Sep 22nd: What is the Work of Love that is Ours to do?, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Rev. Dr. Steven Koski
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What is the Work of Love that is Ours to do? with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: A Braver Way A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 7.13-14.
Join us this Sunday to hear an inspiring message about how ordinary people can change the world through a movement of love.
Transcript:
Steven: Jesus said, enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate, and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate. Narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few will find it, the way of condemnation and criticism is wide and easy. The way of compassion is hard. The way of judging others of it’s so easy to judge others, the way of empathy is hard. The way of despair and cynicism is easy. The way of hope, determination is hard, the way of selfishness, self, self absorption is easy, the way of justice and mercy for others. No, that’s hard. The way of greed is easy, the way of uncommon. Generosity is hard. The way of comfort is wide and easy, the way of courage, now that’s hard. The way of apathy is easy. The way of love is hard, but it’s the narrow way of compassion, hope, justice, courage, love, that’s the way that leads to life. It is the braver way. It’s the way of Jesus. It’s the way we are called to follow. Brian McLaren wrote, before Christianity was a rich and powerful religion before it was associated with buildings, budgets, crusades, colonialism or televangelism, it actually began as a revolutionary movement of love, taking care of the least, the lost, the left behind. Before Christianity was all about policing your beliefs. Jesus was all about how you love and the braver way of love. So imagine if we once again became became less of an institution, and became curious of what it means to be more of a movement, a revolutionary movement of love. Imagine if we focus less on the on the easy way of being a consumer, insisting the church meet my needs and recommitted ourselves to the difficult path of partnering with God in meeting the world’s needs. Imagine if we saw our purpose for worship as equipping ourselves to live the braver way of compassion, justice, love in our community and in our world, the church comprised of ordinary people like like you and me, who encourage one another to choose the braver way is really one of God’s best ideas. You know, the church as it’s intended to be ordinary people like you and me joined in a revolutionary movement of love, remains one of God’s best ideas. You know, our culture tries to convince us that if you got a really big problem, you need somebody, somebody really special and extraordinary, somebody extra smart and brave, some kind of superhero, to come and do something dramatic and in a moment of crisis, and just like that, the problem is fixed, the world is saved, just in the nick of time. And then the lights come on in the movie theater and we roll the credits. Now that’s the hero story. Actually, this idea also underlies our politics. Somehow, the person we elect we think it’s going to be no that’ll be the hero, the hero who will solve all our problems, will fix everything. In his book, world changing, 101, David Lamott wrote that over 20 in his over 20 years of research, he’s yet to find one example where some extraordinary person came and did something dramatic in a moment of crisis, addressing large scale problems all by themselves. He claims it simply, it just simply doesn’t happen that way. There’s another narrative that’s a whole lot less popular and exciting, but actually proven to be the narrative that actually works. It’s the narrative of being part of a movement, a revolutionary movement of love. Lamotte gives a historic example of a large scale social change. Change through the movement lens. It’s the story of Rosa Parks getting arrested starting the Montgomery bus boycott. Now the story, I’m guessing most of us were taught, is the hero story. The hero story of this one woman who was tired after a long day, who made the courageous decision not to give up her seat to a white man who had entered the bus as she was expected to do by the laws of the day, and she was arrested, and that sparked the flame of the civil rights movement and and the nation changed. Now is that roughly how you learn the story? We admire the heroic courage, and really there was heroic courage of Rosa Parks, but we struggle to imagine making the same decision if we were in her shoes. Now most of us details that we were taught are technically true, but here’s what most of us were never taught. By the time Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 she had already been a civil rights activist for over 20 years. She’d been the secretary of the NAACP in Montgomery for 12 years. She was trained in nonviolent activism and voter registration, which were life risking activities in those days, she was a member of the Women’s Political Council, an organization of over 200 African American women in Montgomery that met weekly to figure out how to move things forward in the civil rights movement, and they had been meeting weekly for nine years by the time Rosa Parks was arrested. I mean, they wrote letters almost every week to the bus company demanding that if a black person paid for a ticket, they should be able to stay seated, even if a white person got on the bus. I mean, they demanded black drivers for routes through black parts of the of the town, because sometimes the white bus drivers refused to even stop to pick you up if you were black, and they threatened to boycott if these demands weren’t met. So when Rosa Parks got arrested, word spread quickly to Joanne Robinson, who is the president of the Women’s Political Council, and she quickly called other members of the council, and they decided to launch a bus boycott. Joanne Robinson was a professor at Alabama State, which was then