Let Love Change You.

My comments from the #WeAreOrlando Vigil in Southbridge, MA.


I’ve heard a well-intentioned thought circling around the last four days.  People want to communicate that we can’t let this latest shooter take control of us with terror.  They have said: “Just Go On.”  Just keep going, just live your life, don’t stop.  We want to tell ourselves that this massacre can’t stop us from loving and living.  And that’s right. 

We want to tell ourselves that one more horrifying mass shooting won’t paralyze us.  …But I have to confess I’ve been feeling a little paralyzed this week.   

In fact, this paralysis, is a theme I have seen from my LGBTQ friends as well… so many Facebook statuses that start out, “I’ve been silent so far because… I am just trying to process, to grieve, to remember, to mourn, to lament, to wrap my head around the fact that my community’s life has been threatened.”  I would like to suggest that maybe it is good and natural to be paralyzed for a little while after this great loss of human life. 

Being Paralyzed in these moments is human, and we definitely need a little more common humanity.  Stopping gives us space to mourn, to honor, to wrestle with the traumatic assault on the Queer community and on our free way of life.

As we pause to grieve, and then continue to move forward in unrelenting time, we won’t stay paralyzed.  We will move forward, but we won’t forget – we can’t “Just go on” without letting this change us.  Fear will not stop us, but we cannot “just go on” accepting mass killings as our “new normal.”  

Maybe instead of “Just Go On,”  We really mean “Don’t Let Fear Change You.” 

It is no way to live, to let fear force us back into a closet.   To let weapons of words or laws or hatred or bullets determine our worth and value as human beings.  To lead us to believe, like too many in the Queer community have in the past, that giving up our life is the only way to escape the oppression.

We have a deeply rooted freedom here.  Look at the brothers and sisters around you, standing with you.  Declaring by their presence: We are free from fear!  We have brothers and sisters to stand with, we know we are valuable, beautiful creatures – and I’m here to tell you, you are made by God just the way you are!  As a beloved child!

It may surprise you to hear this from a Pastor, especially you LGBTQ folk.  The church has made some big mistakes on this one.  We in the church have not always been clear about this, in fact, we have done the very opposite.  But myself, and all these pastors are here to support the Queer community and to makes sure you hear loud and clear: God loves you, and so do we.

I want to read a bit of scripture to you, from 1 John 4:7-12.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The God who is love, loves you, all of you.  Don’t let fear change you.  Let Love Change You.

Love for our brothers and sisters who are LGBTQ

Love for our Latino brothers and Latina sisters

Love for our brothers and sisters who are Muslim

Love for our brothers and sisters who are isolated, who have no hope

Love for our brothers and sisters who are closeted

Love for our brothers and sisters who...

Let this powerful, overcoming, all good-love of God embrace you, strengthen you, reconcile you, Change You.

As the eloquent Lin Manuel-Miranda stated the other night at the Tony Awards.  Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside.

It is love that will change the world.

Amen.