Jim Gill                                                                                               April 22, 2007                                               “Tragedies”                                                Luke 13:1-6   Imagine a first century press conference.  In the 13th chapter of Luke we see a group of people, coming to report to Jesus about a tragic national event in the life of Israel during Jesus’ time.  They bring up this event hoping to get a comment from Jesus about this tragedy.  The event the people bring up was a military operation against civilians ordered by Pontius Pilate. Jesus actually expands the discussion to include a second tragedy.  The tragedy that Jesus adds to the discussion appears to be an accidental collapse of a structure at a building site that killed 18 people.  Hear the word of God, the gospel of our Lord from Luke 13:1-9.        “At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans       who Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices to God.  He said to         them in reply, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way       they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means! But I tell       you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!  Or those eighteen       people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them --do you think        they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?  By no        means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!"   Let us pray.  Lord, we have so many questions.  While we will never understand why some things happen, help us understand from this portion of your word how we are to deal with what we can never understand.   Teach us to trust in you with all our heart and to lean not unto our own understanding and in all our ways acknowledge you and you will direct our paths.   This we pray in Jesus’ name.  ************************************ In Blacksburg, Virginia there are eight colleges and graduate schools, a program of 60 bachelor’s degrees, 140 masters and doctoral programs, 25,000 fulltime students, 100 buildings on 2600 acres. Among them stands Virginia Tech. It is ranked 56th in the nation for research. The 2006 freshman class had a high school grade point average of 3.80, and an average cumulative SAT score of 1231. This is a world class college. How could you think of a university setting like this as anything else other than a great place for your daughter or son to study to prepare themselves to make their way in the world?  How could you think of a university setting like this as anything else other than a great place to teach other people’s sons and daughters and in so doing to earn a living for yourself and to provide for your wives and husbands and sons and daughters.     Events like what happened last week at Virginia Tech, like what happened in New York City on September 11, 2001, like the Tsunami in Indonesia, Hurricane Katrina, and her smaller sister Rita, raise fundamental questions. Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why is there so much evil in the world?   I came home on Friday and turned on the TV to see policemen at N.A.S.A. and the word hostage on the screen and I immediately called John Schweers, one of our church family who works at NASA.  Fortunately he had left work early and was at home.  You don’t know how glad I was to hear his voice.  It made me realize that there are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and spouses who will not experience the relief that comes from hearing a voice.   When things like this happen the question always gets asked: Where was God? Where was God on 9/11 when 3,000 died?  Where was God when 280,000 perished in the Indonesian Tsunami? Where was God on that morning of August 29th in New Orleans when Katrina hit?  Where was God when Rita hit?  Where was God this last Monday? Ever since Cain killed Abel we have been seeking for the answer to the question of suffering.  And we are still searching. So what do we do when men conspire to create monstrous works of evil? In the face of tragedy we are driven to ask “Why?”  The Bible sees it as a human thing to do especially in hard times.  When it comes to natural disasters we have some understanding of cause and effect.  Gravity ALWAYS works.  It has no choice. Sometimes even jets cannot defy it and even Blue Angels fall.   When it comes to hurricanes and floods and earthquakes, those things happen without respect to the moral climate or condition of the people who happen to be living in a particular region when disaster strikes.  As Jesus said, ‘The rain falls upon the just and the unjust.” But for all that nature has done to wreak havoc upon the earth mankind has done so much more.  It’s because of our sinfulness, our neglect that levees don’t hold.   It’s because of our sinfulness that resources are not made available in time to prevent further suffering.  It’s because of our sinfulness that guns which can be used for protect life are used to take life away. .   Pontius Pilate sent a political and religious message by slaying a group of men who were more likely than not, innocent. Someone in the Galilean territory may have done something that set Pilate off but these men quite likely had nothing to do with it. They were, shall we say, in the right place at the wrong time. Why is a story of a senseless massacre in the Bible? It’s there because, number one, it happened.  It is there because there are senseless massacres in our world wrought by powerful mad men like Pilate and by powerless mad man like Cho Seung Hui.   