Standing on the Side of Love

Rev. Amy Russell - 2010-02-14

My grandmother was not what you would call a liberal activist. In fact, if you had met her, you probably wouldn't have called her liberal at all. She considered herself a “lady” with all the connotations of that word from her time period. Being a lady meant that when she went out, she always wore a skirt and if she went to church, she wore white gloves. She grew up in the South where a woman was supposed to be soft and feminine and not rock any boats.

But after marrying, becoming a mother, and finally after years of difficulty in her marriage, she divorced, and she found herself in the difficult situation of having to work and support her child, not something a “lady” was trained or expected to do. She went to work at Rike-Kumler's in downtown Dayton. At first, she worked in the hat department and then eventually became the manager of the beauty salon. Now, this wasn't because she had career ambitions, she was just trying to support her family.

One day, the manager of the store came to her and asked her about one of the male hairdressers. He asked her whether the man was “homosexual”. And when she replied that she didn't know but she assumed that he probably was, she was told that the man was to be let go. Now my grandmother had never articulated a position of “gay rights” to anyone or even to herself, most likely. But to her, this was clearly wrong. The man was one of her best employees. She told her manager that if her hairdresser was going to be let go, that she would also have to leave because she could not fire someone for being gay.

This story was told to me by my grandmother, not to brag, not because she thought it was such a big deal, It was told to me at a time in my life when I was a manager in a business and had been asked to force contributions for the United Way from my staff. She told it to me to help me figure out what was right in a difficult situation.

Standing on the Side of Love is not just about marching in parades or putting up posters, or writing letters to our congresspersons. It's about those things, too, but it's mainly about how we put the idea of loving into our lives to help us live better, more ethical lives. It's based on our UU principles.

The number one principle that UUs stand for is “the inherent worth and dignity of every person”. This principle sounds good, but it's not always easy to integrate into our lives.

Meg Barnhouse writes about how difficult it can be to follow our principles in everyday life. She writes:

My experience of the Principles is that they are deeply demanding. The first one asks me to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, which means that I can no longer subscribe to the cheerful Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of human nature...

Now I have to struggle with the worth and dignity of people who do unspeakably awful things, whereas the doctrine of total depravity made that one a no-brainer. I'm supposed to value the democratic process, hearing the voice of everyone equally, allowing everyone to have a say. The UU Principles are enough to make me whine.

Standing on the Side of Love for me means both finding the best way to love the people I interact with everyday in ways that honor their worth. And finding ways to honor people in the world who I may never meet but who deserve to have the right to live with dignity.

My adherence to these principles are often tested even when I am with my family. I guess I should say, especially when I am with my family. I recently spent more than two weeks living with all my siblings and I have to say that was one of the hardest tests of honoring everyone's worth and dignity. While I can say that I honor each one of my siblings, when it comes to who gets to decide what's for dinner or who seems to be the “controlling one” at the moment, my ability to stand on the side of love gets REALLY stretched. And I'm not always happy with my reactions.

Similarly, when we're in meetings around here and it gets to be 9:00 at night and I want to go home but someone has a really important thing they need to talk about- my standing on the side of love gets tested. Or I don't agree with someone and I just can't see why they can't see it my way. I can agree with Meg Barnhouse when she says that our Principles are deeply demanding.

She suggests that to understand how challenging our principles really are that we add the sentence, “beginning in our homes and congregations” to then end of each principle. Like “the goal of peace, liberty, and justice for all, beginning in our homes and congregations.”

Angela Herrera in a sermon she wrote for this event, says, “

And so the question for today is, what does love require of us?

“I look around and I see that there are outcasts now as there were in the old days. People who have been stranded on the barren shores of isolation, with no one leaning in close to love them for who they are and to challenge the voices that denigrate them.”

Angela Herrera mentions the families that have been separated as a result of our immigration policies. She says that families have been separated when they don't carry proof of citizenship or when they are entering this country illegally and that they are treated this way because our laws and practices do not consider them people, but consider them as objects.

She mentions the young gay people who are thrown out of their own homes because they are gay, many of whom are persecuted for being gay in their schools and in their community.

“What does love require of us?”, she asks.

“It requires that we stand boldly on its side. That we harness its power to stop oppression by speaking out and acting out with love as often and as loudly as we can. The world desperately needs people of faith- people of our faith- to speak up and change the tone of the conversation in the public square .. and on the beach, in the grade schools, and everywhere we go, whether you are eight years old or eighty years old. Love is our gospel, its our message, that there is no such thing as a message without a messenger!”

Being the messenger for Standing on the Side of Love means using love as our guide both in our personal interactions and in our interactions with the broader community. It's not an easy message, it's a life-changing message if you take it seriously.

What would happen if each time we considered an action, something we were going to say, something we were going to do, something we were going to vote for – if we considered what standing on the side of love meant in that action? I know it's sounds disgustingly like “What would Jesus Do?” But, hey, if we all acted more like Jesus, wouldn't we all be better off?