Can Love make a difference? How do we remain focussed on Love?

Can Love make a difference? How do we remain focussed on Love?

Today will probably be the last reflection I will give on Bishop Michael Curry’s book “Love is the Way” although there are a lot of other chapters to be explored with a lot of rich a personal insights in them. 

I would like to share a few other of his thoughts today under the questions: Can Love Really Make a Difference in this World? As well as the question, “How do we keep ourselves focussed on the Way of Love in a troubled and divided world”.. 

Bishop Michael Curry writes that on one occasion he was speaking about how he believed that love could change the world, and he was questioned by a journalist who asked him “Sounds nice, but isn't a world built on love a utopian dream?  This had echoed a similar question from a different journalist ‘Can this really work?’ In other words, is love really an effective tool to change the world?  For a moment Bishop Curry had to ask himself?  Could it be, that getting angry, domineering and violent is in fact more productive than doubling down on love?  

But after a moment of pause Michael Curry replied with a question of his own: “How is the way of the world working for you right now?” Who’s the Pollyanna here? 

He went on to say that the world that we’re living in right now is a world built on selfishness, indifference and even hatred and it doesn’t look good. Amongst a host of other major issues of concern, we have wars and rumours of wars and wee have an earth exploited to a point of crisis, despite that fact that, to quote a protest sign “mass extinction is bad for profit”. 

Michael Curry goes on that what all this adds up to is just that: mutually assured destruction. Which he suggests is an insanity. Suddenly a world built on love starts to look like the sane one. 

And so he believes that not only will love work, but that it’s the only thing that will work.  He goes on to say: Love builds, hate destroys. We have to stop the madness, and you don’t stop the madness with more madness.  He says that love is God’s way, the moral way, but it’s also the only thing that ultimately works. It’s the rare moment he says where idealism actually overlaps with pragmatism and suggests that people don’t often think of Jesus as a strategist. But Michael Curry describes Jesus as a leader who successfully built what was essentially a radical equal rights movement within a brutal Roman Empire, a movement that has continued on for over 2000 years. Michael Curry suggests that you don’t do that without being a mast strategist. And so when Jesus said ‘Love those who curse you’, what Michael Curry calls Jesus famous call to non-violence, he wasn’t just speaking of the kind of behaviour that he believed God preferred, he was offering a strategy, a how-to-guide on changing negative situations into positive ones. 

And Michael Curry notes that when Jesus spoke these words in the Sermon on the Mount, he was delivering them to an oppressed and occupied people, share-croppers, seething and sometimes rebelling against their Roman oppressors. 

The Apostle Paul is sometimes held in contrast to Jesus. It is suggested that Jesus invited ordinary people into a new way of life while Paul created a religion around Jesus. But Michael Curry reminds us that in Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 12 he captures the very spirit of Jesus’ teaching from the sermon on the mount where Paul encourages the Christians living in Rome to follow the way of love, not as a call to give up and to give in to injustice, but as a way to help and heal, to lift up and liberate. As Michael Curry puts it,  ‘to defang and disarm an empire without hurting or harming’ in the process.  We read these words in last weeks service: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Thats exactly what what Jesus was teaching.  Michael Curry writes that it is what Ghandi, inspired by Jesus, would later call ‘pricking the conscience’ – disarming one’s oppressors with behaviour so loving that they can’t help feeling the wrongness of their own hate, thus opening their minds to new possibilities. 

Michael Curry believes that in the end Love is the only thing that works. And although the Jesus movement, otherwise known as the church, has not always practised it very consistently, when it has practised the way of Christ-like Love, it has been like a softening agent in society, transforming society for the better.  Jesus called it being salt and light. He also referred to it as being like yeast or leaven in society.  It only takes a little bit of yeast to affect the whole dough and to make all of it rise. 

One of Michael Curry’s early hero’s was Rev. Dr Martin Luther King jnr., although he freely admits that he was by no means a perfect person, being both saint and sinner. But one thing that Martin Luther King jnr did get right was to paint a picture of a dream of a different kind of world not based on racism and segregation, and the method’s by which he sought to achieve that dream were the ways of non-violent action that he had learned in the scriptures from Jesus. 

Michael Curry speaks of how the assassination of Martin Luther King jnr. was an enormous blow, not just to Michael Curry, but to others who had put their hope in him.  For some it raised questions of whether the way of love can really change the world?  For others, it was a reminder that following the way of Jesus in the world is not always easy and can indeed bring with it consequences.  Jesus warns of this, but it doesn’t not stop him from giving his own life for the cause of love, and in doing so he encourages his followers to not give up on the way of love either for it will not be without reward. 

