PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO ALL! a response to the shootings at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut

PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TO ALL! a response to the shootings at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut A Sermon Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark December 16, 2012 Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to all! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to all! Till, ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to all! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Peace on earth, good will to all. How unimaginable this familiar Christmas promise seems on this day. I had planned to share today a nice, gentle sermon about our spiritual life. We were going to gently explore the question What is Spirituality in this Christmas season? But this was not a gentle week. These have been a hard and deeply unsettling several days. It feels right to take time this morning to be together in the wake of all our feelings and all our questions. It feels right to take time to share reflections about Friday and also a story from the past. When I woke up yesterday, the day after the horror, my heart was heavy. I woke early, too early for a Saturday morning, and lay still in bed for some time, thinking, thinking, thinking, and watching the light slowly fill the room. The early sunlight, so bright and unburdened, found me so very, very sad: twenty little children were horrifically dead; six teachers had been slaughtered; and one mother lay dead in her home. I wonder what thoughts have moved through your mind and heart since you first heard the news? Perhaps we thought of those children: who were they, and who were they never going to become? Perhaps we thought of the families mothers and fathers and 1

sisters and brothers and grandparents and aunts and uncles families just beginning to comprehend the completely incomprehensible devastation that had engulfed them. Perhaps our minds went to the waiting, the endless waiting: for information and headcounts and body counts and confirmation that your child was among the living. Maybe we thought of those children who survived, seeing and hearing what no child should ever know. We thought of the teachers in that school building who devoted their lives to nurturing the possibility within those young people, and who did everything they could to save them when death stalked in. We thought of the first responders police and fire fighters and medics who walked into the unfathomable. Maybe we thought of the nurses and doctors at the hospital who worked in vain to save the lives of those two little ones who were rushed there amidst sirens and flashing lights. Perhaps we thought of the young man, Adam, who carried those guns into the classrooms, and of the mental confusion and despair that must have so distorted his inherent humanity. Some of us may have let our thoughts linger on his sibling who, in an instant, lost his mother and his younger brother, or of the father who lost his son in more ways than one. Perhaps we pondered the pictures: scared little faces, terrified but brave teachers, tears, emergency vehicles, church services, flowers, candles, teddy bears, and still more tears. Maybe we thought of the members of this congregation our congregation who, in the past, have lost loved ones to violence, who know too well the heartbreak and life altering extremes now being experienced anew. Perhaps we thought of our own children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, and ached to hold them close and never let them go. Perhaps we rushed to their own schools to pick them up in our arms. Perhaps we wondered how we were ever going to let them go back to school again on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday? Perhaps we wondered, and wonder still, if we, if they, are ever going to feel safe again? Maybe we thought of our collective children, the precious and beautiful children of this congregation, our congregation and of how Newtown, Connecticut is just three hours away from our own elementary schools. Perhaps we thought: It could have been us, it could have been them; it could have been our children in the news. Perhaps we thought, and are thinking now, how blessed we are to have these, our children, with us today. Perhaps we thought, and are thinking now, about our own children, and the children who were lost on Friday, and all the children living all over the world and perhaps some part of us wanted to, and still wants to, cry out in a voice large enough and loud enough for all of them to hear: How could anyone ever tell you, You were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you, You were less than whole? How could anyone fail to notice That your loving is a miracle, How deeply you re connected to my soul? 2