The people who came to Jesus with this breaking news story wanted to know if these people died because they had sinned. Was this God’s judgment because of their immoral living? Jesus gives a very simple answer: No. He then goes on to say to this pressing press conference, “You must repent or you will likewise perish.”  In other words, everyone will die of something.  One day you are here and the next you’re not whether it’s at the hands of some mad man or at the wrong end of the latest storm. So, repent.  Be ready. God is not up in heaven all the pulling strings in our lives. God has given us the charge to multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.  God has given us the responsibility to care for this world and its inhabitants. At the same time, God has also given us the freedom not to care.  If we don’t have the freedom not to care, caring has no meaning.  Because God is not pulling all the strings there is chaos. There is evil.  There is the freedom to care and not to care.   There is the freedom to destroy people you don’t even know because you feel that no one cares for you.    In this world where we have been given the responsibility to manage, this past Monday a lost young man chose to target an innocent group of people in order to send a message that no human can begin to understand. It was senseless. It did not accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.  The deaths of these who were simply going about the business of teaching and learning illustrates how warped and depraved and out of control things have become.  The death of over 3,000 people on September 11, 2001 shows how people’s minds can become so manipulated and warped.  The death of over 3,319 American soldiers in Iraq since the death of 3,000 in New York City shows what an enormous effect one tragic, senseless, desperate act can continue to bring. (and of course that’s not counting the deaths of Iraquis or Afghanis, or insurgents). Where is God when terrible tragedies befall us? I can tell you where God was not.  God was not in the mind of Cho Seung Hui as he walked to school and chose murder 32 people to combat his own personal demons.  I can’t imagine any person doing what Cho Seung Hui did without being led to do so by evil itself.   We live in a fallen sinful world.  There is chaos unleashed in this world by nature, by man, and by the evil one.  That is the case because God had a purpose in giving us free will, the freedom to choose to do good or evil.  Because of that freedom, some like Pontius Pilate and Cho Seung Hui make the evil choice to massacre innocent lives.   But God can bring good even out of this tragedy.  God can bring good out of evil in the same way that God brought good out of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers.  Years later, AFTER Joseph was imprisoned for years, when Joseph revealed to his brothers who he was he said, “You meant this for evil, but God meant it for good.”  What Cho Seung Hui did was meant for evil. But we must be careful not to think that God moved Cho Seung Hui to murder 32 people so that God could bring good out of it.  God will bring good out of this tragedy in the same way that God brought the greatest good out the evil done to his only son, our savior Jesus.   Where was God on April 16th ? God was in the same place He was when his own son was brutally, senselessly tortured and killed on a cross, ordered by the same mad man named Pontius Pilate who ordered those who were making sacrifices in the temple to be killed.  Where was God when Jesus was senselessly killed?  God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  God was in Christ speaking from his death bed of nails and wood saying, “Father, forgiven them.  They know not what they do.”    God had a purpose in sending his Son Jesus into the world to redeem us from sin, to save us from separation from God and to walk with us through the tragic times when when towers fall and when mad men like Pilate and Cho Seung Hui execute others to “make a statement.”   Those of us who have survived the challenges of life to be here this morning in worship may ask another question.  It’s not in the words of the song by Kris Kristofferson,”Why Me Lord?” The question we have is “Why not me Lord?”  Why have I survived when others haven’t?  Why am I left to grieve?  Why did I make it to church this morning safely?   I’d like to answer that question with two Latin words.  Ut Prosim. It is the motto of Virginia Tech. Ut Prosim:  It means, “That I May Serve.”   I have survived to live this morning, “that I may serve.”  You have survived your drive to church this morning that “you may serve.”    Professor Liviu Librescu, was a vivid example of that motto. His rabbi (Rabbi Edward Gluck of Chesed Shel Emes) described the professor this way,          “He dedicated his life to Judaism and to saving lives in America.  He         stood in the doorway and did not let a murderer go in…had his kids        jump out the second story window and told them, “just keep on        going; I'll hold him back.” He was just standing there and the bullets        were going right into him and he still did not let the perpetrator go in.”   His students made it out alive. He did not.  Sixty years ago, Liviu Librescu, survived one Holocaust.   But sixty years later a survivor of the Holocaust incited by one mad man died protecting US citizens from the desperate acts of another mad man.   Professor Librescu fulfilled his University's highest goal.  He fulfilled our rabbi’s highest goal.  Our rabbi, Jesus, said he came not to be served, but to serve.”    