NOTE: This sermon was originally preached on April 22, 2007. I have pulled it together in manuscript form at the request of Steve and Carroll Luck, whose son Ryan graduated from Virginia Tech last spring.
Last Monday morning, tragedy left its calling card on the campus of Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University in the mountain town of Blacksburg in the Commonwealth of Virginia in these United States. When I use the word “tragedy,” I mean something more than the popular and trivialized sense of the word as “a sad or terrible event.” When I use the term “tragedy,” I mean it in the technical sense of the word. A tragedy is a sad or terrible outcome that is brought on by what is called a tragic flaw—an inherent weakness or an unavoidable conflict—embedded in the character and greatness of a person or place. A tragic flaw. An inherent weakness. An unavoidable conflict. In a tragedy, a great character is undone in largest part by his or her own greatness. And so it was on Monday morning.
Her own greatness brought a great institution of higher education to its knees, horrified a wonderful college town, profoundly disturbed storied commonwealth and grieved an uncommon nation. The tragic flaw, the inherent weakness, the unavoidable conflict in the very fabric of American society is that at its best, American society is so entirely open and free that it tolerates behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the very society that tolerates them. The great American poet Nikki Giovanni, who was the Virginia Tech English professor who insisted that Monday’s perpetrator be removed from her poetry class because his attitude and behavior were disruptive to the learning process, said in response to a question as to whether or not the student should have been put out of the university, “If everyone who ever wrote or said anything disturbing were sent home, there would be no one left on campus.” There it is, even after the fact: the inherent weakness that is grounded in our greatness. At its best, American society is so entirely open and free that it insists on tolerating behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the society that tolerates them.
What happened on Monday is a tragedy in the technical sense of the term because the unavoidable conflict that underlies it is the defining tension in American society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is the conflict in our culture between the rights and privileges—the civil liberties, we call them—of individuals on the one hand and the safety and security of the citizenry and the nation on the other hand. I happen to know a little something whereof I speak in this case because for several years it was my responsibility to be in that conversation with faculty and administrative colleagues, mental health professionals, and legal counsel concerning some pretty disturbing students, a few of whom were imminent threats to themselves and one or two of whom were imminent threats to others, including their peers and including me and my university colleagues. The tragedy here, you see, is that everyone at Virginia Tech behaved in relation to the shooter exactly as they are expected to in our society. His roommates tolerated his sometimes bizarre and occasionally frightening behavior, saying that in college you meet lots of very different people, some of whom are indeed disturbing to you. They appropriately reported him to police when his behavior crossed the line to stalking friends of theirs. The police appropriately took him in and had his mental stability evaluated. A judge appropriately found him mentally ill and an imminent threat to himself and recommended that he seek professional treatment for his illness. And because mental illness is no crime, he was appropriately permitted to return to society at large and to the Virginia Tech campus. And in accordance with Virginia law, he was permitted to purchase guns. Everything that happened was legal and constitutionally protected until the lethal rampage began.
Here’s the unavoidable conflict at the heart of the greatness of our nation: as long as our society is so committed to protecting the civil liberties of individuals that the judiciary, law enforcement, mental health professionals and in this case university administrators are not permitted to communicate with each other and cooperate together in addressing the problems that individuals present to the safety and security of society at large, we remain only days or hours away from the next tragedy—the next terrible outcome brought on by the tragic flaw in American society: American society is so entirely open and free that it tolerates behaviors and attitudes, individuals and groups who are capable of destroying the society that tolerates them. It is a perennial conflict at the heart of the greatness of American society.
The question at the heart of this conflict over communication is, “Where do the rights to privacy and the civil liberties of troubled individuals end and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all the rest of us begin?” For some of us this is a theoretical question to be argued out over coffee or some other beverage, while for others of us it is a practical concern with which we must wrestle on a daily basis. You may be surprised to hear that more than once since I have been your senior minister, I or another member of our staff has signed a “no trespass” order that forbid an individual from setting foot on this property or for attending any function of this church that might occur away from this property. This congregation prides itself—which, by the way, “goeth before a fall,” according to the book of Proverbs—on its openness and its inclusiveness. But from time to time, in extreme cases, it becomes necessary to put the safety and security of members of this community of believers ahead of the opportunity for someone to do irreparable damage to individuals and to this fellowship. Those incidents are reminders of the perennial challenge between the tolerance and inclusion of American society at its best and the risks that American society faces from certain individuals and groups.
