Love Will Guide Us
Love Will Guide Us
Rev. Tim Temerson
UU Church of Akron
February 24, 2013
Every time I read or hear those beautiful words by Robbie Walsh, I’m taken back to a summer evening about 4 ½ years ago. That night I participated in a candlelight vigil on the steps of the First Parish Church in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Robbie Walsh, who is a former minister of that congregation, read this meditation as part of the service.
How I needed to hear Robbie’s words that night. On the preceding Sunday morning, an armed man had entered the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, interrupting a musical being performed by the congregation’s children. The gunman opened fire, killing two people and injuring several others before courageous members of the congregation subdued him, preventing a much greater loss of life.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the attack on the Tennessee Valley congregation left many Unitarian Universalists in shock. I know when I first heard the news, I couldn’t believe it. Why would someone do this? Why would someone attack a church and a religion committed to peace and love? And even after a manifesto was discovered suggesting that the attack was partly linked to the gunman’s hatred of liberalism and gay rights, I still couldn’t believe or make sense of such an inexplicable act of evil.
As I drove to the vigil that night, I remember feeling so unsteady and shaken. A steady stream of disturbing questions kept buzzing through my mind. Could something like this happen again and did it mean that we would have to turn our places of worship into fortresses of fear and suspicion rather than love and welcome?
I think what so many of us were feeling in the days following Knoxville resembled that fault line Robbie talks about in his meditation. A seam, a chasm, had opened in a part of our lives that had always felt safe and free from fear. When Robbie reminded us that night at the vigil that our lives could be invaded, sent off in a new direction, and turned aside by forces we were not prepared for, I remember thinking to myself, “That’s me he’s talking about, that’s our brothers and sisters in Knoxville, that, for the moment, is Unitarian Universalism.”
Just as our faith tradition experienced a fault line of fear that shook us on that terrible morning in Knoxville, our nation is experiencing a similar fault line as we continue to struggle with the unspeakable act of violence that took place at the Sandy Hook elementary school just two and a half months ago. I don’t have words to describe the horror of that day and I can’t begin to imagine the pain the families of those who were killed are undoubtedly still feeling. I can only hope and pray that they find some peace and that the enormous wound left in their lives begins to heal.
While I can’t begin to speak for those who lost loved ones that terrible day, I will say that in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I think our nation remains broken and in the grips of a pervasive and debilitating fear. I hear and feel that fear when I listen to the debates about gun violence and gun control, when I hear proposals to turn our schools into armed camps and our teachers into armed guards, and when I see the growing stigma being attached to those with mental illness.
And it isn’t just Sandy Hook that has led to this fear. On what seems like a daily basis, we are bombarded with one story after another of senseless violence and tragedy. I’ve gotten to the point where I can hardly watch the evening news anymore because of the steady stream of tragedy continually being reported. Tucson, Aurora, and Sandy Hook are just a few of the most recent examples of how torn our society is by violence and fear.
How can we help but be afraid? When places that are supposed to be safe - places where people go to learn, to pray, or to enjoy themselves - when those places no longer feel safe, it is inevitable and natural to be fearful.
And I don’t want to suggest that fear is always or necessarily a bad thing. Fear is an emotion that is hard-wired into our very beings. Fear warns us of danger, prepares us to respond, and enables us to survive. Without fear, our lives would be, to quote a famous philosopher, “nasty, brutish, and short.”
But if fear is essential for our survival, an all-pervading fear that seems to dominate so much of lives and our public discourse diminishes us and leaves us feeling as if we do live in a world that is nasty and brutish. When I listen to the arguments made by people like Wayne LaPierre, the executive director of the National Rifle Association – arguments in which the solution to violence is a society in which everyone is heavily armed, a society in which every person is viewed as a potential threat, a society in which fear, constant fear, rules the day - I am reminded of just how dangerous and debilitating fear can be.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I’ve been by the conversations and debates that have taken place in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. On one side there are extremists like LaPierre who use fear to promote what I see as an irrational and dangerous political agenda. On the other side there are people like me, people who believe that we should have more sensible gun control laws. And don’t get me wrong, this is an important debate. But I am convinced that there is a more important, more essential, more soul-searching conversation that needs to take place in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. And that conversation, that soul-searching, must be about fear, the all-pervading fear that seems to be taking hold of our society and our world.
