I've been struggling all week with what to say about the shooting in Orlando. Wes and I live about 40 minutes for Pulse, and even though we didn't know any of the victims, the whole tragedy feels like it hits close to home. I'd be willing to be that you feel the same way no matter where you live.

One of my favorite poems reads that "No man is an island," and "we are all a part of the main." When the funeral bells tolls for one it tolls for all of us. Wes and I went to an inter-faith service on Tuesday night at First United Methodist Church in Orlando. During the service, the names of the deceased were read aloud and a bell tolled 49 times. Wes, myself, and hundreds of others wept openly and without shame. I admit that it was almost more than I could take. Each name hurt so badly that I just wanted to flee from the room. I'll be 27 in August and most of the deceased were younger than me.

So what do we do? How do we respond to unspeakable death, persecution, and pain? To answer that I'd like to go back to the early church and the Gospel of Mark. Mark's gospel was written to the church in Rome sometime between the late 50s and mid 60s CE. At around this time there were nearly 2 million people living in Rome, 30,000 to 40,000 of whom were Jews.

On July 19 in the year 64 CE, a great fire erupted in Rome. It blazed for five days, stilled, then ignited again and burned for another forty-eight hours. The flames raced through most of Rome, and when the conflagration finally ended, most of the city had been reduced to embers. Many people died. Common gossip spread among the devastated Romans saying that Emperor Nero was responsible for the fire— that he had started it so that his proposals to raze buildings and rebuild Rome in a grand, classical manner could proceed unhindered. The tales proliferated, and Nero soon found himself under attack by his senators. He needed to find the real culprits, or at least someone to blame, and he needed to do it quickly.

Fate— and ghetto geography— provided his answer. The Jewish quarter, untouched by the fire, made the Jews perfect scapegoats for Nero. The fact that the Jewish section was far away, across the river and on the outskirts of Rome (which is why it didn’t burn), was ignored. Word raced through the quarter that the Jews were about to become Nero’s way out of his predicament. Feelings resurfaced from the earlier disturbance and expulsion in 49. The Jews had been back in Rome for only ten short years. Understandably, they dreaded another eviction, and dreaded even more the likelihood of worse punishments exacted by the desperate emperor. Fear and anxiety rose to near panic. Predictions of mass suffering and executions spiraled out of control.

Desperate to forestall what they were certain would be Nero’s terrible wrath, it appears that someone or a small group went to the emperor and confessed that a fringe group of Jews had indeed set the fire. They identified the culprits as the Messianic Jews, the Christus followers. Centuries later, it is impossible for us to know precisely what anxieties or divisions drove them to Nero with this story or what they expected that Nero would do. Today, we know only what Nero’s horrific response actually was.

Nero immediately demanded that the Jewish community collaborate with Roman soldiers to identify those who belonged to the Christus group. Presented with a completely untenable situation and trying to reduce casualties, the Jewish community agreed. What ensued was a mini-genocide. Roman soldiers knocked on every door of the quarter, demanding to know if anyone in each house was a Christ believer. The answer determined the fate of the householder and everyone else in that house.

If a believer was identified, either by others in the community or his own admission, everyone in his house was seized and publicly executed. The normal execution involved leading victims to the floor of the Circus Maximus, shackling them, splattering them with blood, and then loosing starving dogs to eat them as Roman citizens watched. Today, twenty centuries later, when we visit St. Peter’s Basilica and walk on its great piazza or watch televised ceremonies held there, it is difficult to imagine that this was a place of terrible torture and slaughter.

If the head of the household denied being a believer, he was nonetheless required to name someone who was. There was no exemption from horror. The named individual was summarily arrested and executed, with no opportunity for appeal or protest. Neighbor was forced to turn on neighbor. As the number of executions mounted, self-preservation was the order of the day. Family members even reported on other family members. Fear and paranoia reigned.

In the end, the Roman Messianic community was totally destroyed. Among its many casualties were the great leaders, Peter and Paul. Although Peter initially fled Rome to avoid the slaughter, accounts written years later told that his escape was stopped— not by Romans, but by a vision of the Christ. As the story goes, Christ appeared and asked, “Peter, where are you going?” Chastened, his conscience and faith reawakened, Peter reversed his footsteps and returned to Rome, where he was immediately arrested and executed. Later unsubstantiated accounts relate that he died after being lashed upside down on a post or cross.

What could possibly have been worse for the believers in Jesus as the Messiah? They identified themselves as faithful Jews (Self identification as Christians would not come for another 20 years). Their community had totally betrayed and abandoned them. Their families, their children, their elders— even Peter and Paul— had been gruesomely murdered. We can only imagine the overwhelming extent of their isolation and pain, and undoubtedly there were times when the promise of the Christ, the prophesied Messiah, seemed hollow and empty. Terror, shame, abandonment, and death are the context of the Gospel of Mark.

