This morning we drove the 45 minutes it takes to get to our church. Not going was not an option. We needed to sit together with one another to find solace in community, rest for our weary souls, and renewal to keep on keeping on when the going can feel so tough.
Ours is a beautiful gathering of perfectly imperfect humans. Open and affirming, the doors open to all, we are a community of people on individual spiritual journeys that can best be traveled together. We don’t all agree on everything, except for one thing.
We agree on Love.
The kind of love that has the power to move mountains, no matter how slowly. The kind that calls us to not just talk about love, but to actually be love to the world within our reach. The kind that chooses to love others, even those, perhaps especially those, with whom we disagree. It’s a tough love, and not for the faint of heart.
There’s a time when a microphone is passed around for people to share prayers of concern, and prayers of joy and thanksgiving. Listening to what was on the hearts of others about the goings on in our world, I didn’t think I had anything to add. Until I did. I wasn’t going to raise my hand for the microphone. Until I did. The words that came out were unexpected. It wasn’t that I found the words to say, it was that the words that wanted to be said found me. And once they found me, I couldn’t not say them.
What if we choose love as an act of resistance?
We all have people in our lives who we love but who see the world differently than we do, perhaps voted differently than we did, and who want things to change in ways that we don’t, or stay the same in ways that we want to change.
I could feel heads nodding all around me. The way heads nod when we hear something true.
What if we refuse to be separated from those we love?
What if we choose to stay as closely connected with them as we are able, and give each other grace for the times we will most certainly fall short of the best of our intentions?
What if we mobilize our love for one another as an act of resistance to the political and power-hungry forces hell-bent on pulling us apart?
There is no power greater than love.
Not unless we give it away.
Let’s not do that.
Let’s choose love as an act of resistance.
Amen.
