Reflection: Love's in Need of Love Today
Scripture: Matthew 21:23-32
Good morn or evening friends
Here's your friendly announcer
I have serious news to pass on
to everybody
What I'm about to say
Could mean the world's
disaster
Could change your joy and
laughter to tears and pain
It's that Love's in need of
love today
Don't delay Send yours in
right away
Hate's goin' round
Breaking many hearts
Stop it please
Before it's gone too far
The force of evil plans
To make you its possession
And it will if we let it
Destroy everybody
We all must take Precautionary
measures
If love and peace you treasure
Then you'll hear me when I say
Oh that Love's in need of love
today
love's in need of love today
Don't delay don't delay
Send yours in right away
It's up to you cause
Love's in need of love today
love's in need of love today
Don't delay don't de-lay
Send yours in right away
It’s Stevie Wonder’s Love’s in Need of Love Today. In the
song, he sings, “What I’m about to say could mean the world’s disaster, could
change your joy and laughter to tears and pain. It’s that Love’s in need of
love today. Don’t delay; Send your love in right away. We all must take precautionary
measures. If love and peace you treasure then you’ll hear me when I say.” I
find a good parallel in Love’s in Need of Love Today with the Jesus’ parable of
two sons. Jesus asks, “Which of the two sons did the will of his father?” When
asked to go and work in the vineyard ‘today’, the first son answered, “I will
not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The second son answered, “I go,
sir”; but he did not go.
Before starting to write this reflection, I received this
week’s Sunday School package from our Faith Formation Elders, (By the way – and
this is actually really good news “to pass on to everybody” that we are in need
of volunteers to deliver Sunday School packages to children in our midst. We
hope to deliver a Sunday Sheet (art sheet) and an Activity Sheet to 12 children
in 4 families. Danika will print her own.) and I looked at the questions in the
Activity Sheet Ann and Fjola prepared with a lot of care, love and dedication
for our children. I am so fortunate that I work with such wonderful Elders who
care about young people. The Elders ask the children, “What if the son who said
‘yes’ but didn’t work had a good reason for not working? What would be a good
reason not to do something he said he would do?” Good questions continue. “What
would happen if everyone said ‘yes, I will help’ and then nobody helped?” “Have
you ever told someone who asked you to help that you didn’t feel like doing
what they asked you to do and then changed your mind and found a way to help?
How did you feel about saying ‘No’? What made you change your mind? How did you
feel about helping after you had said ‘No’?
Now, this is my humble question: “If it is today and the
present time, what is God asking you to do, and you are saying no? Even if you
have said no, will you change your mind and heart, and do it? It is today and
the present time, and you already have heard and known what God is asking you
to do, and you have already given the answer yes. However, you haven’t actually
put your intention, words and thoughts into action and changed your behaviour.
What is God asking you to do?”
I imagine it is God who sings, especially the songs like
Stevie Wonder’s, which tells us, “Loves are in need of love, today. Don’t
delay. Send your love in right away.”
Just one hour before I wrote this reflection, I began to
read peoples’ posts on Facebook such as “Praying for our Black daughters,
sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunties, for Black girls, women, transwomen,
femme, and female-identifying. For Breonna’s family and loved ones. That the
justice system isn’t broken – It was built this way.” (The picture: Completed
mural of Breonna Taylor at Chambers Park, Annapolis, MD. Image courtesy of
Street Arts Films.) I also read a post a Black colleague in the United Church
posted, “I’m wondering what you’d all do if I was Breonna… Whatever it is, do
that!” Last Wednesday, a grand jury indicted one of the Louisville police
officers for shooting into the apartment – with the charges of crime. But not
for killing her. None of the officers were found guilty in Taylor’s death.
Actors, athletes, musicians and other celebrities (including Stevie Wonder)
have been using their platforms calling for justice for Breonna Taylor, the
Black woman shot to death by police during a botched drug raid in Kentucky.
They called Black Lives Matter, joined with voices from all over, from
grassroots, from ordinary citizens and children, calling for justice, calling
for love. They were not heard on the ruling in Breonna Taylor’s death.
Loves are in need of love today. What is God asking
us, you and me, those who are traumatized by systemic racism and those who
express solidarity with them, to do in order to uproot the deep cause of hate
and despair into the right way of expressing anger and love? Have you said yes?