God is found in us when we intentionally choose to serve God and serve our neighbor, especially those who have fallen. We should mourn, yes, but we should also repent, turn to God, and live as those who are ready to die. We are called to live as those who are ready to stand in the doorway that others might live.  We are called to live as those who stand ready to give an account of the hope that is within us…that even mad men might come to know the hope we have and not be driven to desperate acts.    Jesus was telling his press conference that life is fragile. At any moment a tower could fall like it did in the ancient city of Siloam, or the modern city of New York.  At any moment a despot could order our execution, or a mad man could come into this room and start shooting.  The question is as long as you continue to live what will you do with the gift of life that God has given you?  Will you turn to God?  Will you repent?  Will you be ready to go when your death comes?   Where is God? He is here.  He is here because AFTER Jesus’ sacrificed his life to become the Lamb of God who took away and takes away the sins of the world, he became the Lion of Judah who burst forth from the tomb, making sense of his, up to that moment seemingly senseless death, to redeem every victim of every tragedy and every survivor of every tragedy.    In total, sixty-two people were shot on April 16th.   The mad man fired 225 shots, emptying 17 clips of ammunition. Twenty-nine of the people who were hit by these bullets were injured but survived.  Thirty-three did not.  As a part of my closing prayer I want to read the names of those who died, their age and nationality.    Let us pray.  Dear Lord, this week has made us even more aware that we are engaged in a  spiritual battle that is not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. We need to put on the full armor of God that we may stand against the evil one and his works.  We cannot imagine the pain and sadness and loss that the families of these students and faculty who lost their lives are experiencing and will continue to experience.  We are mindful that in addition to these, there have been many others who have lost their lives as a result of senseless tragedy--victims of drunken drivers, of neglect and abuse.  We are mindful of others who have given their lives for the sake of a cause, and of those who continue to take their lives and others with them for the sake of a cause. We are mindful of millions who die of starvation, and of others who die of anoerexia; of those who die of insidious diseases like cancer, and of those who die as the result of weather related disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis and tornados and drought.  These facts also bring us to the stark realization that we are not immortal…that our purpose in life is much more than this life alone.  Help us Lord, to find and live out our true purpose and to repent and be ready to go to be with you at any moment should we die and go to you before you come for us.   Hear us now as we pray for the survivors and the families of those who did not survive.   Faculty Christopher James "Jamie" Bishop, 35, Instructor, Foreign Languages and Literature Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, 49, A French instructor from Quebec. Kevin Granata, 45, Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics  Liviu Librescu 76, Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics, from Israel V. Loganathan, 50, Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering from Tamil Nadu, India.   Students Emily Jane Hilscher, 19, a freshman from Woodville Virginia. Ryan Christopher "Stack" Clark, 22, a senior from Martinez, Georgia, Ross Abdallah Alameddine, 20, a sophomore from Saugus, Massachusetts, Brian Bluhm, 25, a graduate student from Cedar Rapids, Iowa Austin Cloyd, 18, a freshman from Blacksburg, Virginia, Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, 24, a graduate student from Chester, Virginia, Caitlin Hammaren, 19, a sophomore from Westtown, New York Jeremy Herbstritt, 27, a graduate student from Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Rachael Elizabeth Hill, 18, a freshman from Richmond, Virginia. Matthew Joseph La Porte, 20, a sophomore from Dumont, New Jersey Jarrett Lane, 22, a senior from Narrows, Virginia, Henry J. Lee a freshman from Roanoke, Virginia Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, 34, a postgraduate student from Medan, Indonesia Lauren Ashley McCain, 20, of Hampton, Virginia, Daniel Patrick O'Neil, 23, a graduate student from Lincoln, Rhode Island Juan Ramón Ortiz, 26, a graduate student from Bayamón, Puerto Rico Minal Hiralal Panchal, 26, a graduate student from Mumbai, India, Daniel Pérez Cueva, 21, a student from Lima, Peru, Erin Peterson, 18, a freshman from Centreville, Virginia. Michael Steven Pohle, Jr., 23, a senior from Raritan Township, New Jersey, Julia Pryde, 23, a graduate student from Middletown, New Jersey, Mary Karen Read, 19, a freshman from Annandale, Virginia. Reema Joseph Samaha, 18, a freshman from Centreville,Virginia. Waleed Mohamed Shaalan, 32, a postgraduate student from Zagazig, Egypt, Leslie Geraldine Sherman, 20, a sophomore from Springfield,Virginia, Maxine Shelly Turner, 22, a senior from Vienna, Virginia, Nicole Regina White, 20, a junior from Carrollton, Virginia. Cho Seung-Hui 23 senior English major from  South Korea. Centerville, Virginia.   We pray for the families of these who lost their lives and for the 29 who were wounded and hope to physically recover.   We pray these prayers in the name of the one who did not survive his attackers, but has been raised  resurrected and reigning ever since. …Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.