THIS IS HOW YOU CHANGE THE WORLD

When I was a kid growing up down South, they used to talk to us in Sunday school about 'inviting Jesus into our heart.' There was a song we used to sing in church with the words "What a wonderful change in my life has be wrought, since Jesus came into my heart." That is old-time religion, and I don't know many Sunday school classes that use this jargon today.

 But when I saw the photo in my Facebook feed a few days ago of Ernest Branch, a black man in South Carolina hugging a white man carrying a Confederate flag, I remembered that song, and the idea, that somehow we can invite a new life of grace-filled revolution into our hearts. I do not know Ernest Branch. I did not fact check to see if he was a member of Mother Emmanuel Church - I assume not. But his actions remind me of the family members of the church shooting victims a few days earlier, when they offered forgiveness to the shooter in the courtroom. This is the power that drove Jesus, that drove Gandhi, and that drove MLK Jr to change the world: the power of love - and not love that wells from within our own feeble emotional wells. The kind of love that hugs the guy carrying the hate flag and forgives guy who just killed your sister is love from another Well altogether.

I want to be respectful that a lot of folks, in moments of suffering may not be feeling that love. God has wired us to feel deep anger in the process of our grieving over all that is unjust in the world. That anger can be channeled in powerful ways when we give it back to God. Deeply constructive and helpful ways!  I can imagine that Ernest Branch has felt his full share of anger over a lot of things as a black man in South Carolina.

But anger alone doesn't change the game. We need it, but it is not enough. We need whatever is going on inside Ernest - which (by the way) is totally in the spirit of what Clementa Pinckney gave his life to advocate.

People like Ernest Branch are truly dangerous people. When the Gospel gets baked deeply into our hearts, we are revolutionaries of the first order. The most dangerous of revolutionaries: Kingdom agents.

In the last few days, an amazing string of Supreme Court rulings have left the nation spinning, as justice has poured upon the land like a South Carolina summer thunderstorm. In the midst of it all, the President of the United States gave a speech that will be remembered alongside Gettysburg, memorable in part because it came at a moment of both great sorrow, and also a moment when the moral arc of the universe was visibly bending toward justice (a MLK metaphor). It was a rare moment when we could actually see the thing bending in real time! June 26 felt like Easter Sunday in America.

But when the Arc bends, folks, it is because of the combined witness and lives of the dangerous ones: those who have a weapon more powerful than any bomb or gun. That weapon is moral audacity and courage, the kind that only God can give, the kind that enables a person to walk across to one's enemy and to give a hug that leaves him dazed and leaves everyone transformed.

Not everyone in America is rejoicing this week.   But we all could use a hug.