Preaching to horror-struck people

Consensus Volume 31 Issue 1 Preaching the Gospel in Canada in the 21st Century 5-1-2006 Preaching to horror-struck people Rebekah Eckert Follow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus Recommended Citation Eckert, Rebekah (2006) "Preaching to horror-struck people ," Consensus: Vol. 31 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol31/iss1/6 This Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact . Article 6 91 Preaching to Horror-struck People Rebekah Eckert Interim Pastor, Redeemer Lutheran Church Coaldale, Alberta What do you say in the face of horror? I think this is one of the most troubling questions facing preachers today. Whether it is the Sunday after 9/11 or the Sunday after a violent shooting in the town down the road, we as preachers have had to answer this. I want to wrestle with this and suggest a few possibilities. First, though, let me define the problem more precisely. By “horror,” I am usually speaking of violence perpetrated by humans upon humans. This would include genocide, senseless murder, rape, and torture. These are acts designed to harrow the souls of witnesses and victims, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, what Ted Peters calls the sixth step to radical evil (the last being blasphemy: satanic rituals and the destruction of the inner soul).1 They are a particular kind of evil, an intention of creating as much pain as possible. I am emphasizing acts of horror rather than what I might call sorrowful acts. These would include deaths, whether through illness or murder with motive, disease, and despair. Acts of sorrow fill one with regret for a life lost, happiness cut off. Acts of horror push us to wonder whether one wants to live at all in a world where such is possible. Both include, at their root, the question of theodicy: how can a good God allow these to happen? But one can cling to a memory of a life well lived even in the face of acts of sorrow. Acts of horror tend to obliterate the idea of life as a blessing. These are not, of course, fixed categories, and what for one might be an act of sorrow may be for another an act of horror. You, gentle reader, no doubt have your own images of horror that haunt you. I would ask that you recall those to mind, even as I share one of my own. I do this lest this essay revert to abstractions. From the Canadian best-seller, Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda: We saw many faces of death during the genocide, from the innocence of babies to the bewilderment of the elderly, from the Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2006 92 Consensus defiance of fighters to the resigned stares of nuns … For a long time I completely wiped the death masks of raped and sexually mutilated girls and women from my mind as if what had been done to them was the last thing that would send me over the edge. But if you looked, you could see the evidence, even in the whitened skeletons. The legs bent and apart. A broken bottle, a rough branch, even a knife between them. Where the bodies were fresh, we saw what must have been semen pooled on and near the dead women and girls. There was always a lot of blood. Some make corpses had their genitals cut off, but many women and young girls had their breasts chopped off and their genitals crudely cut apart. They died in a position of total vulnerability, flat on their backs, with their legs bent and knees wide apart. It was the expressions on their dead faces that assaulted me the most, a frieze of shock, pain and humiliation. For many years after I came home, I banished the memories of those faces from my mind, but they have come back, all too clearly.2 We say nothing, because there is nothing to say. One may question whether there is anything to say in light of such horrors, and ask who, in fact, can legitimately speak. Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel has said “the truth of Auschwitz remains hidden in its ashes. Only those who lived it in their flesh and in their minds can possibly transform their experience into knowledge. Others, despite their best intentions, can never do so.”3 Yet even as one who has lived it, he has struggled with how to speak: I knew the role of the survivor was to testify. Only I did not know how. I lacked experience, I lacked a framework. I mistrusted the tools, the procedures. Should one say it all or hold it all back? Should one shout or whisper? Place the emphasis on those who were gone or on their heirs? How does one describe the indescribable? How does one use restraint in re-creating the fall of mankind and the eclipse of the gods? And then, how can one be sure that the words, once uttered, will not betray, distort the message they bear?4 The majority of preachers are bystanders, overhearing the cries of anguish, and we lack even what framework survivors struggle to build. Can we speak so that our words will not betray or distort? Or are such anguished experiences simply to be framed by our silence? Yet I believe our call to Christian witness in the world demands we talk of it. “You shall be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Will we really? My experience in the parish has led me to conclude many people live with these questions, that theodicy is one http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol31/iss1/6 Preaching to Horror-struck People 93 of the biggest barriers for people’s involvement in the church.5 These folks are the spouses of faithful attendees, the now-adults who as children grew up going to church, and the spiritual seekers who are looking for a path to follow. They know the churches as flawed vessels, communities that are not perfect but are still communities, whose kindness and fellowship they admire. They show up at Christmas and Easter, not entirely unwillingly. Yet they are not able to take the leap to calling themselves believers, for what kind of a god can they believe in the face of horror? Then, of course, there are the silent struggles of many in the congregation, as the ground of faith drops from beneath their feet, for some cause or another, with a suddenness that leaves them crashing in the dark. When we stand in the pulpit, our witness needs to include their needs. Yet we are witnesses not to one, but two key events: the horrors and Jesus Christ. How do we speak of both? We say nothing, because we won’t. Frankly, it is easier to ignore the greater horrors of the world. We know some of the struggles of our parishioners, and life is difficult enough already for many of them, what with health, financial, relational, and generational problems. Do we really want to depress them? Instead we aim for inspiration, three points and a poem, or these days, a Chicken Soup for the Soul anecdote. The only problem is a steady diet of these inspirational se (...truncated)