“When we love, justice and revolution are not burden or responsibility but passion and opportunity.”
Sermon by Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, May 5, 2019.
Jesus asked, “Do you love me?”
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“Are you coming back?”
I spend five to six hours a month in Men’s Central Jail. With Twin Towers next door, Men’s Central is one of the largest jails in the world — severely overcrowded, noisy, crumbling and rat infested. It has been ranked as one of the 10 worst prisons in the nation. If it were an animal shelter, it would have been shut down years ago for its inhumanity. But there it stands … with more than 4,200 souls trapped inside – 120% of capacity.
Most of the time we spend walking the long rows of cramped, dirty cells dimly lit by fluorescent light. I go cell to cell. Introduce myself. Ask if the person inside wants to talk.
“What’s on your heart?” I ask.
Some don’t want to talk … and that’s fine.
Many do.
Sometimes we talk about their cases … but usually not. I never ask about them. I never ask if they are guilty or not. A crime is not who they are. Even if they are guilty … and especially on what’s called the high-power rows where these are men incarcerated for horrible crimes … I remember Brian Stevenson’s words:
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
I remember the words of the women of Thistle Farms:
“Love without judgment.”
I try to resist the temptation to offer unsolicited counsel.
I remember the words of other teachers I have had.
Seek only to be present
…to know
…to love
I remember the words of Pema Chodron and other teachers of many faiths.
There will be pleasure, and there will be pain
There will be joy, and there will be fear.
Embrace them all.
Befriend them all.
If guilt comes in, ask it why and learn from it.
If shame comes in, ask it why and learn from it.
Finally, I remember the words of Jesus:
“I was in prison, and you visited me.”
I remember those words and remember that Jesus was a death row inmate. I remember that I am there not to do a good deed or something virtuous but to meet Jesus
to listen to Jesus
to pray with Jesus
to love Jesus
to be changed by Jesus.
And so, we talk.
Mostly I just listen.
Sometimes for two minutes. Sometimes for 30 or 40.
At the end, most of the time, we pray, holding hands through the bars. And then, as I prepare to move to the next cell, almost every time the same question:
“Are you coming back?”
“Are you coming back?”
I know this question well.
It is a question with deep, deep roots.
It is a question that has so many other questions underneath it.
Are you coming back?
Am I just a curiosity?
Am I just a subject for you to study?
Am I just something for you to do to make yourself feel better?
Or am I something more?
It’s a question that isn’t only for the jails. It’s for the prisons of loneliness and unworthiness we all too often find ourselves trapped in.
It sounds like:
“Can I call you?”
“Want to get together again sometime?”
“When will you be home?”
The eyes gaze at me through the bars. Hands are still held in hands.
I was in prison and you visited me.
Is this where it ends?
Are you coming back?
I know what that question really means.
I am standing on the lakeshore.
I am Peter, standing before Christ.
And Christ is saying:
Are you coming back?
But what Christ is really saying is:
“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me?”
“Do you love me?” is the ultimate question of vulnerability. I once heard Dante’ scholar Peter Hawkins preach that “Do you love me?” is the riskiest question we can ever ask because it puts us at the complete mercy of the person giving the answer.
We crave the “Yes.” We crave being fully known and fully loved.
We fear the “No.” We fear the rejection and having our inner, lying voices of unworthiness confirmed.
“Do you love me” is the ultimate human question. So, it is little wonder that it is on Jesus’ lips as he stands with Peter on that shore.
Because, spoken or unspoken, it is the question that is so often on ours.
The world’s deep brokenness.
All the systems of injustice that oppress and imprison.
All the ways we cast each other into the bottomless pit and sell each other to the merchant ships.
All our prisons of body, mind and spirit from which we need liberation and emancipation.
The laundry list of -isms I for many predictably and annoyingly tend to raise in my preaching.
All these are built and maintained in our vain attempt to secure the answer “Yes” and defend ourselves from the answer “No” to this most human of questions:
Do you love me?
On Easter Sunday, we cried out that we were tired of singing the same old songs. That we wanted to sing a redemption song.
We proclaimed that these songs were already out there, being sung in communities of the exiled and cast off. That these songs were songs of revolution, because nothing less than a revolution would do. That these songs are waiting for all of us to join in.
That it doesn’t have to be this way.
We shouted these words and we meant them … and then over the past two weeks, I have heard so many of you ask the same question: How?
We want to sing a new song, a redemption song.
We want to be part of this revolution of love.
How?
How do we do it?
It is a great question. It is absolutely the right question.
And while I cannot give you THE answer, because I don’t think there is THE answer … I can give you AN answer. An answer I have found to be deeply true, transformative, painful, scary, educational, disturbing, and most of all deeply joyful and life-saving.
How do we do it?
How do we learn a redemption song?
How do we join the revolution of love?
By falling in love — one person at a time.
That’s it. That’s my answer. That’s what I’ve found.
We go out to the places where Christ tells us the Christ is to be found.
Out to the margins of society.
Out wherever images of God are despised and imprisoned and rejected and left without.
Out where people are told they are worse than the worst thing that they have done.
Out where there is judgment without love.
Out where guilt and shame are not befriended but become accelerants for fear.
We meet Christ one person at a time.
And we ask, “What is on your heart?”
And we listen.