Mark’s words are terse and spare. He gives us nothing but the barest outlines. He does not paint the landscape with flowery descriptions. His stories are stark and revelatory. Why? First, because he addresses Rome’s Messianic Jews, who lived under a death sentence. They had no use for hearts and flowers. Second, because the core message of the gospel itself is simple, direct— even tough. That message is embodied, in this gospel, by a Messiah who fully understood the suffering of his followers— who came to earth, took human form, and withstood agonizing pain. This Messiah wanted those who followed him to know that while their pain was necessary— because they were part of a much larger process— their Messiah not only genuinely understood their suffering but was there, in their very midst, with them, as they suffered. And Mark didn’t need a lot of words to convey that.

How often do we ask, in the midst of suffering, where is God? I do truly believe in a God who is not some far off deity, sitting on a cloud, in a white robe; but instead he is a God who is as close to us as our next breath. When a woman is raped and receives no justice, God feels pain and injustice. When 49 people are brutally murdered in an Orlando nightclub, God dies with them. And when the survivors sit in a packed church and weep at the tolling bell, God weeps as well. I encourage you not to run from your feelings in times like this. Weep. Cry out. Rage against the universe. Go fully into the suffering and know that God is there with you every step of the way. We cannot heal properly if we try to flee from the full extent of tragedy.

Now, I want to teach you something you may not know. In your Bible, the gospels are listed in the order of: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This order is presented from liturgical history. However, the early church likely read them in the order: Matthew, Mark, John, and then Luke. Why?

The early church understood each of the gospels as answering a great human question. In Mark's Gospel it is: How do we face suffering? Mark uses the metaphor of wilderness, as well as two equivalent-to-wilderness metaphors drawn from Jewish history and tradition: deserts and bodies of flowing water. In order to escape Egypt centuries earlier, the Jews had had to enter and traverse the Red Sea. It was their nemesis, the great barrier to their freedom. Seas in general were wild and unruly places, treacherous. In Hebrew writings, seas, lakes, and rivers represented deep anxiety and even death, and so did the desert. The great flood of Noah was strong in memory, as were the myriad stories of the forty-year desert trial of the Jewish people, from which few survived to enter the Promised Land. Mark compassionately uses these three images— wilderness, deserts and bodies of flowing water— throughout his gospel to represent the inner landscape of frightening and uncharted territory.

Despite Mark’s often bleak language, he does not— ever— deliver a singular message of difficulty. Nor does he depict trials that lead only into despair. We will see that each image of wilderness is coupled with an image of comfort or hope. John the Baptist eats both locusts (yuck!) and wild honey. When sin is confessed, cleansing is received. Heaven is torn apart and a dove descends. Jesus goes into the wilderness and encounters both beasts and angels. The sparseness of language may make this coupling difficult to grasp at first. Our initial impression is anything but hopeful. Mark writes nothing but the barest outlines: no long descriptions, or even a list of the temptations. He acknowledges the angels with little more than a nod. Patience and close reading, though, will reveal the pairings. Mark always includes hope.

I could go in-depth on Mark's gospel for pages and pages, but I'll stop here and skip to John. As I said, each gospel answers a significant life question and John follows Mark for a reason. What follows the path of suffering? Revelation, unity, and joy. John's gospel is about receiving joy.

Until this point, so much of the story has been struggle. In Mark's gospel, believers cowered in the battering storms and were tossed in the treacherous seas. Nonetheless, the church remained faithful through all difficulties and missteps. They prayed that their yearning, outstretched hand would be met by a firm answering grip that would lead them ashore. How often do we seek the same? We beg God for mercy and peace in the darkness, and if we're paying attention, what we receive goes so much farther than we could imagine.

The empty tomb at the (original) end of Mark's gospel is followed by John who explodes off the page with:

In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2 He existed in the beginning with God.
3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,[a]
and his life brought light to everyone.
5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

Those first lines remind us of the omni-present God who not only has suffered with us, but has always been and always will be. A God whose brilliance shines in the darkness and is not overcome. Add on to this that John's gospel was written to the church in Ephesus (or Alexandria), a church that was unique for being made up of many Jewish and non-Jewish believers, and its joy comes to bring unity to all people.

I know for many, it's hard to talk about joy and unity so soon after the Orlando massacre. The hurt is still present for me as well, but I wanted to share with you how my experience at the inter-faith service at FUMC Orlando completely embodied the journey between the gospels of Mark and John.

As I said, so many people entered that service with so much pain in their hearts. Together, hundreds of strangers entered into that pain together and filled the pews from front to back. We wept for the fallen. We listened to prayers and chants and sermons from Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Atheists. At the end of the service, we all joined hands across the aisle and sang:

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With our Creator
Children all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
With peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me.

Grace and Peace be with you, my friends.
~Spartan