9/27/2026 - INSTALLATION SERVICE - “Sharing the Hum of Love” - Rev. Dr. Dave Long-Higgins

Good afternoon.

I'm going to try that again.

Good afternoon.

Oh, good.

I wanted just to be sure.

You know, this is a tough time to preach, right?

And to listen, probably.

Maybe, maybe more to listen.

Before I offer the scripture, I just want to say what a delight and honor and privilege it is to be with you all.

And thank you, Anthony, for this generous and kind invitation to preach at your installation.

It's a treasure indeed.

As we were, as I was listening to the affirmation with Jessica just shared, I thought, in case Lakeview folks you don't know, you have a poet writer in your midst.

And I know one when I hear one.

And you probably do too.

Thank you for that beautiful framing of our faith and the journey we share together.

I also want to bring you greetings from your relatives who are the 304 other congregations which make up the Heartland Conference of the United Church of Christ.

And uh pastor, my pastor Beth Geddert at Zion in Delaware said specifically, say to Anthony, blessings.

So I'm consider that done.

Blessings, friend, and to all of you as we're together.

So our text this afternoon comes from Paul's letter to the church in Rome.

And I'm reading from Eugene Peterson's translation called The Message, beginning in the 12th chapter, verses 9 through 21.

Please hear this word.

Love from the center of who you are.

Don't fake it.

Run for dear life from evil.

Hold on for dear life to good.

Be good friends who love deeply.

Practice playing second fiddle.

Don't burn out.

Keep yourselves fueled and aflame.

Be alert servants of the master, cheerfully expectant.

Don't quit in hard times.

Pray all the harder.

Help needy Christians.

Be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies.

No cursing under your breath.

Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy.

Share tears when they're down.

Get along with each other.

Don't be stuck up.

Make friends with nobodies.

Don't be the great somebody.

Don't hit back.

Discover beauty in everyone.

If you've got it in you, get along with everybody.

Don't insist on getting even.

That's not for you to do.

I'll do the judging, says God.

I'll take care of it.

Our scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch.

Or if he's thirsty, give them something, a drink.

Your generosity will surprise him with goodness.

Don't let evil get the best of you.

Get the best of evil by doing good.

May God bless to us the reading and the hearing, the savoring, understanding, and living of this holy word.

Amen.

Will you join your heart with mine for a word of prayer?

Oh love that will not let us go, we rest our lives in you, everything, our worries and our wonder, our longing, our loving, our despair, our delight, the things we can name, the things we can't name, everything we entrust it to you.

And pray that you will create within us a space of readiness, availability, and possibility, so that your spirit may move in our midst.

Oh God, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts, that they might be found pleasing and acceptable in your sight.

Oh God, our strength and our redeemer.

Amen.

So I think many of you know me.

Some of you have are just meeting me for the first time.

I'm on a lifelong mission to get congregations to hum together.

And this is how it works.

I'm gonna play a few lines on my violin.

And as you recognize the tune, I want to invite you to hum along with me, okay?

And I'm gonna stop playing.

We're gonna keep humming together.

You'll recognize the tune pretty quickly, I think.

And then we'll we'll hum it through one more time, okay?

Just to get our to get the uh to get us going.

So whenever whenever you catch it, just join in.

Really?

Did you feel it in your body?

Could you hear it around you, permeating the space all around us within us?

Some of you who may remember I was here a while back, we did this.

You're just as good now as you were back then.

Just want to say it, okay?

Do you remember that there is a hum of love at work in the universe of life?

We often refer to this live presence of love as God, but this afternoon I want to encourage us to think of it as love capital L.

Say it out loud.

Love capital L.

In case you haven't guessed, there'll be a little interaction this afternoon, okay?

Love capital L.

You know that humming can be a great way to pray because sometimes, I don't know if this ever happens to you, and you may find it hard to believe coming from a preacher, we run out of words.

Life hits us fast and hard, and we may not know exactly what to say, but we know that we need something.

Sometimes we may find ourselves in the precious pause of a liminal in-between, that space when what we have known and in what is yet to come holds us actually in some sacred stillness, where we discover ourselves inhabited by this holy one, this love capital L.

It's actually where we find the church in Rome, as Paul writes to them in our text this afternoon.

You'll remember that Paul has not actually met the Roman church in person when he writes his letter.

But apparently there is a word on the street about the challenges that the Roman church is facing as it exists under the shadow of Caesar.

The people have tasted something of the liberating love and power of Love Capital L as made known in Jesus Christ, but there is tension with what they see all around them.

Maybe you have experienced this or tasted something of this experience as I have in our own day and time.

Anthony, as we were talking about this service today, one of the things you mentioned to me is the power of story and how we are connected by our stories one generation to another.

You likely have noticed that there's something irresistible about our encounter with God's love that leads us to a yes, which is the first step into an unfolding story that actually began before we arrived and will continue after we're gone.

This is the truth, actually, of our lives, isn't it?

