God is with us. Where is God?

I had to go pick up the kids.

I had to go to there school and pick them early, I just had to go.

They were not sick.

They did not lay in the nurses office with a fever or an upset stomach, I just needed to see them.

I needed to be with them in a real and visceral way.

So, I left work early, my daughter as eight; my son was 10; I was thirty-nine.

I reached the school earlier than usual but it was already dark out; the dusk was blue ceding control to the darkness of the night.

I wonder if there were stars in the sky that evening.

I was not the only one to pick up my kids early that day though the usual banter between parents as kids went to go get their backpacks and wriggle into their winter coats was silenced.

We waited with jaws jutting, the horror of Sandy Hook crossed the airwaves just hours before, we were in shock, desperate to know the touch of our children’s hands, smaller than ours and still needing to be held, in our own.

They would be safe.

An unthinkable thing, never impossible, never unconceived but still unthinkable because those were the thoughts we put away, put to the back of our minds, denying that it could ever happen here… had happened.

We drove home.

I sat on the couch, the kids dispersed to go play or do homework, untouched for at least a little while longer by the events that happened just miles away.

I hung up my coat.

I sat on the couch.

Numb, I exhaled.

I didn’t understand.

In the familiarity of home, I was lost.

Jenn came home, eventually the television was turned on.

We watched.

Maybe the kids joined us, I do not recall.

I just remember existing in those hours in the slow-moving soupiness of grief and anger and sadness and horror as I prepared boxed mac and cheese for the kids’ dinner.

In the familiarity of my kitchen with my utensils placed in just the right spot for ease of access and usefulness, I was lost.

Celestine Chaney was 65 and a loving grandmother to six.

Roberta Drury was 32, helping her brother as he went through treatments for leukemia.

Andre Mackniel was 53 and about to celebrate his son’s third birthday.

Katherine Massey was 72 and she was known throughout Buffalo as an activist and a person who truly loved her community.

Margus Morrison was 52 and was picking up snacks for movie night with his wife.

Heyward Patterson was 67 and a taxi driver who would give his riders free fares if they did not have enough money to pay.

Geraldine Talley was 62 and know for planning her family reunions.

Ruth Whitfield was 86 and the proud mother of a former fire commissioner.

Pearl Young was 77 and still served as a substitute teacher, still served her community.

Aaron Salter, 55, gave his life trying to help save the lives of others.

A few days after Sandy Hook, an ecumenical prayer service was held at the Congregational Church downtown.

Priests and rabbis and leaders from temples and churches around town gathered together for scripture and song.

After each reading by each religious leader, they would descend from the lectern and head toward a table festooned with unlit candles and take a stick, set the stick aflame, light a candle, then place that stick into a bowl with sand at the bottom, meant to extinguished that stick.

Read.

Light.

Extinguish.

Until the bowl holding the extinguished sticks caught fire.

Sitting in the congregation, I saw the bowl begin to burn, I moved toward the table.

I grabbed the bowl and handed it to a minister behind the table who took it to the back to be placed under water.

But not before one of those sticks dropped from the bowl and landed on my hand.

To this day, I have a scar from where that burning stick branded me.

It is a reminder of those events; an outward representation of a scarred heart wondering at a broken world; a permanent outward manifestation of the fact I have done very little to help solve this issue of gun-violence.

Makenna Lee Elrod, 10, had a smile that could light up a room.

Layla Salazar, 11, loved to swim and dance.

Maranda Mathis, 11, had manners, she was a bright girl.

Nevaeh Bravo, 10, her first name is Heaven spelled backwards.

Jose Manuel Flores Jr., 10, was an outstanding big brother.

Xavier Lopez, 10, was funny and his smile was one that will never be forgotten.

Tess Marie Mata, 10, was saving up money for a family trip to Disney World.

Rojelio Torres, 10, was a good friend to his buddies.

Eliahna “Ellie” Amyah Garcia, 9, was a sweet girl with a beautiful soul.

Eliahna A. Torres, 10, loved softball.

Annabell Guadalupe Rodriguez, 10, was a quiet child and an earnest student.

Jackie Cazares, 9, received her First Communion just a few weeks ago.

Uziyah Garcia loved to toss the football with his grandfather.

Jayce Carmelo Luevanos, 10, would lead the neighborhood’s children to play in his yard.

Maite Yuleana Rodriguez, 10, loved wearing her lime green Converses.

Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, loved school and TikTok.

Irma Garcia, 48, taught school for 23 years and loved her students.

Eva Mireles, 44, taught for 17 years, loved CrossFit and karaoke.

Amerie Jo Garza, 10, was fiercely protective of her 3 year old little brother.

