Let Love win, even if you lose

 

Luke 14: 1, 7-14
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
August 31, 2025

A B & W photo of a young Black child holding a sign that reads "When the power of Love overcomes the love of power, the world will know Peace."

“On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching Jesus closely.” Translations of this passage differ as to who “they” are: the Pharisees and lawyers Jesus speaks to in the following verses or other guests at the dinner. Remember that Jesus himself was most likely a liberal Pharisee—a rabbi, a teacher of the common people. Whoever “they” are, they are watching Jesus’ every move, taking note of everything he says, and this isn’t the first time. It’s not because they want him to succeed but because they want to catch him in a misstep, misinterpreting the law, committing blasphemy, leading people astray. This is the surveillance state, Big Brother, the CCTV, the social media “gotcha” people of their time.



“They” are the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, but Jesus brings something even bigger with him. In our family, when we are driving, we have a saying, “Let the Wookie win.” When an 18-wheeler or RV or a bus is between you and your next move, we say let the Wookie win. Whenever Jesus is face to face with his opponents, with those who would get in the way of the kin-dom of God, Jesus brings a Wookie with him, but Love is the Wookie.



Love that is bigger than the 800 lb. gorilla, but it looks more like a homeless person, like someone who needs SNAP benefits and the food bank to feed their family, like someone who requires accessibility wherever they go, like an immigrant showing up to court with their family and their documentation, like a transgender youth talking about their healthcare with their physician and their family, like a retired individual who can’t afford their ever-increasing rent, like the earth and the environment that can’t get a rest from climate change.



It’s a Love that is bigger than our fears, our frustration, our egos. It’s a Love that is bigger than our need for recognition, our desire for certainty, our attempts to control the world around us. It’s a Love that is bigger than the worst thing we’ve ever done, bigger even than the worst thing that’s ever happened to us.



Sometimes it feels downright naïve talking about a love like this, because it sounds like so much pie in the sky. Because it’s also a love that pushes all our buttons, wears us out, and sometimes begs the question, “What the heck are we doing?” It is a love that has kept me up at night, had me crying in the shower, in my car, in church. It is a love I have failed at miserably more times than I can count. It is a love that continues to hollow me out, looking for all the places where I hide. It is a love that goads me, like a thorn in my side. It pricks my conscience, it makes me think, it ticks me off.



Though there are times I wish I could, it is a love that I cannot kick to the curb because it is also a love that compels me. It’s like I can’t help myself. In the end, I lose to it every time. Because where else am I going to find a love that is unconditional, unmerited, and unlimited but also promises to fill the poor with good things and send people like me away empty? Where else will I find a love that puts me in my place but loves me just the way I am? A love that requires me to be kind when I’d rather be right. A love that gives no quarter to my self-pity but instead points me to my neighbor. A love that doesn’t congratulate me for loving when it’s easy but instead provokes me to love exactly when it is difficult. A love that makes me want to be more brave than I feel.



It's also a love that hasn’t really been tried by those with privilege, precisely because it will cost us. We will lose something. We will lose ease, comfort, social position, popularity, resources, perhaps even friends and family.



As I have said before, from one of my favorite quotes about this invitation to love like Jesus. In his book It’s Really All About God, author Samir Selmanovic wrote, “Jesus offered a single incentive to follow him…to summarize his selling point:

‘Follow me, and you might be happy—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might be empowered—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might have more friends—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might have the answers—or you might not.

Follow me, and you might be better off—or you might not.

If you follow me, you may be worse off in every way you use to measure life. Follow me nevertheless.

Because I have an offer that is worth giving up everything you have:

you will learn to love well.’”



One of the other texts for this Sunday is Hebrews 13, and it instructs its readers to not neglect providing hospitality to strangers, to not neglect doing good and sharing what we have. One of the verses takes it even further. It reads, “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them, those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.” We think, yikes! You don’t hear anyone quoting that verse. And yet that is the whole point of the incarnation. God suffers with the imprisoned in the body of Jesus. God suffers with those who are tortured in the body of Jesus. In God-made-flesh we are not alone in the worst things that can happen.



When we go to the lowest place, the place without honor, when we help those who cannot repay us, we do this as not only a spiritual practice of generosity, but as ones who imitate Jesus. And that’s the real reason why this kind of love hasn’t really been tried. Imitating Jesus is hard. Especially in a complex world that has more technology and wealth and people than Jesus could’ve possibly imagined.



Letting love win, even if we lose is a lifelong journey. Some of us have lost more than we can bear and there are days we wonder if love will win and what our part in it is. And yet this is the human journey, to keep bending that arc of the moral universe toward justice, bending it for those the world steps on and casts aside, even when it looks like we’re losing, especially when it looks like we are losing. If love doesn't win us over, how will it win in anything we are doing?



Church, this is the good news. Love is a Wookie. Let the Wookie win. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Be careful, beloveds, of anything that compromises on humanity:
Institutions or beliefs, strategies of change or powers that entice
God takes on flesh in our humanity, not despite it
In our full humanity, let us be changed by one another
In our full humanity, let us turn toward compassion and care
In our full humanity, let us protect our neighbors, targeted by the inhumane
God has made Sacred all flesh of the earth
Let us love and cherish it all