We are always entering a story that has begun before we were on the scene, all of us as human beings, and will continue after we have left this earth.

True of us as individuals, but also true of our experience of faith communities.

Anthony, the story of Lakeview, of course, did not begin with you, right?

Nor did it begin with a lot of folks in this room, but it began with some of you who are charter members, maybe who are here.

You are charter members, actually, though, also entered into a story that was started in other places and transferred to this location.

In the midst of this congregation being born, there was an energy of encouragement that came from within the gathered community and the covenant community beyond this gathered community.

This congregation was started in partnership with the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries and what was the Ohio Conference, now the Heartland Conference.

Words are stories, they connect us to each other, and there are times when we need a word that encourages, that literally grows the heart larger.

Maybe you've experienced this, as I have many times.

So the church in Rome needs a word of encouragement, literally something to water their hearts with the Spirit.

So Paul, as he often does, writes a letter of encouragement and gentle challenge about what it means to live in liminal space, that space between what is known and that which is yet to be, the space of the stories unfolding.

He recognizes that it's easy to succumb to the energies of the world, reflecting only its entropy, its sapping of everything beautiful and true and good, its sucking out of the power of salvation, which means the power of healing grace.

The power of healing grace.

So Paul reminds the early church in Rome of the liminal hum at work in the universe that also inhabits them.

Hmm, try it with me.

Hmm.

Little back and forth.

Paul writes, love from the center of who you are.

Don't fake it.

Hmm, mm-hmm, hmm.

Right?

In other words, remember that you are inhabited by a ripple of divine self-giving that has made itself known in Jesus Christ and continues to circulate in and through your whole being and in your life together through the gift of the Spirit.

Run for dear life from evil.

Hold on for dear life to good.

In other words, when everything around you tempts you to diversion or distraction from the very essence that brings you life, pause and remember.

I love how Eugene Peterson frames these early verses from the 12th chapter of Paul's letter.

Peterson interprets Paul's counsel by writing, practice playing second fiddle.

Now that's a metaphor I can relate to.

I've actually played a lot of second fiddle along the way.

Now you might think that on the face of it, playing second fiddle is somehow like second class or unimportant.

But the great conductor of the Boston Symphony, Benjamin Xander, offers a different perspective that comes out of his experience playing in string quartets with Robert Kauf, the founding second violinist of the Juilliard string quartet.

Xander reflects: I came away after playing with Kauf that the real leader of string quartets is the second violin.

Not because Kauf dominated the rest of us, but because in his part he had all the inner rhythms and harmonies, and he gave them such clarity and authority that we were all tremendously influenced by his playing.

He was leading us from the seconds.

In a truly great string quartet, all four players are doing that simultaneously.

I wonder, in this limital time in your life together, what it might be like for each of you to arrive, for any of us to arrive in the communities of faith of which we're a part, as a second fiddle, a second violin.

What if our special calling was to pay attention to the inner rhythms and harmonies that love is yearning to bring to life, not only in your life together, but as your life together sings a song of healing love into the cacophony of the world?

See how transformative that could be?

Stretches the unfolding story of the beloved community ever more deeply into the fabric of the human experience and the whole creation.

Part of what Xander lifts up in other parts of his book is that music played in community must have an intentionally transparent quality to it that honors the voices of the other instruments.

It sounds a lot like Love Capital L, weaving its way in and through this organism that we call the church, ecclesia.

Now, I know that you know what I'm talking about.

As a congregation some time ago, maybe from the very beginning, you voted to become an open and affirming congregation of all God's beloved, regardless of any description around sexuality or race or gender or life experience of any kind.

You said and are saying yes to the composing grace that is the hum of love at the center of everything.

And as you know, this is no small thing in the day and time in which we live, when all around us there are forces that would diminish, want to take people out of love string quartet and diminish the possibilities for beauty and joy to rise.

The last time I preached here at Lakeview, I think was in 2023.

It was the end of June, Pride Month.

There was an extraordinary arrangement up here in the chancel with swaths of rainbow color that I think stretched all the way from by the dove down to the altar and down onto the floor.

It was incredible, but maybe you still do that.

I remember it specifically because during the prayer time, Reverend Dave Schwab, founding pastor of this congregation, expressed how profoundly and gratefully moved he was by the imagery of inclusivity that the chancel represented for all God's people.

He was sitting like right over there.

I remember it well.

I remember thinking, what an amazing unfolding of the story of love.

Of course, Dave is no longer with us, now in blessed memory.

But you see, here's the thing, right, Anthony?

We are inheritors of a story that continues.

And it's continuing right here, right now.

Right here, right now.

So here now today, hmm, I encourage you to savor the holy habitation of love and all it yearns to open in you personally and especially in your life together.

When Paul writes to the church in Rome, he encourages and counsels them about agape's interrupting energy that will not stoop down to the world's tit for tat zero-sum game.

You know about zero-sum game, don't you?

I'm guessing you do.

All you have to do is open your daily news feed.

It's writ large on a daily basis.

