Love is Not a Victory March
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
Sunday, January 10, 2010


Readings: From The Wounded Healer by Henri

Songs for the People by Francis E.W. Harper

LET me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life's fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o'er life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so warn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

Message: Love is Not a Victory March

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

Leonard Cohen was a poet before he became
a singer and a songwriter,
and the full version of Hallelujah
has 80 verses.
eight-zero.
That’s a lot.

When it has been sung by Cohen,
and by others,
including the Unicantors this morning,
different verses are included and excluded.
You can’t do it all, but that’s OK,
which is, of course,
part of the point of the song:
that even though we are cold and broken,
we can sing,
Hallelujah,
we can praise.

I heard there was a secret chord
that David played,
it pleased the lord
the baffled king composing . . .

David, it is said, was the author of many of the Psalms,
a warrior-musician,
if you will.

And the story that follows:
David, the first king of Israel,
falling in love with Bathsehba,
the woman bathing on the roof:
David, let us remember,
sends the husband of Bathsheba,
a Hittite named Uriah,
to fight, and instructs the commander
to draw back,
leaving Uriah vulnerable,
and Uriah is killed.

The prophet Nathan, the personal prophet of the King,
comes to David,
and condemns him for this –
and, unlike most folks,
David sees the wrong he has done,
and repents –
although, of course, he can’t bring Uriah back to life.
Yet David still sings,
Hallelujah.

Baffled, broken, imperfect –
and still able to sing praise.

Love is not a victory march –
Love is not a victory march,
so writes Cohen,
in one of the eighty verses.
Instead, it is,
he writes,
a cold and broken Hallelujah.

Which is to say:
even though David has done wrong,
and is punished for it,
he remains in relationship with the holy.

Two of the eighty verses –
ones that are in the song as Cohen sang it,
but not, unfortunately,
in the choral version,
tell us today’s moral:
you don’t have to be perfect
to be loved.
You don’t have to be perfect to participate in what is worthy.

Cohen wrote and sang:
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

There is a blaze of light in every word:
Not just the sacred words,
like Hallelujah and Amen and Gloria
and Nam Myo-ho rengo kyo
and OM,
but in every word, a blaze of light:
everything is holy,
everything is redeemed,
or at least, redeemable,
every word hints, somehow,
at they mystery and power
which flows through our beings.

I don’t even know the name,
as if there could be only one name
for the spirit of life and love,
as if the name matters,
not when every word, every song,
is a blaze of light.

And the last verse in many versions of the song,
including Cohen’s original version,
ends the song like this:

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Even though it all went wrong:
those are not only words that David could sing,
but that we could all sing,
some days.

Some days, some moments in our life,
we feel the grace and wonder of joy,
we feel that everything is right:
As Cohen put it:
remember when I moved in you
the holy dove was moving too
and every breath we drew was Hallelujah:

The holy dove; some versions say “the holy dark” –
either way, we’re talking about that feeling
of purpose and meaning,
that feeling that we belong and all is well.

It’s a great feeling, isn’t it?
Every breath we drew was Hallelujah –
it’s a great feeling.
I’ve felt that way sometimes,
and I bet you have too –
when you loose yourself in something joyful,
when an experience of beauty
or friendship
or love
takes away all the doubt, all the trouble,
and we sing for joy.

And we wish that life would be like this,
forever.
But it isn’t.
Something goes wrong.
We do our best –
or maybe, we don’t.
Maybe something completely outside of our control
intervenes,
or maybe we just return to life as it is,
aware, as we so often are,
of all the ways we, and others, fall short
of our dreams and aspirations.

And we wonder, what did I do to deserve this?
Why are things so hard?

Henry Nouwen, who taught pastoral care and spiritual direction,
and, truthfully, taught life,
reminds us:
“Many people suffer
because of the false supposition on which they
have based their lives.
That supposition is that
there should be no fear or loneliness,
no confusion or doubt.”

This is what they are selling,
isn’t it:
buy this, do that, believe this way, follow me:
and you will be really, truly happy,
with no fear, no loneliness,
no confusion or doubt.

But love is not a victory march,
and we are not gods.
We have wounds.
But we are still worthy.

Nouwen says that it is through our wounds
that we can be healers,
that we can transform.

When we stop living in the illusion,
when we stop pretending that we are perfect,
then, and only then,
can we be a host to another –
to offer a space where another can find their own soul,
and through this shared search
for meaning in the face of limits,
in this shared singing
Hallelujah even though it all went wrong,
in this sharing, hospitality becomes community,
and liberation becomes possible.

Love is not a victory march
David’s victories at war did not bring him love;
nor did his “victory” over Urriah, or over Bathsheba.
Instead of a Hallelujah offered in the moment of triumph,
when we are king of the world,
when everything is going our way,
when we cut through the mess of life
like a knife through butter,
instead of the hallelujah of victory,
Cohen and Nouwen ask us to offer praise
when we are empty;
when we have no other words to say,
when we are wounded,
to offer Hallelujah, Amen,
in these moments
is to remember that grace is the strength of life,
not the escape from it,
it is to say,
though I am wounded, imperfect, mortal, lonely,
I could be no other –
I could be no other and still be human,

Liberation comes through our wounded-ness,
through hospitality to others, also wounded,
through the community we build together.

