“What does this situation need?” No matter what kind of situation is under consideration, if you’re asking The Beatles, then the answer is: “All you need is [pause, motion] love.” That’s right, “All you need is love, love, love. Love is all you need.”
And based on today’s text from Matthew, Jesus might agree, 
though perhaps not in the way some might expect. You see by the time we get to the famous pair of commandments, Jesus has been in the hot seat for quite some time. The chief priests and Jewish elders, the Sadducees and Pharisees, they all come fired up, ready to try and catch Jesus making some kind of statement which would compromise his divine authority. Leading up to today’s passage, their pointed questions testing Jesus take up 56 verses over two chapters in Matthew’s gospel account.
It’s no real surprise that these folks are demonstrating such fervor. As one scholar notes, “The Pharisees, the interpreters of the law, had been positioning themselves as advocates for the people even as they have been promoting practices such as the purity laws that were at odds with the interests of many ordinary people. Jesus has [also] been interpreting the Law, but his ability… to interpret it with clarity, integrity, and commitment to the needs of the people at the margins made him a forceful voice and a threat to [the Pharisees’] authority and popularity” (Nadella; Working Preacher).
While there’s no love lost between Jesus and the Pharisees, it’s because of the expansive color and texture and flavor of Jesus’ love for others who don’t fit the Pharisees mold as people of faith. As another scholar puts it, “The Jesus we see in these stories thinks that to love God with the whole self, with ‘all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind’ (v.37) is demanding and risky. Following the path of love leads him to jump into debates and conflicts with his whole self. Love leads Jesus into all kinds of situations that are not just uncomfortable, but dangerous. Eventually, love gets him killed.” (Pape, Working Preacher). All you need is love?
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There’s a lot of love to be found in Ted Lasso; I think that might’ve been part of JC’s inspiration for this Gospel According to Ted Lasso preaching series. And much of that love isn’t sugary sweet or seen only through rose-colored glasses. In fact, what makes the show so compelling is how very real it is on so many levels of human experience and emotion.
As JC referenced last week, Total Football is the soccer strategy Coach Lasso and the Richmond Greyhounds unexpectedly embrace mid-season. It is a fast, fluid, free style of play in which players must be versatile. As Ted is introducing this key concept to the team at training, he says to them: “All right. Today, gentlemen, we are gonna focus on versatility. Now in Total Football you gotta constantly be asking yourself, ‘What does this situation need right now?’… You gotta be able to jump in anywhere anytime. And the way to do that well is to understand and appreciate everyone’s position and every position’s function.”
What does this situation need? That guiding question becomes one that informs the team’s work both on and off the field, deepening their relationships in moments when they need one another most. In one particularly tender locker-room scene following a homophobic slur being used by a fan, one of the players comes out as gay. To which several players begin to say, “It’s cool. We don’t care.”
Then Ted jumps in to say “We do care,” before he regales the team with a story that – in the end -doesn’t quite fit as well as when he started telling it. Classic Ted. But he concludes by saying, “The point is, we don’t not care. We care very much. We care about who you are and what you must’ve been going through. From now on, you don’t have to go through it all by yourself.” To which teammates quickly add their own affirmation: “You got us, mate. We got you.”
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I’ve been thinking about that scene and the guiding question a lot recently. Perhaps because it’s Pride month which always makes me feel a bit reflective. You see, when I first started coming out just after graduating from college in 2009, I never thought I’d be the kind of gay person who went to Pride or owned/ wore rainbow anything.
Shame and fear have a way of doing that. I just wanted to fly under the Gaydar, to blend in and pass as straight, to be a “good” gay so I might be a bit more acceptable to my family and to the church.
I never really had any notion that God didn’t love me, but my experiences had made it pretty clear that many families and churches weren’t keen on LGBTQ people. So after I came out, I walked away from the church and began my teaching career.