Most mornings my dogs and I head over to the reservoir and trails that are near my house. Those woods and that water are my refuge and my place for spiritual thinking. I needed both this weekend. Refuge and spiritual thinking: Don t we all need both this weekend? Yesterday, in the still breaking dawn, I walked along frost-covered paths and ice crusted puddles. The air was Solstice season cold. Looking out at the water in the reservoir, I added my tears to its wetness, remembering these words by poet Wendell Berry: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Where do you go when despair for the world grows in you, when you wake in fear of what your life or your children s lives may be? Where do you find strength, comfort, and counsel? Who or what offers you understanding and perspective? How do you ground yourself? Where or with whom do you place your prayers? In the past, when you faced weekends like these, times when things shattered, what helped recall you to balance and confidence once more? How, in the past, when nothing felt secure and loss was overwhelming, did you find again the promise of peace? Peace. Peace? Peace on earth, good will to all? How unimaginable this familiar Christmas promise seems today. But dealing with tragedy and despair isn t new in the world. I want to share with you a December story about deep despair and an even deeper return to hope, and how these words, peace on earth, good will to all were written. The story takes place here in New England, in Cambridge, just 14 ½ miles from where we sit today. It is the story of one of the world s most famous Unitarians, the great poet and philosopher Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Early in the year 1861, just after the start of the Civil War the war that claimed so many young peoples lives Henry Wadsworth Longfellow s wife, Frances (or Fanny as he called her) was killed in a horrific accident. While working on a sewing project, her dress brushed against a candle flame and caught fire. Screaming for help, she rushed into Longfellow s study. He tried to put out the growing flames with a small rug. When that failed, he wrapped her in his arms to smother the flames with his own body. In doing so, Longfellow s face, arms, and hands were horribly burned. His beloved wife Fanny died the next morning. (http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/fellowship/edit_i.heard.the.bells.html) What thoughts were going through his head in the midst of this loss? 3

The first Christmas after Fanny's death, Longfellow wrote, "How inexpressibly sad are all holidays." A year after the horror, he wrote, "I can make no record of these days. Better leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace." Longfellow's journal entry for [the next] December 25 th [in] 1862 reads: "'A merry Christmas' say the children, but that is no more for me." (Ibid.) Then, just before the next Christmas in 1863, there came another blow. Longfellow s oldest son, Charles, a soldier in the Union Army, was shot in battle and severely injured in the spine. That year, Longfellow wrote nothing in his journal on Christmas Day. But the following year, in 1864, he wrote a poem called Christmas Bells. (Ibid.) In it, Longfellow told of his own personal despair and of the great despair that violence the violence of the Civil War had brought to the children of his country. But somehow, almost unbelievably, he also wrote of hearing, above the din of that despair, the sound of church bells ringing forth. These are his words, adapted slightly "I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Till, ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime A chant sublime Then from each gun s accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born 4

And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said; "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to all! " Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "Love is not dead; nor doth love sleep! The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to all!" Those pealing Christmas bells reminded Longfellow that there are great powers at work in the world, powers that, when united, are stronger than any fear, stronger than any hate, stronger than any evil or misguided act. Those church bells reminded Longfellow of his Unitarian faith and its profound belief: that within each person is inherent goodness, and that goodness within us and among us and beyond us, will carry us, it can be nurtured, and from it can arise once more a people us who, even in the midst of great horror and tragedy, will choose to stand on the side of hope, stand on the side of love, stand on the side of life! He heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar promise play. What do we need to hear on this day so that we will again and again and again choose to stand on the side of hope, stand on the side of love, stand on the side of life? What, my friends, do we need to hear? We need to hear ourselves telling family and friends that we love them. We need to hear ourselves telling strangers that although we don t know them, they are our sister and brother, and we want to call them our friend. We need to hear ourselves telling our lawmakers that it shouldn t be so easy to buy bullets. We need to hear ourselves telling our President that easy access to assault rifles is sinful and wrong. We need to hear ourselves telling the NRA that, yes, our constitution gives us the right to bear arms but we don t need semi-automatic weapons and body armor to hunt a deer or protect our home. We need to hear ourselves telling each other that we will truly address the reality of depression and other mental illness in our teenagers. We need to hear ourselves telling the corporations that grow rich from worldwide weapon sales that the time has come to stop exporting war and destruction to the far ends of the earth. We need to hear ourselves telling toy manufacturers, video game programmers, television networks and film producers that we will no longer accept their fascination with gunshots and their glorification and worship of violence, violence and still more violence! We need to hear ourselves, along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, proclaiming over and over and over: "Love is not dead; nor doth love sleep! 5