It was 1976, and I had somehow had thrust upon me, at age 22 and armed with a brand-new BA degree, the adult leader’s position of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in North Carolina high school gathering. About a year before this, I had realized that I had attained that social status known in those days as “hippy.” Long hair, partial beard (my church did not want me to have a beard, but my tenure there was over with my college graduation, so I had quit shaving and was growing my Old Testament prophet facial hair!), skinnier than an emaciated snake, living in  what are now called “Chuck Trainors,” a-month-since-they’ve-been-washed blue jeans, and some variety of t-shirt, flannel shirt, or blue work shirt: this was my daily disguise, the bain of every parent whose child spoke in reverent tones about the group of “cool” youth ministers of which I was part. And now, in the summer of ’76, birth year of our still-young nation, I was going to be the responsible adult for about 250 high schoolers and their (real) adult leaders.

The meeting to plan this event was attended by about 13 youth, a couple of other adults, and the long-suffering and most patient human being I have ever known (the Reverend Alex Mooty, father of my dear friend, Bob). Alex was the Associate Regional Minister for the Christian Church in NC who had responsibility for youth ministry, and he had put up with me for longer than he ever bargained for: I moved from being a “state officer” when I was in high school to being a “district adult advisor” while a youth minister in college, and poor Alex seemed stuck with me (I write this in retrospect: one of the things I learned from his generation of clergy – something I have tried to emulate in my own ministry – was to accept the next generation of clergy as full-blown pastors sprung from their own clam shells the moment they declared their calling, a Alex bestowed on me and my young peers as though we had been part of the club forever).

I digress (surprise! surprise!), as usual. The meeting had the youth throwing  ideas left and right, my own craziness joining in the slow process of deciding on a theme. Finally, someone said something about love, maybe, “Why don’t we just make LOVE the theme?” Alex and I both balked a little, but it seemed to be the only topic that everyone kind of agreed on. Love. Like we had just invented it. they started filling in the blanks, and we ended up with this theme: IF YOU DON’T HAVE LOVE, EVERYTHING ELSE IS BULL CRAP. We decided to drop “crap” from the title, and there we were with our theme.

My memory of the event is sketchy now: I’ve attended what seems like hundreds of this kind of thing, so they do tend to run together. I do recall that it was held about three weeks before I was going off to live in a monastery for four months – and no, I did not last anywhere near that long – so my mind wasn’t really on the event at all. But everything we did was supposed to be focused on love. I suppose we did it.

What made me think of this was the royal wedding this past weekend. The Most Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, preached a powerful message during the wedding: it was for many of us the best part of the whole thing. Come Monday morning, though, and he was on the news shows. You would have thought his sermon and its message of love was the most original thing ever spoken. You would have thought that the commentators had never heard of Christianity, too. The mixture of surprise and adulation they poured on him was, to me, well, shocking. Hadn’t these folks ever heard of Christianity’s message of God’s love? Hell, hadn’t they even heard of the Beatle’s message, “All You Need is Love?” My goodness, you’d have thought that Curry had preached the most unique, unusual message since, well, the Sermon on the Mount.

Then I remembered: these days, Christians don’t talk about love, they talk about guns, about America, about the Bible (as a book, but nothing about the actual things the Bible contains, like, for instance, maybe “love”). I’m talking now about the TV Christians, not the real ones. I’m talking about the Politician Christians, not the ones who have compassion for the poor, hungry, homeless, emotionally wrecked, addicted, beaten-down of the world. I keep forgetting that the message of Jesus, the one I mistakenly think is about love and kindness and acceptance and equality, is not the same thing that a local politician means when he says he is a “Christian businessman.”

Many of us looked at the newscasts, and the shocked – what, hope? – in the faces of some of the commentators, and thought, “Duh.” Because we weren’t surprised by a truly Christian message. It wasn’t nationalistic; it didn’t cater to one social class (although basically only one social class was present in the room with him, mostly); it crossed cultural lines sa well. It was beautiful, intelligent (both Dr. King AND Teilhard de Chardin!), sane, hopeful, kind: not much like these reporters have seen and heard much of for many years.

Michael Curry’s Christianity is why I am still doing what I do. It’s why my friends have been marching in Poor People’s Marches the past few weeks. It’s why my teacher friends have been standing with their students outside of classrooms and schools and in the halls of the rulers, begging for real solutions to our pandemic of violence and the absolute love of it in this nation. It’s why I loved a blogpost I read today about loving those in the pews next to you who don’t agree with you politically.

You may not feel the same way I do about religion, and that’s okay. If you haven’t lost hope, if you are working against the powers of despair and outright evil in the world, and if you remember that your “enemies” are still your brothers and sisters, we’re not so far apart. Ideologies and our allegiance to them is part of our problem anyway.

You see, love is the answer. Quite simply (simply stated, that is: love is never an easy road). Michael Curry just reminded us that God is love. The surprise came when he said it out loud to power, and to a world that  needed to be reminded.

If you don’t have love, everything else is bull.