First Reading: Wendell Berry "Peace of Wild Things" #483 Hymnal

Second Reading:

"I will call them my people, who were not my people;

and her beloved, who was not beloved."

-- Romans 9:25

--Hymn #1, Singing the Living Tradition

Four weeks ago this morning the members and friends of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee gathered for church. Not unlike we have gathered here this morning. Some coming early to chat and catch up, to help prepare the sanctuary. Others arriving late in order to finish one last section of the Sunday Times, or because the kids put up a fight at the car. Nonetheless, by 11:00 most had arrived because they didn’t want to miss the special service that morning—a pageant led by the children of the church.

Not long after the pageant began a 58 year-old man entered the building and, over the voices of the children, began shouting slurs from the back of the sanctuary. Seconds later he pulled out a shotgun and began firing into the pews. Several members of the congregation rushed at the gunman to attempt to stop him. One of them was Greg McKendry, an usher that morning. As McKendry approached, the gunman shot him dead. Eventually, several people were able to pin the gunman down; undoubtedly saving countless lives, for police later recovered 76 unspent rounds on the gunman’s body. Six other parishioners were seriously wounded; one of them—Linda Kraeger—died the next day in the ICU.

In the days that followed, evidence in the gunman’s truck and home indicated that the shooting was premeditated and that the gunman had specifically targeted the Unitarian church for what the police called its "liberal social views." The Unitarian Church in Knoxville is well known for its historic commitment to desegregation and racial justice, and, more recently, for its support of gays and lesbians.

I have personal ties to the Knoxville church. The Rev. Chris Buice, the minister of the church, is a friend of mine from seminary. Two former parishioners of mine, Don and Elizabeth Franks, had recently moved from Washington to Tennessee, and were present in the sanctuary on the morning of the shooting. So immediately following the incident my heart was filled—as I’m sure yours was—with concern and prayers for the members of the Knoxville congregation. For the dead, the injured, and for the adults and children who witnessed the slaughter. I also felt—and I know many did—a strong feeling of warmth and solidarity for this faith of ours. Thinking of McKendry and Kraeger, I recalled the long line of Unitarians and Universalists—dating back to the Reformation—who have given their lives for our faith. For me, the tragedy was a kind of gut check that left me saying: "These are my people. This is my faith. And I will stand by it come what may."

Another line of thinking has occupied my thoughts since the shooting. Almost as soon as I heard the horrible news I found myself asking with disgust: "What kind of person would do such a thing? What kind of monster would open fire on a group of 200 innocent men, women and children?" Am I the only one? Did any of you ask a similar question in the wake of this shooting? It feels as though the occasions for us to ask such questions have multiplied in recent years. This time, instead of posing such a question rhetorically, as a way to set the killer apart and to demonize him, I’ve tried to take the question seriously. And rather than chalking his behavior up to something less than human—to locate the motivation for his behavior precisely in his humanity. Which has been a difficult exercise, for it’s made the killer less like a monster and more like…me, like us.

This morning, I’m going to ask you to do some spiritual heavy lifting. Essentially, I’m asking you this morning to enter into an empathetic relationship with a killer. Empathetic not in the sense of forgiving or condoning, but in the sense of understanding and perhaps even identifying with another’s point of view. My intent in doing so is not to indulge some morbid voyeurism or to provide excuses, but to better understand the roots of human sin—his and our own. In the end, these reflections will bring me back to what I believe is the unique importance of this Unitarian Universalist faith of ours.

No one took Jim Adkisson for a killer. When told of his crime, his neighbors expressed shock. They’d lived near him for several years, and described him as a friendly man who just a few weeks earlier had stopped by the roadside to help one of them change a tire. They also described him, though, as a loner, and reported that they rarely saw anyone coming or going from his home. Economic concerns weighed heavily on Adkisson and added to his sense of isolation. A truck driver and engineer by trade, Adkisson had been out of work since 2006. In an angry letter written days before the shooting, he expressed frustration with his inability to find a job. Taking his cue from the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter, whose books were found strewn about his desk, Adkisson blamed "the liberals and gays" for taking all the good jobs. He fretted because his food stamps were about to run out. Adkisson was feeling desperate.

While this is surely not a complete profile of the mind of a killer, it is enough to suggest that, whatever other mental or emotional illness plagued him, Jim Adkisson suffered from a profound sense of alienation, anxiety and insecurity. Like so many in our modern world, he found himself caught in tides of economic and social dislocation. Seeking an explanation for his suffering, he gravitated to the loudest available option: the fear, hate, and scapegoating of the "shouting Right."

Reinhold Neibuhr was one of the giants of 20^th century American theology, and an astute observer of human nature, especially its dark side. Neibuhr once said that the root cause of human sin—of all manner of human sin, the big stuff and the small stuff—is human insecurity. He meant insecurity in an existential sense: as mortals who enjoy the gift of life but understand that this gift will one day be taken away from us—that we are fated to die—we all live with a fundamental insecurity. The insecurity of our being. All other anxieties---those that arise from our circumstance or our constitution—are mere embellishments upon this original anxiety. For me, this explanation of human wrongdoing hits uncomfortably close to home. How about you? Perhaps your conscience, like mine, can right now call up a substantial list of things you know you shouldn’t have done. And perhaps you, too, find insecurity and anxiety lingering in the shadows of that wrongdoing. Insecure in love, we hurt those closest to us. Anxious about our financial security, we step on others for our own gain, use them as means to our ends. What is true of humans is true also of nations. We know that insecure nations conduct bellicose foreign policy: they commit genocide, build fences along borders, start pre-emptive wars.