It presumes that there's not enough for everyone.

It presumes that some people are less worthy than others.

It suggests that if you have some gift from God, there's not enough for others to also share in that gift.

It is quite simply the lie of the world.

Paul called it catasarx.

We translate it flesh.

People think that's about sex.

It's about the way the world thinks.

Katasarx.

It's the lie of the world around which so much of our life and the human family gets constructed.

It would be foolish of us to think that this is a new thing.

It is as ancient as the human community itself.

It's what the church in Rome actually is experiencing under the shadow of Caesar.

But it is still a lie.

Because no matter how much the world wants to construct this artificiality, there is a persistent alternative manifested in all creation that declares an abundance, revealing that there's always more than enough for everyone.

Yes?

Can I get an amen?

Amen.

Paul suggests a different kind of song be sung in us and a different kind of story be written in our life together and in the life of the world.

Paul reminds us it must be grounded in prayer, which is not contrast to action, but actually the very ground from which healthy action can keep us, can keep us alive, fueled and aflame.

It doesn't matter the exact form of your praying, simply humming can be a beginning.

A posture of prayer reminds us that we are held by a power larger than our own best efforts.

The power of Love Capital L that can equip and strengthen and heal and bless.

This readies us, friends, for injecting an alternative action in the life of the world where our enemies, our enemies, our enemies become the focus of our blessing.

Paul writes, bless your enemies.

No cursing under your breath.

Don't hit back.

Discover beauty in everyone.

In other words, allow the hum of love and work in the universe to still your heart and mind long enough.

Long enough.

To discover the beloved core of the person you think is most unlike you.

To discover the beloved core of the person you think is most unlike you.

This is a deep spiritual discipline, and it cannot be lived over the long haul, apart from intentionally attending to the life-giving energy of the hum of love at work in the universe of life.

Scripture tells us that if your enemy is hungry, go buy that person lunch.

If he's thirsty, give them a drink.

Your generosity will surprise them with gladness.

And here the cycle of tit for tat will get interrupted and form an opening that only love, capital L could imagine.

Yes?

Sounds a lot like good news, don't you think?

We have a word for it.

It's called the gospel.

So I wonder, dear, dear friends of Lakeview and dear Pastor Anthony, how will this hum that already inhabits your life increase its power and presence as you enter this chapter together?

Anthony, when we were talking about this service last week, the words you uh used, you described, I asked, how's it going?

So I like to get the inside scoop, you know, so I talk it a little ahead.

Okay?

He said, You said to me, There is a quickening of the water here that is so life-giving and energizing.

I typed it as you said it.

Now, I know you well enough that those words were carefully chosen words, even if you hadn't thought of them before our conversation.

As you know biblically, when the water is quickened, it becomes a pool of healing.

When the water is quickened, it becomes a pool of healing.

It means the water is moving and it's getting splashed out all over the place.

And you never know exactly where it's going to land or the impact that it will have.

Of course, it can take many forms, as it did for you, Anthony.

The quickening water at the Pride Parade in Columbus, splashing through the church community at St.

John's in Columbus, landing the form of a postcard on the pavement at your feet that you picked up and it read, God is still speaking.

And you're wondering, you were wondering about whether there could possibly be a church out there that could love the full you.

And the resounding answer was and is yes.

Say it out loud together.

Yes.

The quickening of the water of love in St.

John splashed onto your life, and you discovered the United Church of Christ, the God is still speaking denomination.

The community where we often say, no matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.

And more than welcomed, affirmed.

That's the kind of quickening that's going on here and has been to take the best practices of what you've And mill them with new energies that would become part of your life now that you, Anthony, are here.

What this means is that together you will be inspired to try new things, attack new ideas, to entertain new dreams.

Now, sometimes when this happens, when somebody throws an idea in the circle of the conversation, sometimes the response will be, that is the craziest idea I ever heard of.

But before what if before every committee meeting or administrative council meeting or gathering of any kind, you first began with What if you have a spirit of a living God all of our gods and all those?

I hope you will risk doing old things, which means also risking failure.

At least that doesn't just write out the world.

You know the truth is we do often risk too a little and play a safe in the church for fear of things not going exactly as planned or for fear of looking foolish.

But remember the apostle Paul?

He was a fool over Christ.

What if instead about worrying about failure we are instead to consider the church a laboratory of love where we try experience experiments that can multiply grace and strength and zones would have never heard or experience the possibility that they are love?

Oh my god.

What would happen if we consider the church an organism of love and learning instead of a machine if you're feeling like that?

You don't have to be a remote writer.

You dearly beloved people.

I know that we who are your headline we hold you in our prayers.

And we love you very much.

God speed and blessings on you.

Amen.

Amen.

So, friends, hear this blessing.

I invite you to rise or embody your spirit as I do this.

This blessing holds our lives.

May God bless you and keep you.

May God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May God look upon you with kindness and give you peace.

May you know always the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ now and forevermore.

Amen and Amen.