It's Not Normal

The Reverend Peter A. Friedrichs

October 1, 2006

Unitarian Universalist Church of Delaware County

Where were you one week ago today, at this very moment? What were you doing? Many of you, I know, were sitting right here, perhaps in the very seats you occupy this morning. Others of you may have been teaching a religious education class. Some of you may have been sitting at home, sipping your second cup of coffee and reading the morning paper. Or maybe you went out to a nice café for brunch. If you were here last week, you remember that we named and dedicated Jadzia Marie Haines, a beautiful and vivacious little girl.

At just about this time last Sunday, while we were celebrating this new life in our midst, another young life ended in violence. Five year old Casha'e Rivers, sitting in the back of her mother's car as they drove down the street of their neighborhood in Philadelphia on a quiet Sunday morning much like this one, was shot dead, a bullet through her heart.

This is a deeply tragic story. Casha'e had started kindergarten at Harrison Elementary School just a few weeks earlier. By all accounts she was a bright, even precocious child. Her life was bound to be hard, there's no doubt about that. Casha'e's father is in jail on a drug conviction charge and she was being raised in a rough neighborhood where drug dealers occupy nearly every street corner. But just like Jadzia, Casha'e's life was full of promise and potential. And now, she is dead.

Casha'e has become a statistic, the 287th homicide in the City of Philadelphia this year. Since Casha'e's death last week, six more people have been killed, according to the grim box score reported by the Inquirer each morning, right next to the latest scores from the Phils and the Eagles. Last Thursday, the tally sat squarely beneath an article reporting on the state legislature's decision not to enact tough gun control legislation. The headline read: "Mostly, a Miss on Gun Control.".

Yes, this is a deeply tragic story, one of 293 tragic stories of lost lives on the streets of Philadelphia this year. Andre Bivins. James Herbert. Michael Lawry. Leary Wall. Robert Burton. The list goes on and on, each violent death a tragedy, until we are engulfed by a sea of tragedies. And how do our lawmakers respond to this man-made disaster? Do they adopt aggressive measures to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals? Do they support funding of jobs initiatives? Do they pump money into the school systems? No. Instead, they wave the Second Amendment in our faces and jealously guard their campaign coffers, fattened by the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun concerns. Like so many ostriches they bury their heads in the sand. They say "It's not our problem, what happens in Philadelphia." They talk of hiring more cops and increasing the sentencing guidelines. Less than a week after Casha'e was murdered, State representatives rejected legislation that would assess higher penalties for gun shops that sell to "straw" buyers. They turned down a bill that would limit the sale of ammunition to licensed gun owners. They refused to give the City permission to adopt stricter gun control ordinances than the state imposes. And this week they'll reject a proposal that would limit the right to purchase a handgun to one gun per month per person.

You may think that it can't happen here. Here in Delaware County we're insulated from the violence of 30th and Huntington or the 6000 block of Locust Street. But have you heard about Lou's? Lou's Loans. Also known as "Lethal Lou's." It's a pawn shop right in Upper Darby, a mere 15 minute car ride from this very spot. According to Philadelphia police, guns bought at Lou's killed 19 people and injured another 65 in the last three years. Between 1996 and 2000, Lou's sold 441 guns that were linked in some way to crimes. 15 minutes from here. The ATF finally revoked Lou's license to sell guns, but the shop's owner is challenging that in court.

There is an old adage that says if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he'll jump right out again. But if you put that same frog in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, he'll just sit there until he boils to death. The problem of violence in our city is not new. I would venture to guess that for many the daily tally of slayings barely raises an eyebrow. The heat has been building for so long that some don't even break a sweat. "This is what life is like in the big city," they might say. But I'm here to tell you: This is not normal. This is not the way people should live. Little girls should not be gunned down in broad daylight while riding through their own neighborhoods. I feel like the new frog in town, tossed into this water and, my friends, I'm here to tell you that we're at a slow boil. And we've got to get out of this pot before we all perish.

I admit that this is a complex situation. While I would advocate for reasonable gun control measures, some of you may see this as an encroachment on personal liberty that is unacceptable. We can agree to disagree on that. But where we cannot disagree is that 5 year olds, fifteen year olds, fifty year olds, should not be dying in our streets each and every day. Gun control alone isn't going to solve this problem. More police patrols won't do it. Tighter sentencing guidelines aren't the answer. When six out of every ten young African American men in Philadelphia are unemployed,* six out of ten, finding people jobs is part of the solution. And if employment is a significant issue, education follows close on its heels. A friend of mine is teaching in a North Philadelphia public school this year in the Teach For America program. She tells me that her average class has more than 40 students in it. 40 students per teacher. Oh, and her room has fewer than 30 desks. Not only that, but more than half of her kids don't speak any English. In the eighth grade. And the school doesn't offer English as a Second Language classes. The needs of special ed. students are left unaddressed because of funding cutbacks, and after-school enrichment classes are non-existent because the neighborhood is too dangerous for the teachers to stay after dark. Is it any wonder that Philadelphia's drop-out rates are among the highest in the country and that we find gangs fighting for turf seemingly on every street corner?

