...how love sounds

Lord, your church on earth is seeking your renewal from above;

teach us all the art of speaking with the accent of your love.

We would heed your great commission: “Go now into every place;

preach, baptize, fulfill my mission, serve with love and share my grace.”

---Hugh Sherlock, 1960

I am always interested in the decision of television directors and producers---mainly of news, documentary, and reality programming---to decide to use subtitles to “translate” the speech of characters or interview subjects with broken English or thick accents. I am continually amazed (and amused) by the great diversity of ways that we speak “American English”---cultural, regional, and even generational differences. Yes, generational---I sometimes think folk of a certain age might need subtitles to understand the everyday slang of teens and twenty-somethings! One of the most humorous choices, to a (mostly) southerner like me, is subtitles applied to a thick southern accent---how could anyone have trouble understanding that?!

I think what fascinates me is accent. People who specialize in training actors can sometimes isolate and identify accents not just by country or region, but by city, or even borough or neighborhood in the case of New York City. They can train actors to speak with the accent of a certain location, a certain people group, a certain era.

Imagine with me what the sound might be of all of us speaking with love’s accent. What would our voices sound like? What words would fill our vocabularies? What tone, what timbre would govern our speech? How does love sound, translated into everyday language? Would the world recognize love’s accent on our tongues?

Would we need subtitles to translate love?

...the time that I've taken

A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.

---Isaac Watts, 1719

Time is such a strange concept. Each day has twenty-four hours in it; some seem to fly by and we leave things undone, while others crawl, second by second. And I’ve known people that I would wager had more hours in the day than I do --- they fit so much more in! And does time take forever when we are waiting on something? Daylight saving time? Don’t get me started! It’s been over a week, and I’m still mad about the hour that disappeared into thin air from my overnight one Saturday night!

This is not a new puzzle; the Israelites were always wondering when God would act, and tiring of waiting for things to happen. In this 300-year-old text, Isaac Watts reminds us that our time and God’s time are different. We may find it easier to wait when we remember that God’s reality runs on a different clock than ours.

...even our scars are lovely

In heavenly love abiding, no change my heart shall fear;

and safe is such confiding, for nothing changes here:

the storm may roar about me; my heart may low be laid;

but God is all around me, and can I be dismayed?

---Anna L. Waring, 1850

In their song 'Breakeven', The Script sing, 'I'm fallin' to pieces, 'cause when a heart breaks, no it don't break even.' And if I'm honest, I could raise a glass and sing along extra loud with that chorus...how about you? Experience crushes, the storm roars, my heart is 'laid low'. And I would swear I am falling apart.

And here's the thing: it's all true. When we choose to engage this broken world in love, heart in hand, otherwise unarmed...it. will. break. us. We cannot engage brokenness, I don't think, and remain whole, unchanged. The world will break us and, even when we heal, we will bear the scars of our wounds as reminders, and the sites of the breaks will ache on days when the cold and damp push against us like a late winter storm.

But, friends, hear the good news. In our brokenness, bearing the scars of love, we grow more and more to resemble our broken Brother, Jesus, who by his own choice entered the flow of everyday brokenness, and wears the scars of engaging wounded and wounding humanity in love and tender compassion. By his great love this God walks with us on our broken way, transforming our dismay into devotion, offering us the chance to see that even our scars are lovely.

...a resting place

My faith has found a resting place, not in device nor creed;

I trust the Ever-living One, his wounds for me shall plead.

I need no other argument, I need no other plea,

It is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me.

---Lidie Edmunds, c. 1890

We’ve all heard the stories of the minutiae that divide Christians from time to time. The color of the pew cushions in the new sanctuary…blue like the river of life, or red like the blood of sacrifice? The organ…loud or soft? Bongos and guitars in the Sunday morning worship or high church and opera voices? Whether to sing all four verses of every hymn, or save time with a quick pass by first and last? King James or NRSV?

This hymn reminds me every time that letting the small things get in the way of the one true thing --- Christ’s sacrifice to reconcile us to God --- keeps us far from each other, and from our spiritual center. Our faith rests not in creed, argument, or the thousand little things good people sometimes disagree about. Our faith rests in the good news, the gospel, that Christ died, and lived, for you…and me. Here is our resting place. Here is our center.