A Special Service in Remembrance of the victims of the deadly shooting on July 27, 2008, at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, Knoxville. Tennessee Valley and the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church, Farrugut, were holding a joint service.
The Sermon by Rev. Henley
There was a little girl who lived on the West Side of downtown Chicago, many years ago when the West Side was a place where poor people lived. Helene was her name, and she was the youngest of five daughters. She walked to school in shoes that had been repaired with cardboard. Her mother slipped the cardboard inside her shoes because there were holes in the bottom of her soles. The cardboard was supposed to keep her socks from getting wet when it was raining, and keep her feet from freezing when it was snowing. Of course, we know that the cardboard really didn’t protect her feet.
Her shoes had to be repaired with cardboard until her mother could scrape together enough money to buy a pair of shoes for the oldest daughter who could then pass on her shoes to her younger sister, who could then pass on her shoes and so on, until all five girls had another pair of shoes.
Helene’s family was so poor because it was the Depression, and their father had lost his job and had hitched a ride on a train West to see if he could find work. Although he wrote occasionally, he never found any work and he never sent any money back to Helene’s family.
The girls only had one dress to wear to school, and the children at school made fun of Helene and her sisters.
Of course, it goes without saying, that at Christmas they didn’t have turkey and dressing for their holiday dinner, and of course there was no presents for the girls. The only special food Helene’s mother could afford to buy was wieners and hot dog buns. So for Christmas dinner they had good, ol’ fashioned Chicago hot dogs with sauerkraut, relish, and onions!
When the girls went out Christmas afternoon to look at the lights in the neighborhood, the other kids out playing in the snow pelted them with snowballs and made fun of them because they didn’t even had one Christmas present.
Helene ran in crying, followed by her sisters, and their mother asked them why they were in so soon and why was Helene crying? When she found out, she took the one hot dog bun she had left. She sat it on the table; she put the wiener in the bun. She looked at the girls and said,
“Life is like this hot dog. This is our life. It’s not the best anyone could have, but it is our life. And this relish here, it represents love. And she piled on the relish on top of the hot dog. Now, some people eat their hot dogs without relish, they live their whole lives without any love. We on the other hand, eat our hot dogs with a lot of relish, and we have a lot of love in our lives.
Remember this girls, no matter what situation you find yourselves in as your grow up, you will always have a choice. You can live your life with a lot of love or a little love, or no love. You decide how much relish you want on your hot dog?”
Love is the relish on the hot dog of life.
When I think of Jim David Adkisson, the 58 year-old unemployed truck driver who carried the 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley UU Church last Sunday and opened fire on the congregation, I think, there was a man who had very little relish on his hot dog of life.
Jonathan Fast, a professor at Yeshiva University Wurzweiler School of Social Work who has studied school violence and school rampage killings wrote a column this week about Adkisson. [Jonathan Fast, MSW, PhD, “A School Shooting” posted August 1, 2008, on HuffingtonPost.com]
Fast explained Adkisson’s behavior:
“Adkisson was a man for whom life no longer seemed worth living. School shooters reach this state after years of being bullied and abused, abused physically or sexually, and rejected by peers and girlfriends. Social awkwardness, psychiatric problems and learning disabilities further aggravate the situation. Adkisson had failed in relationships … and failed vocationally … His food stamps had been terminated, making survival difficult. According to some sources, he was alcoholic and subject to lingering dark moods. Alcoholism is often associated with getting developmentally "stuck," at the age when the drinking began.”
Adkisson developed a hatred for people who were different than him. He also blamed his problems and society’s problems on “liberals.” And the “liberals” he hated the most were religious liberals. All this led to a need for revenge. He chose a church where one of his former wives attended more than eight years earlier.
And we know the horrible story. And we pray that it won’t happen again.
What does Jesus’ miracle of feeding the multitude have to do with people like Jim Adkisson? The people in that crowd were the marginalized: poor farmers and laborers, beggars, outcasts and the homeless. An oppressed, conquered people, often by their own ruling priests, as well as by the Roman system.
The crowd had plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied and feel hopeless and full of despair. They had good reason and that is probably why they came to hear this unusual rabbi from Nazareth. They sat in the desert sun for three days listening to his story and his mission.