As people committed to this Unitarian Universalist faith of ours, we covenant to promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations and to pursue the goal of world community with peace, justice and liberty for all. This is the ethical dimension of our faith, the dimension that urges us to action. As people of faith we are committed to working for justice. We are committed to striving for liberty. We are committed to making peace and acting with compassion. The interdependent web of which we are a part doesn't have boundaries that end at the city line. Every morning when I pick up the paper, and read of the carnage from the day before, the well-worn verse by John Donne rings in my ears:

The ethical orientation of our faith compels us to be "involved with mankind," to respond to injustice and inequity when we encounter it. Whether you are in favor of gun control or against it, whether you support the welfare system or oppose it, whether you think school vouchers are a good idea or a bad one, our Unitarian Universalist values require us to do what we can to promote the values of justice, equity and compassion in all human relations. We cannot call ourselves Unitarian Universalists if we don't, and when violent crime takes the life of a young girl, or a teenage boy, or an old man, we have a moral obligation to confront the problem and to seek a solution.

From my perspective this also goes beyond a moral imperative. As religious people, people who hold as our highest value the transformative power of love, we must act to end this epidemic of violence in our midst. We are called by our faith to love our neighbors as ourselves, and our neighbors are being murdered at an alarming rate. Last week I promised to would tell you my thoughts on God, and although this is not the context I had intended at the time, it's as good as any, and perhaps better than most. I believe in God, but probably not the God that you picture when I make that statement. I do not believe in the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. My God is a divine power that exists among us. It is the power that flows out of relationships of deep meaning. In its simplest form, God is the power of abiding love. This power, this God, exists everywhere and always because these relationships exist everywhere and always. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." The power of divine love, what I call God, helps us and heals us, and it shows up in unexpected ways. The phone call from a friend you haven't heard from in years, just when you need it most. The unexpected hug from your sullen teenage son when you've had a horrible day at work. The spouse who listens to your crazy idea to become a minister, and says "Yes." All of these are God working in our lives.

One of the implications of this belief in God as the divine power of love in our lives is the fact that we share the responsibility for God's continued existence. We can actually increase God's power in the world by working to deepen our relationships, by drawing tight the strands of our interdependent web. By strengthening the bonds of community, by creating interactions of substance between each other, we increase the power of divine love in the world. And because we have this control over the Divine, we are obligated to work to enhance and multiply it. That is the religious imperative of such a belief in God.

Now this has all gotten pretty heady, so let me bring it back down to earth and the matter at hand. When we commit acts of violence, or when we allow others to do so, we diminish the power of love in our lives. Just as we have the ability to strengthen God's power, so do we have the ability to weaken it. A week ago today, God took a hit. When Casha'e was killed, the relationships she had, and all those she would have had, were lost to this world. There is less Divine love in the world as a result. So it is whenever we weaken or break the sacred bonds that connect us all. The daily violence in the streets of Philadelphia is killing our neighbors and it is killing God. And it must stop.

Yes, it is a complex issue, and the thought of tackling it is overwhelming. It is a question of violence. It is a question of race. It is a question of poverty. It is a question of employment. It is a question of education. The death toll by violent crime summons forth our greatest fears and our greatest doubts: Our fears of failure, and doubts about our power to effect meaningful change. Do we really believe the slogan that is a favorite UU bumper sticker, the words of Margaret Mead, when she says "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."? Confronting the challenge of violent crime in our city also calls forth other fears as well. Fear of facing the "other." Fear of facing undeniable realities. Fear of moving out of our own comfort zones. Even fears for our personal safety. When I read of Casha'e's murder, my first impulse was to drive down to the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia. I wanted to see, first-hand, what it looks like, this place that must be so different from Swarthmore and Media and West Chester. But I haven't, because I am afraid. Now this is not Baghdad or Fallujah. This is not a city on some distant shore, populated with a hostile enemy. This is my city, populated by my neighbors. Yet I am afraid to go down there because it's a place where people are shot in broad daylight.

And then there is the fear of being transformed. What if we get involved in this work of promoting liberty and justice and equity and discover that we're not so comfortable with our own comfort? What if we find that we become consumed by our compassion? What if we discover that Marianne Williamson is right when she writes: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." Yes, there's plenty to be afraid of.

But the time has come to face our fears and to move beyond them. What can be done? I'm not sure. What should we do? I don't yet know. Can we make a difference? I surely hope so. All I know for certain is that we cannot sit idly by and watch the death toll mount, day after day, week after week. All I know is that we must begin to work together to bring this senseless violence to an end. More than two thousand years ago, Lao Tzu wrote that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you'd like to join me on this journey, I invite you to meet with me in the Lounge during Fellowship Hour to explore the first steps we can take.

Where were you one week ago today, at this hour, at this very moment? What were you doing? If you were here, you were celebrating a new life, dedicating yourselves to sharing our Unitarian Universalist values in relationship with Jadzia and her family. Let us dedicate ourselves again, this week.. Let us dedicate ourselves to celebrating all life by seeking to end the violence that takes life away. Let us do this … for Casha'e.…for God. …for one another.

Blessed Be and Amen.

* Philadelphia Inquirer September 23, 2006

Closing Words:

As we extinguish our chalice and bring our worship to an end, I leave you with the words of Edward Everett Hale (#457 SLT):

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