Alexandria “Lexi” Aniyah Rubio, 10, had straight As and won a citizenship award at school.

Alithia Ramirez, 10, loved to draw pictures and even submitted a Doodle to Google once.

I did not rush to my children’s school this past Tuesday, though like most of us, I am sure we responded to this latest shooting with the same grief and anger and sadness and horror as we did almost 10 years ago.

And along with those feelings there was a certain new one, one that can only be described as recognition, a familiarity with such horrendous events because they happened again.

And they continue to happen.

Again.

And again.

And again.

According to the Washington Post, the US has experience three thousand five hundred shootings since that dark day in December occurred under the bluest of skies.

And Sandy Hook wasn’t even the first.

And I wonder.

What are we doing?

What are we doing to each other?

What are we doing to ourselves?

And from this pulpit, I can most assuredly tell you, I have no idea.

Only that, God is with us.

Now, you might ask, how is God with us when we are impacted by sin in such a way?

Where is God in our school houses and supermarkets?

Where is God when our most vulnerable are left unprotected doing the most mundane things?

Picking up a birthday cake?

Learning long-division?

Where is God in this broken world of ours?

I sat in that prayer vigil after Sandy Hook.

I sat in a good old fashioned New England meeting house located right there on a quaint New England green and thought what is the use of any of this?

Why even bother?

I had only recently returned to the church, I think maybe just 10 months before and I was in a phase of discernment.

Should I dedicate my life more to Christ or just go back to living a good life with my wife and kids?

So, as I sat there in the warm glow of a packed churched decorated with Advent and Christmas decorations, I wondered those old thoughts that drew me away from the church in the first place.

What is the point of any of this?

And perhaps as we reel on this day from the two most recent horrific shootings that made it past the everydayness of a typical shooting into the large font, above the fold headlines showing shock and despair right there in the black and white.

What is the point of any of this?

And yet, God is with us.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega…”

If God is to be all things, God is with us in all things.

This sermon is not meant to be a theology lesson, a dissertation about why God allows tragedy to occur and I am not sure even our greatest theologians have ever provided a satisfactory answer, for me at least.

But it is meant to point one thing out.

God is with us.

“I am… the first and the last…”

I sat there in that church ensconced in the New England.

I was having those thoughts, my hand was throbbing.

And I realized that I was but one among many; many wonderers and many wanderers sat beside me and behind me and in front of me as well.

I was not alone.

I was in relationship with community; a community drawn together by God and to God to share in our grief, console each other; and maybe, as one body, point to somewhere in the distance in the darkest of nights unlit by the moon, under starlight unseen, a different light.

Perhaps even the darkness there was hope.

There is hope.

“I am… the beginning and the end.”

God is with us.

God is with us and the evidence of that fact is this community, small or large, big or small, where two or three of us are gathered in Christ’s name, God is with us.

And God wants us in community, God wants us to be in relationship with each other; just as God created Eve as a partner to Adam, so too does God want us to create our own relationships and find our own partners.

And we deny God when we deny each other.

In a land so fond of calling each other Demonrats and Rethuglicans, we are breaking our covenant with God when we split and think we are the better of the other.

We cannot worship God outside of community.

We cannot share in the Eucharist closed off from the world, God wants us in community.

And so when we ask what is the point of all of this, we are asking the right questions.

And the right answer is the point of all of this is each other.

Worship Christ with one another so that we can stop seeing each other as the stranger, as a threat, as someone different from ourselves.

Worship Christ in community so that we can witness the benefit of community, the benefit of loving each other, the benefit of healing each other, the benefit of visiting the sick, of feeding the hungry, of lifting up the poor.

We build the kingdom through community and love for one another.

And we build the community by finding love at the margins.

We are a separated and broken people and we heal our brokenness through love.

Love of God and love of each other.

By seeking out love we will see those who might be different from us, who might hold different beliefs from us as the extended portion of God’s family, our family.

Because God is with us.

For too long, have we been at each other’s throats, for too long have we hid behind the self-stultifying selfishness of social media and separation.

Only when we come together in understanding and conversation will we no longer see each other as the other, the one who is less than.

And longer will we do each other harm.

Only when we come together with love for one another, will we realize God’s want for us all.

Let us ask our questions about God and God’s place in tragedy, but let us ask them in community.

Let us wonder about the actualization of sin, but let us ask aloud in communities of faith and understanding.

We are not alone, for God is with us.

And from that relationship, we will grow a community based on love alone, for each other and for God.

Because God is with us in all things, God is the Alpha, the Omega, the first, the last, the beginning and the end.

God is with us.

Amidst the tragedy and loss of so many innocents, God is with us.