The words of Jesus in Luke 13:1-9 remind us that the causes and the consequences of tragedy are not simply individual in nature. It was all too easy for Jews in the first century and Christians in the twenty-first century to blame disasters on the sins of individuals. “So you think that those Galileans whom Pilate had killed were any worse sinners than their peers in Galilee?” Jesus asks. “Do you think that the people who died when the tower of Siloam fell were more sinful than anyone else in Jerusalem at the time?” he says. “No, but unless you turn from your own sins,” Jesus says, “your end will be the same.” In the teachings of Jesus, sad and terrible things that happen are more complicated and complex than merely the consequence of individual sin. And at the same time, Jesus uses the examples of terrible and horrifying events as an occasion for his listeners to turn their thinking and their living in another direction. So let me suggest this morning two turnings for you and for me now that tragedy has once again left its calling card on the American psyche.
The first turning is to solidarity with those who suffer. Solidarity with those who suffer. Stephen and Carroll Luck’s son Ryan is one of several family connections in this congregation to the Virginia Tech family. Steve showed me a handwritten note he and Carroll received this week from a Clemson fan. At the top of the note was printed that distinctive “VT,” that italicized capital V, capital T, that everyone now knows stands for Virginia Tech and the Hokies. And underneath it was an orange Clemson tiger paw, which, by the way, is not welcome symbol in the Luck family. But underneath the Clemson tiger paw were the words, “Today we are all Hokies.” Today we are all Hokies. That’s solidarity with those who suffer. I’m told that on the Furman campus this week, hundreds of Furman students signed cards that went to Blacksburg with the words, “We are praying for you,” on them. Clemson University students and staff held a vigil. In fact, did you know that “Solid Orange Friday” was marked by wearing maroon along with orange this week? That’s unthinkable, isn’t it? Solidarity with those who suffer. Solidarity with the suffering of the victims and solidarity even with the suffering of the perpetrators, as in “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In the New Testament, it is said that the church is “the body of Christ.” And if we are the body of Christ, then at least one aspect of our calling is to take up the sins and the sufferings of the world upon ourselves in solidarity with those who suffer, whether they are victims or perpetrators. Whether we want to admit it or not, today and every day, we are all Iraqis. Whether we want to deny the truth or not, today and every day, we are all Somalis. Whether we want to hear it or not, today and every day, we are all Zimbabweans. It is our calling as the body of Christ to turn to solidarity with all who suffer. We are never fully Christian or Christ-like until we are able and willing to express and live out our solidarity with all who suffer, including even the perpetrators as well as the victims of suffering.
The second turning we must make in response to tragedy’s calling card is repentance and reform. Repentance and reform, as in “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” You see, it takes a village to raise a psychopath. By the end of the week, we have begun to hear the stories from classmates about the teasing and taunting, the baiting and bullying that over the years helped to turn an unhappy and unhealthy individual—of which there are millions in this country and not a few in this congregation—into a pathological specimen. This individual’s personal history is a catalogue of errors, a case study in how a displaced and disaffected child can be transformed into a cold-blooded killer. Do not be so naïve as to think that it could not happen here. Do not be so foolish as to believe that you can take care of your own children by only taking care of your own children. You cannot build a castle wall high enough or a moat wide enough to protect your children from themselves, much less from the displaced and disaffected children of others. There is not enough barbed wire in the world. It is impossible to protect your children by protecting only your children because it takes a village to raise a psychopath. And so we must repent and reform in the realization that all God’s children are our children. The disruptive ones, the hateful ones, the mean ones, the ones we’d like to throw out of school. I have lived and worked in the office where in consultation with faculty and administrative colleagues and mental health professionals and legal counsel we have deliberated what to do about the student who was an imminent threat to himself or herself and the student who was only potentially a threat. I have participated in and participate still in the tragic flaw in American society that we are committed to living in relationship with and tolerating even those individuals and groups who have the capability to destroy us. We can talk about what went wrong in process and procedure that led to Monday’s tragedy, but the complex and complicated reality is that this sad and terrible thing is grounded in the character and the greatness of American society.
But we need reform. We need reform in the mental health establishment so that school officials and law enforcement are better informed about who they are dealing with and how best to help them before they destroy themselves and others along with them. We need reform in firearms legislation so that the constitutional right of individuals to bear arms does not run roughshod over the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all the rest of us as it did in Blacksburg on Monday. And we need to reform our social and theological isolationism because it takes a village to raise a psychopath, and we are that village in Greenville, SC, in Centerville, VA, in Blacksburg, and in every community in these United States. Tragedy’s calling card calls us to repentance and reform as well as to solidarity with those who suffer.
If we do not commit ourselves to healthy bodies, healthy minds and healthy souls of all the world’s children—not just our children behind walls and moats barbed wire, then it is only hours or days before the next tragic episode. We must think and live and minister in new ways, not only to ourselves and our own, but to all whom we meet, even the troubled and the disturbed. That’s our calling as the body of Christ, willing to take up upon itself the sins and the suffering of the world, in Jesus’ name.
Let us pray.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do. Amen.
This material is Copyrighted © 2007 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
