“Love is our redemption song… it is the human condition that is the only true adventure… it is both our journey and our destination.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, May 19, 2019.
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“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”
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In 1975, Nikki Giovanni, who had been raised on Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and by the time she was 30 had been dubbed “The Poet of the Black Revolution,” wrote a prose poem called “Love: is a Human Condition.” I want to share a part of it with you:
An amoeba is lucky it’s so small
else its narcissism would lead to war
since self-love seems so frequently to lead to self-righteousness
I suppose a case could be made
that there are more amoebas than people
that they comprise the physical majority
and therefore the moral right
But luckily amoebas rarely make television appeals to higher Gods
and baser instincts
so one must ask if the ability to reproduce oneself efficiently has anything to do with love.
The night loves the stars as they play about the Darkness
the day loves the light caressing the sun
We love…
those who do…
because we live in a world requiring light and Darkness
partnership and solitude
sameness and difference
the familiar and the unknown
We love because it’s the only true adventure
I’m glad I’m not an amoeba
there must be more to all our lives than ourselves
and our ability to do more of the same.
Love one another.
Love one another as I have loved you. That’s what Jesus said. And we have spent the past two thousand years trying to figure it out.
And amidst moments of deep brilliance and beauty, in our humanity, what a mess we have made of it.
We have imprisoned love within fear.
We have confused and conflated love with being nice and avoiding conflict.
We have turned love into burden and obligation, something we have to do to “get into heaven” or “be a good Christian” whatever that is.
We have even managed to weaponize the language of love against each other, in the name of Jesus defining who gets to love whom and who is worthy of love and even hating and killing … all in the name of love.
As I once heard someone say who apparently was a little light on the story of the resurrection: “Jesus Christ must be spinning in his grave.”
Jesus tried to make it so simple. Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you. Jesus tried to make it so simple, and, of course, we know it’s not.
We know love is anything but simple.
We know love is beautiful and wonderful and terrifying and complicated.
We know love is an invitation to the height of joy and the depth of pain.
And so why do we do it? Why do we love?
Because love is a human condition. Because somewhere, deep inside we know that we are not amoebas. Somewhere, deep inside we know that there must be more to all our lives than ourselves and our ability to do more of the same.
We love because it is the only true adventure.
Love is the great human adventure of liberation.
Of moving, as Henri Nouwen wrote and Ed Bacon proclaimed, out of the prison of the house of fear into the freedom of that house of love.
Love, James Baldwin wrote, “takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within…. Love … not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
Love is our redemption song, our sure and certain hope as we live in that house of fear that “it doesn’t have to be this way” … that “we don’t have to be this way.” And so we love. And then we fear. And then we love again. And then we fear … and progress is measured by the nanosecond longer we stay in that house of love before we flee back to that house of fear.
Jesus says to his friends: “Love one another.” We hear those words. And together… always together… we try once more.
We love because love is a human condition.
Love is what brings us fully alive.
We love because it is the only true adventure.
Jesus says to his friends: “Love one another” And since 1882, when 11 people gathered in a living room in Pasadena, we have been coming together as All Saints Church … always together … to embark on that adventure anew.
The only true adventure that is love has taken this congregation down a winding path. It has been glorious and dangerous and the one thing it has never been and never will be is dull. And every generation has done what we are beginning to do now … what we are taking our next step in doing today … and that is looking back, looking around and looking forward and asking “what does love, the only true adventure, look, sound, feel, taste and smell like as a new road rises up to meet us?”
For the past several months, your vestry and staff have been wrestling with articulating a set of core values that express the heart of what love lived out loud looks like at All Saints Church … a set of values that are, as Brian Robinson quipped, the “special sauce” that makes All Saints who we are… a set of values that will guide us in discerning the course for this great adventure in the months and years ahead.
Providentially, this week, Sally Howard and I sat down with Richard Rohr and some of his staff at the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque and found they are going through much of the same process – it’s always wonderful to meet partners in the adventure – and how they phrase finding their “special sauce” is asking “what does our transformation look like?”
I like that. Think we might borrow that one, too.
“What does our transformation look like?”
As we have asked that question here at All Saints Church, four values have emerged that have resonated deeply with us as what it has meant and means for All Saints to be on this only true adventure of love … four values that are that “special sauce” that makes All Saints who we are as this adventure continues together.
You’ve heard me say them repeatedly over the past few weeks and today we are opening them up for all of us to reminisce with and dream with, to pray and play with.
What does love look, taste, sound, smell and feel like at All Saints Church?
Radical inclusion
Courageous Justice
Joyful Spirituality
Ethical Stewardship
If you look in the back of your service leaflet, you’ll see these printed with some working definitions that are not meant to be chiseled in stone but to be a launching pad for storytelling and conversation. Four values that are the first fruits of the one of our four foundational goals to claim our values, mission and vision.
I know, four goals, four values … it can be confusing. Sorry about that.
Try to think of it this way. We have four goals to shore up the foundation of our work at All Saints Church so we are ready to move together into our next stage of the only true adventure that is love.
