February 14, 2016
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
I love the phrase “Emotional Bosh.”
It is a phrase spoken by Martin Luther King:
When I speak of love,
I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response which is little more than emotional bosh.
The emotional bosh kind of love is what we are talking about when we think a husband who abuses his wife still loves her. Or a parent that harshly punishes their child does it out of love.
Love in our culture is unfortunately mostly about romance, or about a transmission of affection, or about Hallmark clichés.
But the truth is that the kind of LOVE that is really powerful – that is transformational – isn’t only affection but must also include respect, commitment, trust, vulnerability, and work. That kind of love isn’t only about a feeling but about a choice – about a commitment to act.
The most common false assumption about love is that we will not be challenged or changed.
The truth is we change and are changed by love.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote,
When I knew how to love
the doors of my heart opened wide before the wind.
Reality was calling out for revolution.
Have you been changed by love?
Have you ever caused change through love? I know that you have.
Love creates a revolution first in our own hearts.
My closest relationships are those relationships in which I have been vulnerable – relationships in which we’ve risked saying the hard things to each other. We’ve argued perhaps, yes, but then chosen to come back together – after honest searching, apologies, commitments to forgive and to go forward differently. I’m not talking just about romantic relationships, but also friendships, family members, and communities.
Here at this church, we commit to standing on the side of love. That’s what it says on our big yellow banner out front. Several years ago, The Unitarian Universalist Association – of which we are a part – launched a Standing on the Side of Love campaign. It’s purpose is to confront exclusion and violence based on identity, be it sexual orientation, gender, race, class, religion, ability, or any other excuse for harassment.
Unitarian Universalists have always found many ways they are called to stand on the side of love…
In the 1800s Unitarian Lydia Maria Child defied the prohibition of her time against women speaking in public and demanded freedom for enslaved African-Americans and the vote for women. She also protested the Trail of Tears – the brutal removal of the Cherokee people. She was standing on the side of love.
When Unitarian Universalist minister James Reeb heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. to Selma, AL, and was bludgeoned to death by racists, he was standing on the side of love.
Especially during the recent anti-immigrant rhetoric and actions in the country, several UU congregations have given sanctuary to individuals and families at risk of deportation. They are standing on the side of love.
UU congregations across the country have hung Black Lives Matter signs in front of their buildings – saying, yes: All Lives Matter, but Black Lives are particularly at risk right now. They stand on the side of love.
This past summer, when the supreme court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal, this church advertised that it would offer free wedding ceremonies to same-sex couples. Even knowing that we might attract negative, even hateful attention, this church said: We stand on the side of love.
Why does it make a difference to stand on the side of love?
The author and activist bell hooks says,
Love comes in and says, “There isn’t any difference that can’t be understood. There isn’t any conflict that can’t be reconciled. So love becomes a major, major threat to the formation of any kind of culture of dominator thinking and dominator society.
But the skeptic may ask – “dominator society” ? Isn’t racism pretty much over – except for the rare skinhead, perhaps?
Most in our country continue to live with the myth that All Lives are treated as if they Matter the same.
Consider the fact that Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” owned, and bought, and sold slaves. And we know from his writings that Jefferson saw people of color as somehow less than white people; he saw women as less than men; he saw people who were not Christian as less than Christian. In his world, the only people that really mattered were white Christian men with property.
Jefferson was a product of his time, shaped by the socially accepted prejudices of his time – just as we are a product of our time.
So it can be difficult for us to see that racism has not disappeared – but instead, as I explained a few weeks ago, has remained in an invisible and seemingly subtle form that lies outside our conscious awareness. It hides in our unconscious biases, and it becomes embedded in the policies and structures of our cultures and institutions.
The Civil Rights Movement was successful in changing many of the laws that created inequality, but what remains is the bias in our hearts and minds. In some ways, this kind of racism is harder to eradicate.
This bias can have real effects in the lives of people of color, especially if they are also underprivileged in additional ways, such as class or gender.
So what do I mean when I talk about racial justice? What does justice mean? As bell hooks says, the heart of justice is “a longing for people to be able to grow and develop freely in a positive and constructive way.”
So justice calls for the conditions that allow for the flourishing of all people.
Unfortunately, instead I think many people think of justice like the scales of justice: someone gains and someone loses.
bell hooks says:
Dominator thinking and practice relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp.
So the opposite of Standing on the Side of Love isn’t – at root – Standing on the Side of Hate – but perhaps Standing on the Side of Fear …the fear that I will not have enough: Enough love, enough belonging, enough security in the identity I have constructed with the help of my culture.
But when we are rooted in real LOVE, we are moved to want justice for others because we do not see ourselves as separate.
As Martin Luther King said:
Love builds up and unites. Love is creative and redemptive.
And here it is: love happens in relationship.
Our understanding of racial issues is severely limited, the fewer real relationships we white people have with people of color. Our understanding of difference – any kind of difference – is immature and stunted until we risk relationships with people different from us.
So I challenge us – the next time we encounter an opportunity for relationship – whether it is with someone here at this church who we are different from, or our waiter at the restaurant, or our neighbor down the street – I ask us – how can we stand on the side of love in that moment? Not the love that is emotional bosh, but the love that requires vulnerability, honesty, empathy, commitment, courage.
Love is a choice to see ourselves as connected, and open to being changed.
The Board has voted to add a quote to the sign in the front of the church. It will say,
“We need not think alike to love alike.” (John Wesley)
We best realize love in community.
How can we open ourselves up to be challenged and changed by this, our church community? And how can we move out to change and be changed by our wider community?
Cornel West said
Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
Let our love be the kind that moves us toward justice. May it be so. Amen.
-Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon