The Greatest Force in the Universe

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Rev. Jonalu Johnstone
February 12, 2023
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

“The Greatest Force in the Universe” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called love the greatest force. But is love really a force? Is it really that strong? We’ll see what a few religious traditions have to say about it, and share some love.

Welcome

“Love is the greatest force in the universe. It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. [One] who loves is a participant in the being of God.” So reads a handwritten note from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chalice Lighting

This is the flame we hold in our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine upon systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth that we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.

Call to Worship

THIS IS THE HOME THAT LOVE MADE
Amanda Poppei

This is the home that love made.

It is full of the love that the founders felt, when they planned out these walls and raised these beams above us.

This is the home that love made.

It is full of the love of all who have worshipped here; those who have celebrated and grieved here; the babies dedicated, couples married, and family members mourned here.

This is the home that love made.

It is full of the love of our children, as they learn and laugh together, and our youth, as they grow into their own sense of purpose and meaning.

This is the home that love made.

It is full of the love of the staff who have served it, full of their hopes for this congregation, their hard work and their acts of dedication.

This is the home that love made.

It is full of the love of the choir, the love made so clear in the voices lifted here on Sunday morning.

This is the home that love made.

It is full of our love: the love of this community, despite our differences and our disagreements; the love that holds us together as a people.

This is the home that love made.

Can you feel it! May the love be with us always.

Amen

Affirming Our Mission

Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.

Lesson

Ancient Greeks had different words for different kinds of love:

Sweetheart love – the Greeks called it eros. The kind of love that your parents might have for each other. Eros was the Greek god of love.

Friendship love – Do you have a best friend you love? When you love someone like a sibling, even if you’re not related. The Greeks called it philia.

Storge – Love your parents have for you and that you have back. By instinct. Unconditional and like no other kind of love. So, even when you do things they don’t like, or that make them angry, they still love you. Deep. Storge was Eros’s brother in Greek mythology .

Agape – Biggest kind of love – love for everyone world.

Prayer

from the Rev. Lyn Cox
Sabbatical Pastoral Minister at the UU Congregation of Rockville, MD.

Spirit of Life and Love, known by many names and yet fully known by none, we give thanks for this time and this place of renewal. We give thanks for the ability to begin again: after the disaster, after the tragedy, after the loss, after meeting the challenge set before us.

Grant us the courage to continue on the journey, the courage to speak up for the well-being of others and ourselves and the planet. May we forgive each other when our courage falls short, and may we try again.

Grant us hearts to love boldly, to embody our faith and our values in living words and deeds. May our hearts open to embrace humility, grace, and reconciliation.

Grant us the ability to learn and grow, to let the Spirit of Love and Truth work its transformation upon us and within us.

Grant us the spirit of hospitality, the willingness to sustain a fit dwelling place for the holy that resides in all being.

Grant us a sense of being at peace in the world, even as we are in motion. Let us cultivate together the strength to welcome every kind of gift and all manner of ways to be on the journey together. To this we add the silent prayers of our hearts.

Meditation Readings

From Buddhism – The Dali Lama

To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering just as much as you. On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them.

… Genuine compassion should be unbiased. If we only feel close to our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.

… , genuine compassion is based on the recognition that others have the right to happiness just like yourself, and therefore even your enemy is a human being with the same wish for happiness as you, and the same right to happiness as you. A sense of concern developed on this basis is what we call compassion; it extends to everyone, irrespective of whether the person’s attitude toward you is hostile or friendly.

[po 302-304, The Essential Dalai Lama: His Important Teachings]

From Christianity – I Corinthians 13:4-11, 13

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end …. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Sermon

Part 1

The greatest of these is love. The fiery prophets, the mystic saints, the Buddhist monks, all agree. Love is the greatest force in the universe.

But — Have you ever thought of love as mushy or weak-kneed? A fleeting feeling, instead of an unconquerable, eternal power? I admit I have. I have cringed at saccharine sweet pictures of love, especially this time of year. And I like sugar! I even like those little candy hearts with the silly expressions of love. Still, love a force?

The picture of love from Corinthians confuses me more patient, kind, not arrogant or boastful. Christianity and Buddhism alike urging us to love our enemies! Our enemies! The people who hate us and want to destroy us. How can a love like that be a force? Much less the greatest force in the universe, as Dr. King wrote in that note. It’s hard to align that slow patient kindness, that openness to potential destroyers with the idea of a force in the universe. Love that will not let go, that will defend its object and that will vanquish lesser motives and ideas. How does love do that?

Maybe it requires us to consider, not love itself, but the other side of the equation – force. Maybe we need to reconsider what force might be. When we think about force, we usually think about what might better be labeled violence. We think about someone making someone else do something. We think about force as physically pushing or threatening harm. We think about force as bullying or strong-arming coercion.

What if force were something different? What if force were like water? There’s an old Holly Near song – Holly Near is a bisexual singer-songwriter who was active in the women’s movement back in the day. The song went:

Can we be like drops of water falling on the stone?
Splashing, breaking, dispersing in air,
Weaker than stone by far, but be aware,
That as time goes by, the rock will wear away.

The idea is much older than the twentieth century. Taoists in ancient China often spoke of the power of being like water. Water, said Lao Tzu, overcomes the hardest substance and offers no resistance.

