The news has reverberated long after the gunshots rang and the shockwaves from El Paso and Dayton have rattled every county of our country yet again. We’re a little more than 7 months into a new year and according to USA Today, there have been 251 mass shootings in America…and we’re only on day 217.[1] We’ve experienced more devastation than we’ve had days to count.
Absolutely unconscionable. Perhaps your mental dialogue has echoed mine: How utterly senseless and stupid! When will it stop? What has happened to our world? How have we arrived at a point where people wrongly rationalize gaining validation in life by invalidating life itself? No shred of valor exists in attempting to make a name by attempting to take one in the process.
Whether a life of faith is familiar to some or completely foreign to others, tragedy tends to corral our questions into a common pool: “Where is God when there is pain, suffering and despair in the world?” It’s a weighty question; it’s a warranted question and in the throes of grief and shock, no answer is completely satisfactory. That said, however, the face of Jesus paints a utterly unique response to our collective cry:
“Where is God when there is pain, suffering and despair in the world?” Go to the gospels and you’ll see: “Where there is pain, suffering and despair in the world, there God is.”
The Gospel of Mark makes mention of one of them: A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. From that point on, Jesus could no longer openly enter the city, but was outside in deserted places; and they came to Him from every direction. ” (1: 40-45).
Behold: The Word…made flesh…dwelling among us—the Word wandering in deserted places, in pain, suffering and despair. What in the world are you doing, God? In Christ, perhaps the more correct question would be, “God, what are doing in the world?” After the horror of last week and beyond, we can easily ascertain why. Look: God, not only present, but moved with pity. Some other translations indicate that Jesus, upon seeing this man’s state, was moved with anger. The Greek word for that is orge (sounds like or-gay), which means violent passion. Get this: Our Lord—our God—is violently passionate about the world, about us, about our state, our suffering, our desperation—so much so that it wasn’t enough for the Lord to be present as a mere passerby, but rather chose to stretch out his hand and remain in deserted and despairing places—places like El Paso and Dayton and Vegas and Florida and Pennsylvania…places like Galilee…like Calvary.
For every violent finger, our Creator in Christ, stretched out a hand with violent passion.
Though they certainly have their place, I don’t wish to talk politics or policy since they often perpetuate a lot of finger pointing and we brandish those fleshly weapons a lot these days. Instead, I’d rather focus in on a Gospel that invariably unbinds and unbends all pointy fingers into an outstretched hand and dares all would-be disciples to go where Jesus goes and do what Jesus does in the way that Jesus did it: One violently passionate hand at a time. Tomorrow makes day 218. Rather than point a finger, offer a hand. It won’t make headlines, but it sure will tell a different kind of news.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/03/el-paso-walmart-shooting-250th-mass-shooting-this-year/1913486001/