A Sermon by Pastor Eun-sang Lee
Preached April 25, 1999
Sunday following the Columbine Tragedy
John 10:1-10
To Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
Heaven opened up and snow covered our city
as if to cover up and caress her wounds.
I drive the wet highway.
Everything looks so normal,
cars tailgating and cutting in,
trying to get a tad faster to wherever they are going.
This whole scene, looking so normal,
seems to be a dream.
Like so many others I was fixed in front of a television screen.
It took a long while
to realize what had happened.
Like so many of us,
I was numbed,
woke up in the middle of the night,
was given in to uncontrollable sobs,
was consumed and exhausted.
It seems so unreal that things still look so normal,
cars tailgating and cutting in,
trying to get a tad faster to wherever they are going
on this wet highway.
My heart is so heavy.
I feel such a despair.
I don't remember feeling this way in a long time.
Not just because of all of this is so overwhelming.
Not just because of the depth of your nihilism.
If religion is more than consolation , more than sustaining the sense of balance and the peace of mind in times of turmoil,
beyond that,
if religion is to show wherein the hope lies,
not just individually,
but for the whole humanity,
if religion is to point to the possibility of the heavenly among all human race.......
right now,
I'm feeling the amount of violence in our society too overwhelming,
I'm despairing our culture of violence,
I'm wondering we're ever going to stop this.
Clement Park is inundated with flowers people brought.
Young girls brought poems.
Others brought peace banners and prayers.
Strangers hugged each other and cried on each other's shoulders.
You two have brought out the best in us,
the very thing that make life worth living
but are often forgotten in our frantic city life.
We all learned what are really important in life;
friends, families, love and care for each other;
it is ironic that your action represents the breakdown of community,
and yet, it is the precious-ness of human community we are learning.
Your disregarded human lives,
you acted as if they meant nothing, your own as well as others'.
Because of that our hearts ache and suffer.
Not just the hearts of those who knew those who have lost their lives senselessly, including yours,
but all of our hearts tremble.
You see, life means something.
It is precious.
Why else it causes such a pain in friends and strangers alike?
You tried to show the world that you sneered at life.
But we know you couldn't bear the meaninglessness of life.
Isolation hurt you so much.
That is the paradox.
Your showed us clearly that life means something, maybe all thing.
Those who've seen the inside of the school say it was like hell.
Were you also living with such a hell in your hearts?
A member of the first SWAT team, whose son also goes to Columbine,
said he had no doubt that there is place for you two in hell,
but, for me, I cannot help but pray and believe
that you now find the acceptance and peace.
You already lived a hell on earth.
We heard that all of the students, parents and teachers say that they never thought this kind of thing would happen there in their school, in their neighborhood.
Here in the inner-city in our beautiful Capitol Hill,
people of all diversity,
people of the street, many of them Viet Nam war veterans, some with mental disabilities,
young punks and Goths,
heterosexuals and homosexuals,
refugees and newly immigrants,
those who are aging gracefully,
young single professionals and struggling single parents,
are trying to learn to not just tolerate each other
but to understand each other, appreciate the diversity, and create a rainbow community of all children of God. The way to the beloved community, we have learned,
is not by shutting up our gates and protect what we have,
but by opening up and understand and love and care.
Edward Hale once said;
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything..
But I still can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
So, next time I see you walking down our streets, I'll try to learn your loneliness, pains, fears, and your hopes. I will seek ways to hug you and embrace you.
God so loved the city.
We believe in that love.
Even today, we affirm that faith as a community.