What if that is the patience of love, that it can wait while gently having its way? It does not insist on its way. It may wear the rock away, or if another pathway opens, it may flow around the rock, eroding the side of the rock instead of its upper surface. The water has flexibility, to flow where it can. And yet, to know where it must go … somehow. And its power cannot be dismissed. Anyone who has just come through an ice storm knows that. That’s water in its most angry and destructive form.

Perhaps love can be a force.

Sermon Part 2

This hymn comes from the same place that our reading does – the book of I Corinthians in the Bible, chapter 13. It’s one of the most famous readings of Christians, often read at weddings. It’s not about eros love, though, or storge love. The word “love” in I Corinthians 13 is agape, that big, huge love that encompasses everything and everyone. I Corinthians was written as a letter by Paul, a leader who had persecuted Christians until he had a conversion experience and became one. He was writing it to a church in the city of Corinth that was having trouble. Paul had founded that church about twenty years after Jesus died, and he went off to Ephesus where he heard stories about how the church members were not treating one another well and were arguing about all kinds of silly stuff. Churches do that sometimes, even today.

So Paul wrote to the church at Corinth telling them how they needed to treat on another in the church, with agape with patience, kindness and so on — with that full overwhelming love that flows through us to others, like water.

And the song we just sang whose words come from that letter tells us that not only is love powerful, it’s essential. If you are brave and inspirational, but you don’t do it with love, it comes to nothing. That’s what the words tell us.

Psychologically, love is necessary. Babies cannot thrive without it. Heck, that’s why we’ve got hormones that make us take care of them! Really, none of us thrive without love. We need to be touched with affection – hugs and kisses and tickles and cuddles. We need to know there are people we can count on, who will show up and help us get what we need. We need to know someone who will listen to our deepest, darkest secrets and still show up for us. What’s more, we need to give love as well as receive it. People who spend money on someone else instead of themselves are happier. And when you give to others, they often give back – whether money or love. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place,” wrote the Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston.

And this is the kind of love we aim for in church. Do we always get there? No, we let people fall through the cracks and not receive the love they need. Sometimes, we break their hearts. But we keep trying. We ask for forgiveness We try to love through our ministerial staff. We try through the structures of the church, like our Caring Council. And, most importantly, we try to love – all of us — in our personal interactions – all of them – in the groups we are part of, in the meetings we attend, in all of our formal and informal relations. Because love has to flow like water. It can’t be just the formal structures. We want it to be everywhere.

The Rev. Jo Von Rue, minister of May Memorial UU Society in Syracuse, New York, told a story about her embarrassment as a poor child to be prompted kindly to wear deodorant. She writes:

Love shows up in soft, easy comfortable places: a new baby in the delivery room; a meal train when you’re ill; a hug, or the sweet smile of a stranger.

But here’s the thing: love shows up everywhere.

We don’t always recognize it, but love shows up even more in the messy, vulnerable places. Love shows up in the form of a friend seeking forgiveness. Love shows up every time we interrupt bad oppressive comments and jokes. Love shows up in complicated conversations-and for me, love showed up in the simplicity of a teacher awkwardly reminding me about deodorant.

And Paul tells us, you can’t just go through the motions. It shows. If you do not have love, the deeds do not carry the force or power that they would have with love. As Mother Teresa said, “it is more important to do small things with great love than to do great things with little love.”

Part 3

Most of you know something about our UU principles. We also have a set of sources. One of them is “Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves.” Of course, love is not only taught by Jews and Christians. Buddhists use the word compassion, but I think compassion is much like agape love – big love that we have to nurture. It doesn’t come as naturally as love for family or sweethearts, or even for our friends. We have to encourage it. To do that might take a lovingkindness meditation, as Buddhist practice.

May I be well and happy.
May you be well and happy.
May my family and friends be well and happy.
May those I do not know be well and happy.
May my enemies be well and happy.

Practice does make it easier, even if it stays really hard. We can practice everywhere, though, sending the energy of our love to clerks in the grocery store, to drivers we pass on the road, to people we see at work or school, to the people of Turkey and Syria and Ukraine, to those we see in the news. Practice opening our hearts and sending love. They may never know it, but it may change you.

Our religious tradition comes from two distinct but overlapping branches – Unitarianism and Universalism. For the Universalists, love was always central because they believed in a God so loving that they would never send anyone to hell. The Universalist God saved everyone. The Universalist God was what I learned God was when I was four years old in the Baptist church – love. If God is anything at all, I still believe that God must be love. The powerful, all-encompassing love that sustains us and everything and everyone in the universe.

Rev. Chris told you last week that the UUA is updating what’s called Article II – he’ll be leading a program about those II revisions next week following the service. And that proposal puts love squarely at the center of Unitarian Universalism, as it was always at the center of Universalism.

The Article II Commission said:

Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of our shared values thru the spiritual discipline of love.

Are we ready for a religion with love at its center? Love, I expressed publicly as justice, as Cornel West has reminded us. Love strong enough to cast out fear, to save us from foolish priorities like ego and greed. Love that connects and reweaves the fabric of our families, our culture, our nation, our world. A love that breaks down the barriers of politics and religion so that we can fully embrace even those who are far different from ourselves. A love that makes “we” bigger and more inclusive every day. A love that flows in us, through us, around us, so that we are awash in it.

Benediction

Omid Safi, liberationist professor of Islamic Studies

Go, be your best self. Be your most beautiful self. Be your luminous self. Be your most generous self. Be your most radically loving self. And when you fall short of that – as we all do, as we all have – bounce back and return. And return again. There is a grace in this returning to your luminous self.

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