One of those four foundational goals – the goal of claiming our values, mission and vision – has generated these four values that will be our GPS as that adventure continues. Four values that will guide our work and determine our mission and vision for the years ahead.
The four foundational goals will be accomplished over the next couple years. The four values as we affirm and claim them, are our articulation of what has guided us in the past and our commitment of what will continue to lead us into the future.
Now, your vestry has done its work – and so many thanks to Tony Jackson and MaryAnn Ahart and the whole task force on Values, Mission and Vision that has done so much of the heavy lifting of distilling the countless expressions of what makes All Saints All Saints down to these four values.
Your vestry has done its work, and now all of us get to join in. For the next three weeks after each service, there will be tables with members of the vestry and staff where you get to go and engage in conversations about each of these values.
Do they resonate with you?
What do they mean?
Tell a story where we have lived them out.
Tell a story where we have fallen short.
As the road rises to meet us, where are these values calling us to life’s great adventure of love today, tomorrow and in the years to come?
The conversation and storytelling, the praying and the playing will continue in different ways through the summer and into the fall. And I have no desire to short circuit that process by giving you my answers to these questions now … and I do want to say three things about these values.
The first is that these values
Radical Inclusion
Courageous Justice
Joyful Spirituality
Ethical Stewardship
These values are not external things to be imposed on us as burden to be carried or an obligation to be fulfilled. One more list of should. These values come from us. These values come from you. And they are not just from us. They are for us.
Radical Inclusion
Courageous Justice
Joyful Spirituality
Ethical Stewardship
These are not just what we get to be for the world, this is what we get to be for one another … this is what we get to find for ourselves.
Radical Inclusion means this is a community of faith where you are not just tolerated with a passive sense of welcome, but where you are embraced to express yourself fully and lovingly as who you are and expect that your presence will be treated as a gift given by God to change who all of us are just as you are being transformed yourself.
Courageous Justice means this is a community of faith where you will be loved so much we will risk ourselves for you and never let you stand alone.
Joyful Spirituality means this is a community where you will feel beloved in a way that moves you to sing and dance and laugh until tears run down your face.
Ethical Stewardship means this is a community where you can know that everything you offer will be treated with respect and the greatest of care to fuel the movement of the only true adventure of love.
And yes, even as I say these things, I know we can all think of times where this hasn’t happened, where the opposite has happened and is even happening now. That’s because these values always have been and will continue to be both journey and destination. Of course, they are aspirational. We do not pretend now or ever to live them anywhere close to perfectly.
And … articulating these values … letting them emerge from our souls and be implanted in our minds and hearts … letting these values be the definition of our transformation gives us a structure for lovingly dreaming and holding ourselves to account to the best of what this adventure can be in our lives.
So that when we are faced with a decision in liturgy or budgeting or care for one another or what is happening beyond our doors we will transcend personal preference, proximate gain or loss, we will transcend the power of fear and instead look deep into each other’s eyes and deep into our hearts and say:
“What does it mean, right here, right now, in this specific instance to be radically inclusive, courageously just, joyfully spiritual, to be ethical stewards. What does it mean, right here, right now, not to shrink back in fear but to dive headfirst into the one true adventure of love.”
Which brings me to my final word. Jesus was not a centrist and the love commandment is not about just being nice.
The only true adventure that is love is not for the feint of heart. The love commandment of Christ is about being bold. Love as James Baldwin meant it in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. And so, as we dive into these values and tell our stories and dream new dreams, these values will also be looking deep in us and lovingly urging us truly to engage in this adventure of love.
Because to be boldy and radically inclusive means asking ourselves “who am I, who are we willing to make room for, knowing that making room will change me and change who we are together?’
To be boldly and courageously just means asking ourselves, “what am I, what are we willing to risk, knowing that power concedes nothing without demand and justice always comes with a price.”
To be boldly and joyfully spiritual means asking ourselves, “can I, can we soar above the seductive drone of cynicism, welcome expressions of spirit and worship that might be different or challenging and take joy in seeing them express the joy of and bring joy to others among us as they work their gift of transformation on the our hearts and the heart of this community?”
To be bold and ethical stewards means asking ourselves, “can I, can we look beyond proximate profit, self-interest, and fear as our basic resting pulse and reach for using all that we are and all that we have to practice what Becca Stevens calls the one sacrament of the church with its seven prisms: healing.
Jesus greets us each new day with the same words: “Love one another.”
Love because it is who you are.
Love because it is who we are.
Love is a human condition.
The night loves the stars as they play about the Darkness
the day loves the light caressing the sun
We love…
because we live in a world requiring light and Darkness
partnership and solitude
sameness and difference
the familiar and the unknown
We love because it’s the only true adventure
As All Saints Church, we love with radical inclusion, courageous justice, joyful spirituality and ethical stewardship because we are not amoebas … and there is certainly more to all our lives than ourselves
and our ability to do more of the same.
Amen.
