Love the Hell Out of the World

Unitarian Church of Harrisburg Clover Lane

March 8, 2015 by Rev. Eric Posa

Viola Liuzzo knew something about hell on earth. Growing

up in a poor, white family during the Great Depression in
Chattanooga, TN, her family struggled economically after
her father was disabled while working as a coal miner.
[TELL LIUZZOS STORY]
We UUs are the inheritors of the great tradition of
Universalism, the tradition that rejected eternal hell, that
lifted up the deep and inalienable lovability of every single
soul. Like so much of our liberal religious heritage, our
understanding of Universalism evolved over the centuries.
The 20th century saw the Universalist Church shift away
from its focus on hell and heaven, and expand to embrace
a universal religion, one that embraces truths from all
religious traditions. This intellectually inclusive approach
served us well for decades. This was the time when the
joke was first told that when people died, you could tell

they were Unitarian Universalists because instead of going

to heaven, they went to the discussion about heaven.
But in the 21st century, our universalism is shifting again.
Our embrace of pluralistic truths is not going away, but its
no longer our defining characteristic. In our post-9/11,
post-Great Recession, post-Ferguson, post-climate
change world, recognition grows among us that embrace
of multiple theological perspectives, while good in as far
as it goes, is not enough to live our religion most fully. We
have to do something about it. A concept of hell is
becoming once again useful, though NOT in the familiar
way. Rather than the old dogma of eternal damnation in
the next life, we are recognizing the need to respond to
those hellish states of existence we experience in this life.
In this world filled with violence and racism, poverty and
depression, war and addiction, we know that much of the
reason for no longer needing eternal hell is because too
many current-day hells pervade our world. Affirming the
core Universalist principle that every person is loved
beyond measure, by a love so powerful that our

predecessors knew it as God, now calls us to spread that

love in ways that ease the suffering of those around us.
Instead of either heaven or a discussion of heaven, we
latter-day Universalists go to helland start freeing people
from it. Because we are called to love the hell out of the
world.
That phrase, Love the hell out of the world, is quickly
becoming the new catch phrase among Unitarian
Universalists committed to putting our faith into action, and
to articulating why it is our faith that guides our actions.
First articulated just 5 years ago by my dear friend and
colleague, Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford, a recent
Google search turned up over well over a dozen UU
ministers who have written sermons or blog posts on the
subject. My friend Rev. Crawford explains the concept this
way:
The hell is all around, and we work, in great
passionate swoops and in slow, plodding routines, to
put that extravagant love into action and remove all
the bits of it from the world. Misery, ill health, disease,

viciousness of greed in the face of want, voices that

shout hate or whisper meanness, soul-eating
addiction, humiliation, despair, injustice that curls up
nastily, poisoning the spirit of giver and receiver ... we
do not flee. Bone-chillingly afraid we may be, but we
step forward. We are the only form love will take and
the work is ours to do.
Here at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg, Ive seen so
many of us embody that love, and take up that work, even
when the circumstances around us doing so were so
hellish. When our LGBT friends and neighbors at Pride
celebrations and social justice events so frequently faced
the bitter opposition of religious reactionaries who tried to
force their own views of hell upon them, it was members of
this church that stepped forward to lead the Silent Witness
Peacekeepers, which offers a nonviolent presence at
LGBT-affirming public events, and silently showing love to
those who opposed us as much as to those we supported.
In part due to their faithful presence, such public
opposition has become minimal in recent years. While I

was not personally able to be with you during much of that

work, I had the joy of celebrating with you this past May
one of its great successes, as same-sex marriage gained
legal recognition in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
and couples who have been committed to one another for
years, for decades, sought out this church to bless
formally their marriages, because we had become known
in this community as a place of acceptance and openness.
This is just one way we have lived out the love that is the
spirit of our church, in order to love more of the hell out of
our world. Weve been loving the hell out of the larger
world, through everything from the environmental
education and organizing gatherings that have happened
here at Clover Lane, to the breakfasts and community
center hours at our Market St. campus. But weve also
loved some of the hell out of each others lives. Held
memorial services that comforted one another through
loss and grief. Offered a pastoral, listening presence to
fellow members struggling through personal challenges.
Our spiritual exploration and practice groups Clover

Grove and the Christian Fellowship, Mindfulness

Meditation and Monday night Yoga add depth and
meaning to the lives of participants, a way out of
complacency and life lived by rote and without purpose.
And yes, our Sunday morning worship, and RGL for our
children and youth, call us out of isolation into beloved
community with one another.
As Rev. Dawn Cooley wrote, Loving the hell out of the
world means being in relationship with the world. It means
constantly expanding who we are. It means challenging
ourselves to not turn away from the pain within ourselves
and within others. Loving the hell out of the world means
loving each other out of hell. It means listening to one
another, learning from one another, helping each other. It
does not mean we will always agree we wont but it
means we will stay in conversation because our mission is
the same, even if our politics or theology are different.
Loving the hell out of the world means overcoming fear,
bitterness, and hatred, with abounding and embodied
love.

It's hard to love the entire world, though. Sure, in the

abstract. But actively, passionately loving everyone and
everything in it? But thats okay, because our call is to love
it in ways that truly drive out some pieces of the hell within
it. We let our hearts crack open, and pour out our love
onto others. When we pour that love out together,
alongside other lovers, we create space where we can
rest our hearts together, stronger in the assurance that in
the presence of so much mutual love, our hearts and our
loving are safe, secure, surrounded by the fierce, joyful
protection of mutual love.
Jesus reminds us in the reading that our treasure follows
our heart. Of course, that verse, adapted, serves as our
stewardship theme this year. We reverse it, as a reminder
that its not the treasure that creates space for our hearts
to rest. Its the movements of our hearts, the flow of our
mutual love, that creates heart-space. The flow of our
material treasures trails in loves wake, as we support our
heart-spaces with our financial resource.

But the paradox is that the reverse is true in another way.

Money may not instigate the creation of heart-space, of a
place to rest in beloved community & be strengthened for
the loving acts to come. But it can and does reinforce such
spaces, as our financial treasures strengthen our policies,
our staffing, our programs and ministries. Our treasures
strengthen our church, that it may better equip and
empower us, separately and together to go out and
strengthen world as UUs. The stronger, more healthy,
more vibrant and yes, better financed a church can be,
the more it can help us love the hell out of the worlds
around us.
Viola Liuzzo, and all others who fought and marched in
Selma, truly loved the hell out of the world as they lived
and died in it. This weekend, as thousands are gathered in
Selma for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, recreating the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
Liuzzo, Rev. James Reeb, and other martyrs of Selma are
being honored for their service and sacrifice to the cause

of civil rights. Those gathered this weekend include literally

hundreds of UUs, some of whom are returning to Selma
50 years after their first visit there. They exemplify
Unitarian Universalism at its best the willingness to
stand beside our brothers and sisters of other faiths, from
other states, and for most of us of other races. This spirit
of abounding and embodied love lifts us out of our
complacency and cynicism, it inspires us to reach out to
one another, reach out to our neighbors, reach out to heal
this world. So may this church, may the Unitarian Church
of Harrisburg, continue to live into that love that is the
antidote to our hellish experiences. May it call us forward,
in Rev. Crawfords words, extravagantly, wastefully, with
an overpouring abandon and fervor that sometimes
surprises even yourself. And may our support of UCH
allow it to continue strengthening us, as we ever seek new
and greater ways to love the hell out of this world. So may
it be, amen.