When we look at what he did, Jim Adkisson appears to us as a monster. But when we examine why he did it—when we understand his loneliness, his anxiety, his insecurity, his sense of powerlessness—suddenly he appears not so different from the rest of us. Jim Adkisson is like a mirror for me, in him I see myself as I truly am—a vulnerable and insecure person often seeking his security by hurting others.

If this is indeed our predicament---if we do, indeed, suffer from this existential anxiety—this insecurity—and if this is the cause of our sin—is there no hope for us? Is there no balm for our anxious souls? Or is it as the poet once said, "The only sense of security is a false sense of security."

Well, if by security we mean escaping our mortality, then no, I’m afraid there is no security. But if by security we mean a reprieve from the anxiety and uncertainty of being, a resting place for our anxious souls, then I believe the answer is "Yes, there is a balm."

Paul Tillich, another titan of 20^th century theology, who taught at Harvard and at Union Seminary in Manhattan, was a great and complicated intellect. Yet for all his dense theological work, Tillich was probably most famous for a sermon that he used to preach as he made his way around the college chapel circuit back in the 50s and 60s, a sermon titled, simply, "You Are Accepted." You are accepted. At first this might seem a rather modest title for a sermon. Not, you are saved. Not, you are the lucky winner of a one way ticket to Glory. You are accepted.

The modest title belies the profound experience at the heart of that sermon, the moment when, in the midst of our dislocation, our insecurity, and our anxiety, we glimpse a truth that puts our souls at ease. Here are Tillich’s words:

"Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: ‘You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!’ If that happens, we experience grace."

Grace. Do you know the experience that Tillich is talking about? A moment of existential peace, belonging, acceptance. I think its what Wendell Berry was describing in our reading this morning when he was liberated from the anxiety and despair that had driven him out of bed in the middle of the night by going out amongst nature. He said, "For a moment I rest in the grace of the world and am free." You are accepted. You belong.

One of the first times I felt this experience was the day I discovered the Unitarian church. I was 23 years old, and recently out of the closet. I was living in Oregon when the Religious Right was putting referenda on the state ballot that would severely restrict the civil rights of gays and lesbians. The airwaves that political season were filled with hate speech toward gay people, we were called sinner and pedophiles. One day in the midst of it all I was walking through downtown Portland and happened upon a church. It was an old church, looked like it belonged back in New England, whose red brick walls and a white columns were covered with signs that said, "Hate Free Zone." It was a large church, that took up a whole city block, and whose entire block, church walls, street signs, trees, were draped in flowing ribbons of pink. I walked in that morning and say way back in the far corner, which, if you pay attention, you’ll notice is often where the vulnerable and the broken will sit. On that first Sunday, an openly gay parishioner spoke from the pulpit, carrying his infant child in his arms. The first time I’d ever seen an openly gay person in church. The preacher—a woman—preached a gospel I’d never heard of before, called Universalism—the good news of God’s love for the whole human family. Friends, in that moment I heard that voice to which Tillich refers, whispering, "You are accepted." And not only that: "You are beloved." "I will call them my people who were not my people; and her beloved who was not beloved."

Jim Adkisson walked into a Unitarian Church 4 weeks ago. He, too, was feeling under siege, alienated from the culture around him. He, too, was seeking some assurance—some balm—for his troubled soul. Not unlike me on that Sunday 15 years ago. Not unlike you this morning. Not unlike the parishioners in Knoxville that he opened fire on. To me, that adds yet another layer of tragedy to the events in Knoxville. Jim Adkisson had come seeking the right thing…he’d come to the right place to find it…yet he came with a loaded gun and heart full of hate. If he had come, instead, with an open heart, he likely would’ve been greeted that morning by the usher, Greg McKendry, a man that he killed. Greg would’ve likely handed him a program and given him one of those warm welcomes for which he was known in the church. He would’ve sat down in the back corner of the church—where the broken and vulnerable sit---and would’ve enjoyed a pageant put on by the children. And maybe Jim Adkisson would’ve heard that whisper that Tillich spoke of: "You are accepted." "You are beloved." But it was not to be.

Few places are better suited to deliver this message of love and acceptance than a Unitarian Universalist church. Our gospel of love runs deep and our embrace is wide. The world needs Unitarian Universalism now more than ever. Let me put it to you this way:

The church I serve in Washington, DC, is called All Souls. I know I’m biased, but I happen to believe that All Souls is just about the best a name a church can have. For in those two words are summed up all that is good and true and beautiful about religion. I mean, can you imagine a church that called itself, "Some Souls Church"? They’d never admit it, but isn’t that the de facto name of the dominant religious culture in America. Too many people in our world worship a God of some souls. A God who plays favorites. A God who picks and chooses, separating the wheat from the chaff, the saved from the damned, the chosen from the forgotten.

The Good News that we Unitarian Universalists must share is that a God who picks and chooses is no God at all. It is an idol. Instead, we must lift up our message that at the center of the universe there is a love that calls to all of us—not some—that calls to all of us with the words, "You are accepted. You are beloved." A love that is greater than us that can provide a balm to our anxious and insecure souls.

I’ve been told by people who doubt it that this motion that there is a love that embraces all people—and not just some—sounds too good. That it’s too good to be true. I always like to remind them what Mae West once said. She once warned, "Too much of a good thing . . . is wonderful!" Other folks worship a god of some souls, and they have the audacity to call that the "good news." We stand for a love that embraces ALL souls, and I dare say that is the even better news.

And those of us who would seek to honor this tragedy and those who died in it would do well to go on preaching our gospel and bearing witness to it in the world through acts of justice and compassion. All Souls are welcome and accepted at the table of love and human fellowship. All Souls, up to and including, and even most especially…you…and you…and you. You are accepted. You are beloved. Amen.