The church’s need to redefine “love” is long overdue.
We easily state “love” as the answer to an array of questions or concerns put to us:
- Challenge: family fractures. Our solution? Love.
- Challenge: Poverty. Our solution? Love.
- Challenge: Racism. Our solution? Love.
But too often what Christians mean by love and what is needed in the world by love are two very different things.
In a truth attributed to Dr. Cornel West, tenderness is what love looks like in private, but justice is what love looks like in public. Many churches privatize love so that it never dresses as anything other than tenderness. It’s never given legs to march or a voice to vote. It’s restricted to care packages that come in the form of house paint for the impoverished, house staples for the indigent, or house calls for the isolated. It’s domesticated and tamed.
But love was meant to go public. Unleashed. Unrestricted. Untamed. And in public love must take the form of justice. Justice that marches. Justice that protests. Justice that mourns. Justice that votes. We cannot say that we love our neighbor when we don’t publicly act against injustice toward our neighbor. I pray that this day, Juneteenth, becomes an annual clarion call to the people of God. I pray that this day finds us on our knees lamenting the slow flow of justice and on our feet laboring for the urgent need for justice. I pray that this day presses us to weeping, confessing and resisting. I pray that leads us to organize and rally and overturn.