And the conversation I believe we need to have revolves around this question – are we as a people, are we as a species, going to allow fear to dictate, to dominate, to control our lives? Are we going to live behind walls that divide us versus them, walls that lead us to view our neighbor with suspicion, walls that stigmatize those who struggle with mental illness, and walls that lead us to treat the stranger as an object of fear rather than as a welcomed guest and friend? Will our society and our world be steeped in fear or is there another path, another way?
On the Sunday following the tragedy in Knoxville, the Tennessee Valley Congregation held a service of rededication in their sanctuary. Even though the chaos and mayhem of the preceding Sunday were still evident, including bullet holes in the walls of the sanctuary, members of the Knoxville church courageously joined together that morning to sing, to pray, and to make an extraordinary choice about their future. And the choice they made that day was for love and compassion, not fear and suspicion.
I can still remember watching that worship service as it streamed live over the internet. Carol and I sat together at our dining room table and watched as this extraordinary community of Unitarian Universalists showed us the way out of fear. We were so moved by their courage, by their commitment, and by their compassion. When the service began, I still had all those questions that I had brought to the vigil a few nights earlier, all those questions about how we as a religious community and as people of faith would respond to fear. And it was the congregation in Knoxville that pointed the way, pointed the way to hope rather than despair, to love rather than fear.
I’ve often asked myself how they did it. How was this community that had been so traumatized just a week earlier - how were they able to stand together and to choose love over fear? I haven’t spoken to anyone from the Knoxville church about the shooting and its aftermath but here’s what I experienced as I watched that amazing service of rededication. I believe the members of the Knoxville church were able to find a path out of fear because they had faith - faith in themselves, faith in each other, and faith in the ultimate goodness, the ultimate hopefulness, and the ultimate beauty of life. When faced with an unspeakable act of violence, the Knoxville congregation put its faith in what Robbie Walsh so beautifully calls “tensile strands of love.” strands that held them together as a community. As I witnessed what has to be the most extraordinary and moving worship service I have ever experienced, it was so clear to me that the members of the Tennessee Valley congregation found their strength in one another, found their courage in the embraces they shared that morning, and found their faith in the deep assurance that no matter what the future held, they would not have to face that future alone.
And I think that’s what the tragedy in Knoxville can teach us today. As the Tennessee Valley congregation learned on that terrible Sunday morning when their sacred space was violated, there are no permanent solutions for evil. There are no walls we can erect, no weapons we can carry, no fortresses we can build to guarantee our safety and security. Our lives can be shaken, invaded, and pulled apart. But if we can make a choice to follow the lead of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and choose love rather than fear, I believe we will also find ourselves held and strengthened by strands of love and compassion that have the power to heal our lives and change the world.
And I must say that in that incredible moment when the Tennessee Valley affirmed chose love over fear, I felt something profoundly change in Unitarian Universalism. Prior to Knoxville, I believe our faith tradition was focused primarily on freedom of choice – on the freedom of the individual to believe and think according to the dictates of their own conscience. And don’t get me wrong. Freedom of conscience remains at the core of who we are. But after Knoxville, I believe Unitarian Universalism became a religion about love – a love that knows no bounds, a love that reaches beyond our own lives to the needs and concerns of the world, a love that, above all else, seeks to cast out the fear and hatred that divides the world into us versus them and friend versus enemy.
Now I know that all this talk of love can sound pretty idealistic and perhaps feel a little too kumbayahish, if that’s a word. And I don’t mean to suggest for one moment that if we all just love one another, all the brokenness and pain in the world will disappear. Love is powerful but it will never eliminate tragedy, never eliminate suffering, and never eliminate acts of evil.
But if love is not a solution to the problem of evil, I believe with all my heart that it is the answer to fear. Love can cast out fear, love can tear down the walls that divide us and make us afraid, and love can bring healing and hope to a broken world. So on this day, let us resolve to turn away from fear by offering a resounding “Yes” – yes to life and to love.
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