"Mobilize Love"

There is a line in a movie I’ve seen many times. A widower is on the phone with a stranger, telling her about the first time he met his wife. And the stranger says, Tell me, what was so special about your wife?

And he answers, Well, how long is your program?

And then he says, Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together... and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home... only to no home I'd ever known... I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like... magic.

It was like coming home… only to no home I’d ever known.

These lines from Nora Ephron’s movie, Sleepless in Seattle, are with me today as I find myself in the unusual position of welcoming you – you children and elders, you visitors and friends, you staff and volunteers, you wanderers and worshippers and lovers of leaving – welcoming you to a service of ingathering. Since this is my first Sunday in the pulpit as your settled minister, the process seems somewhat reversed! I am being welcomed, and I am welcoming. Maybe it feels a little as though, as the first guest to arrive, I’ve turned around and decided to serve you a drink.

And at the same time, it feels to me like coming home… only to no home I’d ever known. It feels like a million tiny things and when you added them all up, it becomes a new congregation, a growing aggregation, a spirited welcome back from vacation, a new sensation. It’s babies and children making noise during our silent meditation. It’s our choir singing at both services.  It’s the start of what we call a new church year, the ending of a summer sabbatical for your minister, the beginning of our religious exploration classes, and the start of an annual ebb and flow of energy and vitality in community life that will take us from here, now, today, September 12, 2010, through days and weeks and months and over a year to the distant shores of the future. There we see feasts and festivals, holidays and holy days, new beginnings, saying hello, saying goodbye, and through it all: this gathered community. This church home. It is good to be together.

And it can be hard to be together. In our liberal religious tradition we preach the good news of radical inclusion. To atheists and humanists, lovers of the teachings of Jesus, Christians, post-Christians, cultural Jews, practicing Buddhists, interfaith families of all kinds, we say: there’s room for one more. You are welcome here. Bring all of who you are – your pots and pans and reels of fish on your head. Tell your story here, sing your love of life and your struggle for freedom, your hopes for a world in need of healing. There’s room for one more.

And if you’ve been here a few weeks, like me, or a few decades, you’ll know how hard it can be live up to that welcome, that radical inclusion, that persistent, peculiar faith in room for one more.

Sometimes our differences make the rafters shake. The meeting heated.  We argue about money and buildings, staffing and social action.  Comes the question: are we living up to the values of those who came before us, are we taking care of their church? Comes the question, are we building a church worthy of those who will come after us, are we far-sighted enough to imagine the community of faith that is big enough for their dreams?

All these voices, all these restless souls, one more idea, one more question, one more step. Sometimes it nearly brings the house down. I know you’ve seen the windows shake in these earthquakes of democracy, in the roar of disagreeing human community. You’ve heard the distant rumble, seen the walls begin to crumble, felt the house begin to tumble.

Amidst the struggle, amidst the falling down, in the depression, in the ruins of it all, comes the question: how can there be more room? How can there be more welcome? How can there be more singing?

Comes an answer, one of the best and hardest I know: mobilize love. Mobilize love. Get love on the move, give love a hammer and nails, ask love for a generous donation to the building fund. Mobilize networks of love. Knit prayer shawls of love. Make love manifest. Mobilize love.

In the dust of disappointment, mobilize love. From the darkness of despair, mobilize love.

When it’s easy, can there be anything easier than sharing love? And when it’s hard, can there be anything harder than sharing love?

This morning I would like you all to take a reminder of that love home with you. Catherine, our Director of Religious Education, is going to come forward now, and Louis is going to play a little music for us, and with some help from our children and youth, she’s going to give you a tiny heart sticker to take home with you. When you get your sticker, won’t you please turn to your neighbor and place it on their hand? It’s small. It’s sparkly. It may stick with you a moment or all day long. And as long as it stays on your hand, or shirt or foot or eye, wherever you’d like to put it, I hope it will remind you that love is on the move here at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, and that you are not alone, and that you are loved.

When love is on the move, there is room for one more. Mobilize love.  When love is on the move, we are the church – we visitors, we newcomers, we parents, grandparents, we children, we friends.   Mobilize love. When love is on the move, raise up a bonny new house. Here all are welcomed. Here all are needed.

Here love is on the move. It is good to be together. It is good to be home.