Martin Luther King himself knew how difficult it is to consistently follow the way of love in the face of opposition and violence and so to encourage and help those who were part of his own movement, he laid out for them what he called the Ten Commandments of Non-Violence.  Michael Curry says that number 10 was specific to marching, but numbers 1-9 are more universal in nature. 

I personally was unaware of these 10 Commandments of Non-Violence of Martin Luther King, until I read Michael Curry’s book. I have to say I was not only surprised by them, but also deeply impressed by them.  I can’t go into detail here, but I will try to outline them briefly: 

Commandment 1 – Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus
Commandment 2 – Remember always that the non-violent movement seeks justice and reconciliation – not victory. 
Commandment 3  - Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love – this says Michael curry is the call to be the change that you would like to see in the world. Make the dream real by enacting it. 
 Commandment 4 - Pray daily to be used by God in order that all people might be free. (This is about having a vision of love and peace that goes bigger than just one’s own group). 
Commandment 5 – Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all people might be free – Michael Curry invites us to recall that the opposite of love isn’t hate it’s selfishness. 
Commandment 6 – Observe with both friend and foe, the ordinary rules of courtesy.  
Commandment 7 - Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.  Michael Curry writes that service is the way we can exercise the muscles of love. 
Commandment 8 – Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue or heart – I am guessing that most of us are generally able to restrain ourselves when it comes to the violence of fist.  How do we fair when it comes to the violence of tongue and heart? 
Commandment 9 Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health – Michael Curry writes that this is the call to put your own oxygen mask on first. Unselfish living doesn’t mean ignoring the self or becoming anybody’s doormat. 

So, can love make a difference? Can love change the world? 

On one occasion, Michael Curry was preaching in at the Howard University’s Rankin Chapel in Washington DC.  Afterwards he was informed that the famous South African Jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela wished to meet him.  Michael Curry was dumbfounded, having no idea why one of the world’s greatest jazz trumpeters would want to meet him? 

Hugh Masekela was waiting in the vestry and as Michael Curry entered, the jazz trumpeter threw out his hand and started shaking Bishop Curry’s hand vigorously, saying: “Anytime I come across an Anglican Bishop, I make sure to meet him”.  Hugh Masekela went on to explain that it was the Anglican Archbishop Trevor Huddleston who made it possible for him to become who he was.  When Hugh was a teenager he saw a movie based on a famous jazz trumpeter which captured his imagination. The next day he went to the chaplain of his school who was Trevor Huddleston, and Anglican monk and priest from Mirfield West Yorkshire who had chosen to serve the poor community of Sophiatown in Johannesburg.  Hugh Masekela told Father Huddlestone that he wanted to play the trumpet. And seeing the light in the teenagers eyes, Trevor Huddleston went to a local music shop and bought him a trumpet. Handing the trumpet over to Hugh Masekela, Trevor Huddleston had no idea of what an impact that would have on Hugh, or how Hugh would become a world renowned trumpet player. As Michael Curry writes, All he knew was that he had seen love glimmering in the eyes of Hugh and he did what he could to add heat to it’s light. Trevor Huddleston’s gift of the trumpet was a gift of love that changed a young black teenagers life growing up in Apartheid South Africa. 

Hugh Masekela is not the only one to have been impacted in a profound way by Fr Trevor Huddleston. Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a similar story how when he was a young boy, he contracted polio at a time when there was still no vaccine. He ended up in hospital where he stayed for months.  Father Trevor Huddleston would come and visit him in hospital and bring him books to make sure that he didn’t fall behind in his school work.  It was the love and care shown by Fr Trevor Huddleston that inspired Desmond Tutu later in his life to become an Anglican Priest which later led to him become Bishop of Johannesburg and then Archbishop of Cape Town, playing an enormous role in advocating for the end of Apartheid in South Africa and giving the people of South Africa the Dream of the Rainbow Nation as a vision for a New South Africa to aspire for.  T One has to concede that dream for a New South Africa has not been fully realised yet. Indeed corruption has eaten away at that dream. But at the time it could be said that Archbishop Desmond Tutu played a key role in preventing South Africa from descending into civil war. 

Can love make a difference in this world? Trevor Huddleston’s acts of love and kindness to Hugh Masekela and Desmond made an enormous difference, and particularly in the case of Archbishop Desmond Tutu had positive consequences that go far beyond any ability to predict.  

I am reminded of the story of the starfish by Loren Eiseley. It all started when...

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

    “Well, I made a difference for that one!” 

The old man looked at the girl inquisitively and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. 

Michael Curry asks, What kind of a world would we live in if even half the people in it were committed to living in the way of Love. What if it was even just 25% of people. What kind of difference could we make together?