementary-aged. Peace is still far from us. So are hope, joy, love, and life.
I gave my closing thoughts to the congregation after the program. Throughout the weeks and even months leading up to Advent, I've felt strong conviction that this worship service was one in which to be forthrightly evangelistic. I prepared my reflection early in the week, before any of us would or could have imagined such tragedy would occur so near to us. (You can read my thoughts posted below, if you'd like.)
I delivered my closing message as I'd prepared it, unsure how to speak on tragedy without robbing the kids of their joyous presentation. But I'm not confident that I made the right decision. Perhaps, I think, I should have spoken more directly to the tragic irony of proclaiming hope and peace in violent times. I'd value your input.
Let us pray and act for peace.
(You can read the full text of what I said after the jump . . .)