Virginia Tech Convocation Sadly Fell Short

When the students at Columbine High School met at Clement Park, a park I used to visit often, the majority weren't chanting Buddhist prayers or calling the Muslims to face Mecca and pray. What I do remember was dozens of students in worship of one name: Jesus. Sam Matherne, a girl in a group of approximately 120 students cried out, loud enough to be heard,

The only way you'll get through this is through Jesus. If you don't have Jesus, get Jesus. You don't know if you have tomorrow.

In two days, that shooting will be 8 years ago. What has changed since then?

Plenty.

A Muslim cleric, a Buddhist community leader and a Jewish speaker quoting Ecclesiastes spoke at the Virginia Tech Convocation in Blacksburg, Virginia yesterday. Finally, a Lutheran Minister batted clean-up, trying to help these stunned, grieving college students with exhortations to pull together.

Excuse my bluntness, but it's needed: Get a spine!

Buddha is dead. Has been for a long time. Mohammed, same thing. Jesus? Uh-uh, you aren't going to find a skeleton in his closet. He pulled his bones out of the grave right after he grabbed the keys of death and hades. If I'm not mistaken, we just celebrated his "coming out" party. It was called Easter. Jesus has the power that these other pretenders only dreamed of having. Resurrection power isn't found in Buddha or Mohammed or Krishna or money or possessions or sex or corporations or even in our friends and family. You can be the most loved person on earth and be destined for hell, because we all sin. There is one way to meet God and not find yourself dispatched to hell: call on the name of Jesus.

Romans 10 puts it best:

For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

Indeed, how can they hear without someone preaching the name of Jesus to them? Attendees at the Virginia Tech Convocation were sold a bill of goods today. They never heard the one name that saves, the one name that is above every other name. They didn't hear about Jesus yesterday, and it was a black day in Blacksburg.