Later conditions would change; later, after this rabbi was killed, their children and grandchildren would become militant. But not now, they were inclined to listen to the stories of hope that Jesus offered. And after three days, when Jesus knew he had to move on, for rest if nothing else, he knew he could not send them home without a meal to sustain them through the desert to their villages.
How did a few fish and a few loves feed the multitude of hungry, marginalized people who came to hear Jesus message of hope? They made a decision to share what little they had, and that was the miracle.
Just as the mother on the west side of Chicago told her daughters, “You decide how much relish you want on your hot dog?” So the crowd,
living in a culture of poverty,
influenced by Jesus’ message of love,
shared the little they had.
All Jesus asked of us was to love God and love each other.
For all the Jim Adkissons in the world, there are billions of people, who go about their lives, living and loving, come what may.
How much relish do we have on our hot dog? Do we need more? Do we want more? The answer is as simple as Jesus’ "love commandment," the more we love, the more we will be loved.
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After this sermon we lit a candle for Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger, killed by Jim Adkisson on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley UU Church during a joint service with Westside UU Church, Knoxville, TN.
Our head deacon David Skidmore read:
“Poems Old and New” from A Tagore Reader edited by Amiya Chakraverly
The world today is wild with the
delirium of hatred,
the conflicts are cruel and unceasing
in anguish,
crooked are its paths, tangled its bonds
of greed.
All creature are crying for a new birth
of thine,
Oh, Thou of boundless life,
save them, rouse thine eternal voice of hope,
let Love’s lotus with its inexhaustible
treasure of honey
open its petals in thy light.
O Serene, O Free,
In thine immeasurable mercy and goodness
wipe away all dark stains from the heart
of this earth.
Thou giver of immortal gifts
Give us the power of renunciation
and claim from us our pride.
In the splendor of a new sunrise of wisdom
let the blind gain their sight
and let life come to the souls that are dead.
O Serene, O Free,
in thine immeasurable mercy and goodness
wipe away all dark stains from the heart
of this earth.
After the reading, we sang Hymn #1 in Singing the Living Tradition “May Nothing Evil Cross this Door.”
I then read an except from an article by Barbara Brown Taylor, “What’s New?” in Christian Century, 5/30/06
“There is always tragedy somewhere, as the news reminds us so well. But there is not always tragedy everywhere, which the news does not make quite so clear. The good news is that where ferries are going down, brave people are diving into water to lift thrashing children to safety. Where crops are failing, generous people are providing relief for farmers and migrant workers, and where a [disappears], an entire community is turning out to hunt clues, post flyers, cook food and keep watch with the family.
Meanwhile, there are entire towns where nothing terrible is happening, where parents are caring for children with remarkable tenderness, where nurses are tending patients, mail carriers are delivering packages, and at least one person is taking off work early to coach a youth soccer team. Terrible things will continue to happen, which the best efforts of people will not be sufficient to prevent, but bursts of gratuitous kindness are the mustard seeds from which healing bushes sometimes grow. They constitute the alternate reality that I want to live in…”
Then I gave this FINAL REFLECTION:
We must remember, there is far more goodness and love in the world than there is meanness and hate. We are called as a people of faith
to love,
to pray, and
to trust.
To love God and love each other
To pray, not for miracles, but for the generosity to give from whatever we have, and
To trust that all will be well, that all will be well
TODAY'S BIBLICAL READING:
Matthew 14:13-21 is the very familiar story of one of Jesus’ miracles.
13 As soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone. But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns.
14 Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
15 That evening the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16 But Jesus said, “That isn’t necessary—you feed them.”
17 “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish!” they answered.
18 “Bring them here,” he said.
19 Then he told the people to sit down on the grass. Jesus took the five loaves and two fish, looked up toward heaven, and blessed them. Then, breaking the loaves into pieces, he gave the bread to the disciples, who distributed it to the people.
20 They all ate as much as they wanted, and afterward, the disciples picked up twelve baskets of leftovers.
21 About 5,000 men were fed that day, in addition to all the women and children!