a college for black students. She called a number of students that she trusted and asked them to meet her at midnight in her office, and they spent the whole night copying 17,500 flyers calling for a one day boycott. Now this was before photocopies, copiers. This was like mimeograph stuff, so it took hours, and then the students got in Joanne Robinson’s car, and they spent the entire morning posting, dropping these flyers off, getting black churches and black owned businesses involved all morning long. The point I’m trying to make is they didn’t wait until a fire broke out to build the fire station. They had put in the hard, relentless, brave work of love for years, they were ready to go change the world because of all of the mundane, boring, frustrating meetings they’d attended for years before this particular moment, they were ready to change the world, because there were ordinary people like you and me asking, What can I do? And they were willing to make phone calls, create print, distribute flyers, spread the word, get others involved. Joanne Robinson and the Montgomery political Council organized a Montgomery Bus Boycott, and I suspect none of us have ever heard of Joanne Robinson’s name or the names of anyone on the women’s political Council, or the names of any of the students who were critical that night in spreading the word, why don’t we know their names? Because we don’t tell movement stories. We tell hero stories. But the world’s not changed. Changed by superheroes, the world is changed by ordinary people like you and me, who join forces with other ordinary people, choosing the braver way, choosing to become part of a movement, a revolutionary movement of love. The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not go on for one day. It actually went on for over a year and was really effective. They not only needed to keep the pressure on the mayor, the city council, the bus company, they also had to get people where they needed to go. Lots of people sacrificed. They walked long distances and they walked together because it wasn’t safe to walk alone. The elderly needed to get to their appointments. The sick needed to get to the doctor. Groceries needed to be picked up, so they set up a central dispatching phone number. The NAACP took up a collection from people who had very little money, and they bought six station wagons. I mean, they basically created Uber in 1955 people volunteered their cars. They volunteered themselves as drivers, and they got people where they needed to go. Well, where was Rosa Parks? What was she doing? She was volunteering as a dispatcher, answering the phone, making sure people got to where they needed to go. So right after international fame, right after appearing on the cover of The New York Times, Rosa Parks, went right back to the movement, because she understood that it’s movement the movement work is what creates change, is what moves things forward. So if we follow the hero narrative when there’s a crisis or the need for change, your instructions are to wait, wait for a hero to show up and save the day, and then your role is to stand on the sidelines and either criticize how they’re doing it, or clap. Now the movement narrative. Movement narrative offers, offers really different instructions. The movement narrative encourages us to ask, what is the work of love that’s mine to do? What’s tugging on my heart, as Frederick beechner wrote, God’s call to you is when your heart’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep needs. The apostle Paul put it a different way. The Apostle Paul said in First Corinthians, 12 seven, the spirit of love shows up in each person in a unique way for the sake of the common good. Of all instructions for the movement narrative are different instructions for the movement narrative involves asking, what’s the work of love that’s mine to do? What’s my heart’s deep gladness? And next, find some other people who care passionately about what you care about and join them. I guarantee you. I guarantee you that if you’re paying attention, God’s Spirit is stirring in your heart. God’s Spirit is inviting you to the braver way, inviting you to join others in the revolutionary movement of love. Now the hero narrative really tries to convince us that it’s only extraordinary people, people who are not ordinary, people who are not us, who change the world. That’s just not true. David Lamott says, I’ve got bad news and I’ve got some good news. Well, let me give you the really, really bad news first. So brace yourself. Do you know what changes the world? Committees change the world. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s true. I mean, I jokingly say that the motto of the Presbyterian Church is changing the world one meeting at a time. Maybe that’s not a joke, but the recipe for change, the recipe for change is people like you and me, change. Losing the bravery way, having a shared sense of the work of love that is ours to do, and getting together, figuring out what needs to be done, what you can do together, who’s going to do what? What’s my part, what’s my heart’s deep gladness, and then meeting again to make sure you did what you promised each other you would do, and supporting and encouraging and loving each other along the way. That is really how the world changes, and that is how our lives change as well. That’s the church at its best, not an institution, but a movement, a revolutionary movement of love. Our mission statement at first, Presbyterian, is living the spacious and radical love of Jesus so that all might flourish. There are such huge challenges in front of us. You may not be a superhero, but the world has need of you. First Presbyterian has need of you. What is the work of love that is yours to do? May we recommit ourselves to choosing the narrow way, the braver way, the way of Jesus, the way of love, the way that leads to life. It’s not only what changes the world, it just might change you and.
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