LET me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young . . .

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

So says Francis Harper –
abolitionist, suffragist, poet, author, teacher,
African-American,
Unitarian –
sing for the poor and the aged,
the children,
the world, worn and weary,
sing for it.

Sing, not because all is right with the world,
not because we won, whatever that might mean,
sing, not for the rattling of sabers,
but for peace, for hope, for mercy –
sing Hallelujah, not because everything is perfect,
not because we are unwounded and complete,
but for exactly the opposite reason:

sing Hallelujah, because there is work to do,
sing because more abundant life is possible –
not given, not secured, not ours by entitlement,
but possible.

sing for the wounded healer,
the host, comfortable in their own skin,
who gives us space to grow our souls.

Sing praise for community –
not perfect ones,
not places where everyone is always healthy and happy
and nobody ever disagrees –
sing praise for real community,
for people who walk together in covenant,
walk, haltingly, towards more abundant life,
walk towards that life,
but stop often,
to help folks catch up,
to see the sights and talk about them,
but who seek meaning in their wounds,
who are liberated in the absence of illusions.

Love is not a victory march.

Love comes in lots of forms –
the kindness of friendship,
the passion of passion,
the loyalty of family, natural or created,
the thrill of curiosity.
Love can be sweet and tender,
vivacious and powerful,
loud, quiet, busy, still,
but it is not a victory march.

The same goes for all the things which matter:
things like faith, justice, hope.

Take faith, for example.
A lot of folks seem to think that faith
is assurance – total confidence in one’s righteousness.
Clarity – I know what I believe,
and that belief is sure and without doubt –
this, people think, is faith.

Maybe – but I don’t think so.
Faith, to me, is a sense of participation,
a feeling that we are in life,
that wonder and possibility and beauty are available responses
to the feeling of being alive.

It is not victory over life, let alone victory over death,
but harmony with life and death,
it is being part of things –
and that’s enough for me, today.

Same goes for justice –
justice isn’t a victory over the evil-doers,
or absolute fairness between everyone,
but, instead, justice is about the process,
the ability for people to participate
in the public sphere,
for the movement toward harmony
in the relationships between human beings,
and between us and all life, and us and the cosmos itself.
It’s not an outcome,
it’s a way.
It’s a song that we keep singing
as we do the work of the world.

And hope – hope too.
What gives me hope
is the acknowledgment of the imperfect.
There’s a poem by Ric Masten about this –
Masten describes a “revolutionary” –
but one who “laughed real laughter” –
and this revolutionary described all that is wrong with the world
that we have broken the ocean
that the next time the conquering heroes arrive
the future is gone in a nuclear flash,
but then, Masten ends the poem like this:

“the fact that he bothered to get out of bed
this morning and say it gives me
a kind of hope.”

This is my kind of hope:
the hope that comes when people are honest with one another,
when we describe what is broken,
and our longings for what could be better –
that we bother to get up in the morning
and say it,

that we participate even though we are imperfect,
that is hope.
that we struggle together for more opportunities for participation,
that is justice.
that we celebrate our ability to participate,
even though we aren’t sure about anything,
that is faith.
that we care, and laugh and cry together,
that we are both wounded and imperfect
and can be together, and search for more abundant life,
not perfect life, but more abundant life,
this, to me, is love.

We won’t win.
There is no winning.

We go on.
We strive.
We build and create more opportunities for conversation,
for love and faith and justice and hope
to be alive in us,
but we don’t win.

When we embrace participation without perfect,
when we remember that we can sing
Hallelujah, even cold and broken,
then we can avoid the great pitfall
and embrace the great opportunity
of this moment.

We can avoid the great pitfall:
hypocrisy.

I don’t know about you,
but I’m sick and tired
of people who think they are perfect and righteous,
and are quick to point out all the faults in everybody else.
When we think we have to be perfect
to be loved,
then how easy it is to convince ourselves
that we are perfect,
at least, better than everyone else:
but that’s nonsense, of course.
Nobody is perfect –
and you don’t have to be.
You don’t have to be perfect to be loved,
and the people around you don’t have to be perfect
in order for you to love them.

When we can admit that
it all went wrong,
but still sing,
then we can accept others as they are,
as they are,
and, finally without hypocrisy or judgment,
we can be the kinds of hosts that make
community happen beautifully.

And,
when we value participation
more than perfection,
we can embrace the great opportunity
of this moment:
the opportunity of adventure.
These times call for new ideas,
new experiments,
these times call for people who will say YES!
But if we think we have to be perfect,
well, then this makes us cautious.

When it comes to some new adventure –
when we are asked to be loving hosts
so that others, and ourselves,
might grow our souls –
we hesitate, we worry.
We know that it all went wrong once,
or we fear it might all go wrong.
And our spirit of adventure stalls out,
the engine of possibility flooded with the fuel of doubt:
a little is OK,
but too much and you won’t go anywhere.

But there is a blaze of light in every word,
and it is through our wounds that we heal,
it is through our willingness to risk
that we create what is beautiful and worthy.
Maybe our new adventure will work out just like we planned:
Maybe not.
And that’s OK,
because, either way, we can say:
Glory. Om. Hallelujah. Amen.