After two years, I left a school distract with employment protection for one where I could be fired if someone took issue with me being a queer person. It was a very white, very homogenous rural school (the only person of color on staff was the Chinese exchange teacher, and many teachers had grown up in the district and returned to teach there).
I was very intent on keeping my personal and professional lives totally separate. But one day during planning, my department chair stopped by and asked if I was gay. Caught by surprise, I simply said, “Uhhh, yeah…”
Word trickled out through the department, the faculty, and eventually to students. And kids started showing up. They needed a safe space to ask questions about their identities and to support one another. Their fear and pain were so familiar to me. Our common experience was that faith communities had told their parents and families that they were broken, that they needed to change; some woke up to parents praying over them; others were kicked out of their homes and cut off from their families.
And suddenly the long-latent tug in the direction of ministry returned. “What does this situation need?” I found myself thinking. And I couldn’t fathom letting them grow up in a world where they never heard about their belovedness from the pulpit. So I went to divinity school, not for myself, but for them. For Kelly and Matt and Peter and Dylan.
Some of those students have reached out to me since to say that I saved their lives. But what I always tell them is that they saved mine. I’m not sure I ever would’ve come back to an active faith in a congregational community without them. And only once I got into divinity school did I realize just how much spiritual healing I needed after years of struggling with the pain of being unseen alongside the risk of being seen. Only there, in that queerly beloved community, did I begin to discover the liberation that comes with unapologetic authenticity and a true sense of belonging… both to God and to others. It was all the love I’d never known.
But I admit that such a safe, nurturing time and space feels rather far removed from the present moment. A little over a week ago, the Human Rights Campaign declared a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States. This follows an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative attacks passing state legislatures this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number (and that was previously the worst year on record). As a result, I confess to being a bit preoccupied with Coach Lasso’s guiding question: “What does this situation need?”
Perhaps the Beatles were right and love is the answer, but it’s gonna have to look a lot more like Jesus’ love:
The same love that inspired Jesus to eat with the outcast, reach out to the untouchable, and embrace the powerless, also drove him to confront the demonic, outmaneuver the manipulative, and correct the clueless. Jesus was no pushover… Jesus is a lot more complicated than we sometimes pretend, and the love he taught demands that we expand our whole selves for God and neighbor (Lance Pape; Working Preacher).
Jesus’ love asks us to put a lot on the line: it is risky and demanding; it calls us to show up and speak up in solidarity, to confront that which is unjust, untrue, unChrist-like. And sometimes that has consequences.
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Returning to Ted Lasso, Sam Obisanya is a Nigerian superstar on the Greyhounds’ squad; his character is just as strong as his play; on and off the pitch, Sam is just a stellar human. In the most recent season of the show, we see Sam struggling with the injustice unfolding in the U.K. around the treatment of refugees. One of Britain’s top leaders acts heartlessly while a refugee crisis unfolds, and Sam decides to use his platform to speak out.
As a result, his newly opened Nigerian restaurant becomes the target of vandalism and is nearly destroyed. At his breaking point, Sam weeps upon his father’s arrival to the U.K. from Nigeria for a visit and shares what has happened. Ola Obisanya hugs his son and encourages him: “Don’t fight back. Fight forward.”
Friends, THAT is what Jesus’ love says to us. Fight forward in love. With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. With God and with neighbor. In community. In solidarity.
It is perhaps no surprise that the team shows up for Sam just as they show up for their gay teammate. Sam stops by to show his father the restaurant even though it’s in disrepair, only to find his teammates there repairing and restoring the space. Stunned and nearly speechless, Sam eventually manages to ask, “What are you guys doing here?” To which his teammates respond: “We all just asked ourselves ‘What does this situation need?’ And we thought your situation needed us.”
Dear ones, the world needs us. The LGBTQ+ community especially needs us. So many marginalized communities need us. To be Jesus’ hands and feet, to be his presence and voice. To show up and speak out about God’s love with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind. That is loving our neighbors as ourselves. Everything hangs on that. May it be so. This day and each day. Amen.