“At one point in the grand Holy Spirit riff that is the Book of Acts, after Paul and Silas have whirled through town on one of their preaching tours, some local Christians are brought in front of the Roman authorities. The case against them is simple. These people have turned the world upside down.

“They have turned the world upside down. Now we know that those Christians weren’t more numerous than the forces of the empire, they weren’t better armored, they weren’t wealthier, and God knows they weren’t better organized. They didn’t turn the world upside down by being bigger, or stronger, or meaner than the empire. They turned the world upside down by mobilizing for love. They embraced those who were pushed aside. They cared for those the empire disregarded with its callous scorn. They put their bodies on the line to stand with those who were targeted. They were immovable in their commitment that not even death can stop the power of God’s love. That’s how they turned the world upside down, by facing the empire’s murderous cruelty with the irresistible force of love.

“After all the things I have seen this week in Minnesota, I am weary, I am weighed down, I am angry, and I am heartbroken. I have no doubt all of you are, too. For those of you outside Minnesota, it is hard to overstate the magnitude of cruelty we are seeing, and the depth of fear that nearly everyone is living with all the time. So we are weary, weighed down, angry, and heartbroken.

“And what the forces of evil and meanness in the world want is for us to stay there. The forces of evil we promise to resist in our baptismal covenant want us to meet anger with anger, they want us to meet hatred with hatred, they want us to meet scorn with scorn. The forces of evil are always fed by mimetic anger and hatred. Those forces are out there tonight, as ever, daring us to become its food.

“And, beloved, we aren’t going to do that. We are going to make like our ancient ancestors, and turn the world upside down by mobilizing for love. We are going to disrupt with Jesus’ hope. We are going agitate with Jesus’ love. Not because we are weak, or we have given up. And for God’s sake not out of some naive wish that that everything will be just fine when it is so obviously not. We are going to choose to turn the world upside down with love because we know, we know, the cross of Jesus Christ settles forever that love is the most powerful force for healing in the universe.

“In this moment, like so many that have come before, love calls us to give ourselves away. Love may very well call us to put our very lives on the line. We may not feel like we are able to stop what is happening in this place, or others that are surely yet to come. But no matter the outcomes, we will not be moved. We will continue to stand up. We will continue to stand with. We will march in the streets, and deliver food to those locked in their homes, and flood our legislators with calls for the madness to stop. And because we have each other, because we are carried along by the Spirt’s river of love, the weariness will not overcome us. The anger will not consume us.

“So tonight we lament, we grieve, and we pray. We hold each other in our heartbreak. We give voice to our anger.

“And then tomorrow, Episcopal Church. Tomorrow, my beloved Minnesota, we get on with the business of turning the world upside down. We get on with the business of resisting with love, of disrupting with hope, of agitating with joy because we know that love has already won. Our work is to show up, every day, in every place, using all we are to show the world its victory, until God’s love is fully and gloriously done, on earth as it is in heaven.”