And we learn.
And we are inspired by the beauty of what we see and hear and touch and feel.
And we hold hands through the bars.
And we are changed forever.
We meet Christ one person at a time.
And Christ tells us what needs to change.
Christ teaches us the anthems of revolution.
Christ teaches us our redemption song.
One person.
One moment.
One thought.
One idea.
One love at a time.
We meet Christ, and Christ stays with us.
As we go to bed at night, we think of the Christ we just met.
Where are they sleeping?
What are they thinking?
What are they loving?
What are they fearing?
And as we go about the rest of our lives, as we sit at our tables of power and authority and decision, they are with us … the Christ we have met one person at a time is with us … and they are whispering in our ear … not voices of guilt and shame but of love.
Are you coming back?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
And as we spend time together
As we open ourselves up to one another
As we let each other see and help each other see the divine in each other.
We learn that the answer is …
Yes.
And then we have to ask
What does love look like?
Because when we love, we cannot abide pain and injustice for those whom we love and have loved us.
When we love, justice and revolution are not burden or requirement but passion and opportunity.
It is our joy to commit to living the love that isn’t a noun but a verb.
It is our joy to change our lives and change our world not because we should, not out of guilt, not out of shame but because we are so in love that we cannot bear the ones we love to be in pain any more.
It is our joy to be revolutionaries for love because we are loved and because we are in love.
We meet Christ one person at a time.
And when we do, we fall in love … and we let others fall in love with us.
And that’s what changes the world. One person. One love at a time. That’s the revolution. The revolution of love.
That is what drives me.
I have become and am becoming a revolutionary for love.
I have become seriously annoying and disturbing not because I have read a book or considered a logical argument or heard a really good story on NPR.
I am becoming a revolutionary for love, I am becoming even more annoying and disturbing because I have met Christ and fallen in love over and over and over again.
I insist on continuing to say Black Lives Matter not because it’s the good, progressive thing to do or because of any virtue in me but because I have fallen in love. Because of Brittany and Alexis and Jasmine and Andre.
I campaign for abolishing prisons and building treatment and counseling and job training centers because I have fallen in love with Michael and Scott and Devonte.
I work to end sexual exploitation of women and help fund women’s cooperatives because I have fallen in love with Regina and and Katrina and Shelia and Hayley.
I stay up nights wondering how we can end the indignity of homelessness because I have fallen in love with Steve and Bob and Debra.
I rail against the ongoing destruction of colonial capitalism because I have fallen in love with James and Stephen and Mama Jennifer and Jean-Baptiste.
I get arrested for the undocumented refugees among us because I have fallen in love with people whose names I cannot mention because even mentioning their names would put them in even greater danger than they are.
I could go on and on and on. I struggle to focus my life after falling in love with so many people. One of the greatest blessings of life is that there are so many more names in my list of love.
I have fallen in love with all these people and so many more. All these beautiful Christs whom I have met and keep on meeting. Who have given me the gift of their presence, their story, their truth, their love. And I not only have to live my life for their love, healing and liberation because of the power of that love, I get to live my life that way. It is not a burden, it is the deepest joy.
And that’s not all.
I stand up here Sunday after Sunday and talk about this stuff not only because I love them but because I have fallen in love, I am falling ever more deeply in love … with you.
I don’t think you have any idea how much I love you. How beautiful you are. How brilliantly Christ shines in you. How much you inspire me.
I love you so much, and I want this for all of us together. I want to know the joy you have, and I want you to know the joy that I am finding. And this is the way of love, the way of Christ, that I have found. And my deepest dream is that we walk it together. One person. One step. One love at a time.
Many of us are doing it already. And where we are, I hope we will begin even more to share the stories. Because transformation not shared is wasted. I am hoping we will more and more be intentional about growing this revolution one person, one love affair at a time.
There is something we are slowly working into some of the job descriptions here at All Saints Church, and I hope if you haven’t already you will work it into your job description as being a part of this community. And that is spending at least five hours a month in a ministry of presence of befriending and loving Christ in a marginalized community of which you are not a member. A ministry not of fixing but being present … and listening … and loving … and being changed.
For me, it’s the jails … other people will choose other things. We are doing this with the idea that it will become a part of the life of every member of this community. That each and all of us will go out and meet, fall in love and be transformed by Christ where Christ told us Christ would be.
How do we join the revolution? That’s how. Each of us. One person at a time.
And then we bring that transformation back into this community where we share stories, and it informs us and changes us. So that when we talk and pray and learn and play and make decisions, we will carry these voices, these stories, these faces, these lives on our hearts.
That is what will lead us truly into radical inclusion, courageous justice, joyful spirituality and ethical stewardship. Falling in love so much we cannot bear to be about anything else.
And, as we are changed, we will look more and more like these marginalized communities and we will be living the wisdom of Greg Boyle when he says the mission of the church is to “gather everyone at the margins until the margins disappear under our feet.”
That is our revolution of love.
That is our redemption song.
One person. One moment.
One love. One heart.
Do you love me?
It’s the question that Christ stands before us asking.
It’s the question that our hearts silently are pleading.
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
Do you love me?
As we spend time together
As we open ourselves up to one another
As we let each other see and help each other see the divine in each other.
We learn that the answer from us and for us is …
Yes.
Amen.
