There is one nagging question that keeps peeking its head out in the midst of all our efforts. It doesn’t matter whether we’re doing justice work, or whether we’re sitting alone at home in an easy chair reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle. It nags at us quietly, sometimes obnoxiously loud. Maybe most of the time we never notice it. But it’s there. The question is – are we enough?
The question is not just a self-esteem question, but also a practical question. Are we enough within the world as it is? Given our limitations – limitations of health, of mobility, limitations of time – are we enough within our limitations?
The beautiful thing about coming together as a community is we discover there are people there who can fill in our gaps. I learn this daily from each of you – I learn more and more what I don’t know. Instead of depressing me, this invigorates me actually. It makes me glad you’re here – here to offers your gifts, your expertise, your love. We don’t all love the same. You probably know this already from growing up or having friends or romantic partners. No two people love the same.
This can be frustrating especially when we expect a certain kind of love – maybe a love were used to or a love we’ve always wished for. More often than not we are surprised by the love we receive. The ways we give and receive love sometimes seem obvious, and sometimes no matter how often we try, it alludes us. It can be like chasing a shadow. We see it, but we never seem to be able to grab hold of it – to touch it and let it touch us.
For me justice and love are partners. They are so close. At the heart of justice, is the possibility of a realized love. A love we have always longed for. Even if we don’t know it. Even if we have never seen it before. It is a way of life that looks at the world as it is, including it’s limitations, including our own, and trusts there is enough here to make something beautiful possible. It doesn’t mean it will be perfect, and it doesn’t mean we need to be perfect either.
It just means we are willing to see the world as it is, and see possibility even in the midst of despair. We learn to see opportunities for something…perhaps not everything…but something.
In the lobby of the Jewish Community Center they have a plaque that reads anyone who can save one person, saves an entire nation.
It takes practice to see love in the heart of limitation. But I believe it’s the only place it can be realized while we’re still alive. We’re here for a short time, relatively speaking. We see the gaps. We see our own, and we see the world seeming to hang by a thread, and people who miraculously wake up every day in the midst of insurmountable odds. Maybe that’s how we feel.
The odds may seem they are stacked against us from making real change. But as Sam Cooke wrote “a change is gonna come.” He wrote that song in 1964, and now the change is here. It’s not gonna come tomorrow…it’s already underway. It’s happening right now. Everyone is a part of it.
I think it is a mistake to divide our life between works of justice and other activities like sitting and reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle. The most important place for justice work to take root is on our own hearts, and this can happen any time, any place.
It begins with the trust that none of us is ever truly alone – even if we’re sitting by ourselves. We trust we are connected – to the people in this church, to the people in our families, to the people worldwide who have been struggling for millennia for a more humane world. We are part of that, gaps and all. Those gaps are not mistakes – they are openings for more love. In those gaps we finally discover an answer to the nagging question – are we enough?
