During a service in remembrance of the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech, the Rt. Rev. Marc Handley Andrus spoke about how his time at the university informed his understanding of God. Andrus and his wife Sheila attended graduate school at the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus.

The noon service on April 23 at Grace Cathedral was attended by about 70 people, including 20 or so Virginia Tech alums. Andrus spoke about working as a member of the support crew at Virginia Tech’s dairy farm, planting and harvesting crops, loading grain onto wagons, and repairing machinery. Laboring alongside a group of men, Andrus came to see that God is like these men -- highly skilled, deeply intelligent, very funny, and caring profoundly for all of creation. God is a working God, he said, “always seeking to bring meaning out of chaos, integrity out of that which has been broken, and new life out of death ... But like those men, this God works ceaselessly and yet almost always unseen.”

Andrus addressed the gospel reading for the day (Matthew 11:25-30), saying that Jesus invites us to be in relationship with him, working on our side of the double yoke. Those who worked to get help for Cho Seung-Hui or worked to save others from his rampage were partnering with Christ to bring order, meaning, and new life out of a desperate situation, Andrus said. By working in alignment with Christ, he said, we may experience pain, tiredness, and ceaseless labor, but in that labor we will find the joy and rest to which Jesus invites us continually, past our deaths into eternal life.

Andrus concluded his sermon in an emotional voice, saying, “As heartbreaking as it is, I believe that we can trust the words of this Jesus who says that he offers this rest, and that all those young people and adults who died there in Virginia Tech and die in conflict and violence every moment of every day all over the earth, there’s a worker Jesus, there’s a worker God, who continues to invite them into rest with that God forever.” Moving prayers of the people and a sharing of the peace followed the homily, and the Very Rev. Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, presided over the Holy Eucharist.