Have you said no? Are you the first son? Or Are you the second?
The second son in today’s story who answered, “I will go,
sir”, but did not go, may have been just delaying his yes (action) until
tomorrow, when his father asked him to go and work in the vineyard today. This
week, my husband and I went shopping together. We had a very nice French press
coffee/tea maker in mind, hoping to advance our life style with some flavour
and convenience. Even though I had important tasks to do – writing this sermon
and joining a United Church zoom meeting on anti-racism work right after --
even though I had a fairly busy schedule this week, I never delayed going to
the mall and getting the ordered French press. I asked my husband, “Why do we
delay certain things, even if they are important, while we might never delay
other things believing they are urgent?” We engaged in a reflection together:
perhaps ‘material desire’ is always easier and so much more attractive, and
therefore, often takes precedence. Also, the things we believe we can fix and
know the solutions, and the solutions are what we can identify as A or B, in a
clear straight process, we go for it. However, for the solutions that require
more complicated, collaborative reflections, asking uncomfortable questions and
diving in to the life-long process, we tend to delay engaging and putting them
into action. Getting what we want gives us an illusion of power, while
expressing our love to someone means allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.
Just as our Elders asked the children to ponder, “What if
the son who said yes but didn’t work had a good reason for not working? What
would be a good reason not to do something they said they would do?” my
understanding is that everyone has different talents, experiences and paces of
learning and reflecting. Certain paths that lean towards love, healing and
reconciliation take a life-time. Like the first son, some of us may say no at
first and then gradually move towards engaging love and justice. Like the
second son, some of us may say yes, first, then, need more time for integration
by directly and indirectly witnessing other’s experiences of pain, trauma,
despair and grief. One of my friends said after he carefully engaged with the
questions from our Elders, “I was reminded that I planned to call my Dad.” His
aged dad, who had been estranged from his family since he was very young, was
recently admitted to hospital for heart and kidney failures and almost died but
recovered. My friend added, “But I am still delaying calling him. Certain
things are deep.”
There may be many circumstances and tasks in which we have
said yes but still haven’t gone to work – sending love --. Lately I read that a
new clock was erected in New York. It is a Climate Clock which counts down the
days we have left to deal with the climate crisis. The Climate Clock displays a
deadline of sorts: the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds left to curb
greenhouse gas emissions in order to give the Earth a two-thirds chance of
staying below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, compared with pre-industrial
times. This is the goal of the International Paris Climate Agreement – a level
of warming which scientists say if we exceed, the impacts will become
increasingly more disastrous. The loves that are in need of love, urgently,
deeply, are often the ones which and who have been silenced and oppressed at
the bottom of the pyramid of power. In Greek philosophy, which influences
Western academics and politics, at the high top of the pyramid is God, then,
Greek free men, followed by Greek free women, then Greek children, then, slave
men, slave women, slave children. Under the humans come animals, under animals,
plants, under plants, minerals, and so on. It is the hierarchy of beings, also
known as the ladder of existence. This is how the world politics, economics,
theology and colonialism have organized the world; The higher beings are at the
top, the lower beings are at the bottom, and the Earth is the material that has
been ranked in the lowest bottom, under everything. The Earth is in need of
love, today. We are in this, and our life and our next generation’s tomorrows
are in this.
Loves that are in need of love, urgently, deeply, intensely
are the cries at the bottom of the ladder of existence. We need to call
ourselves and encourage one another. We may delay sending love for various
reasons, but let us hear first the announcements from God: The world’s
disaster, the world’s tears and pain. The world’s joy and laughter. The calling
of the heavenly father and mother is not for us to save and fix. Rather it is
for us to hear the world, neighbours, family and friends, the Earth and the
oceans, and ourselves, to do our part. Yes, in action, Yes in action, and yes,
in action. Loves are in need of love today. Don’t delay. Send your love in
right away. To do the will of the Creator, because we have each other, We are
not alone.
Reflective music: Loves in Need of Love Today – Cover by
Dawn Pemberton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGGbRKHdGlE
Hymn: MV 26 Your Love Is Amazing (Hallelujah)
10,000 Reasons Please
watch from 9:44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6KJ395GKoo
Thank you, Golden Ears United Church, BC, for sharing amazing music!
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