Final Sunday of Trinity: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 and Matthew 22:34-45
Love is all around: When Richard Curtis approached Wet Wet Wet about recording a cover song for the Four Weddings and a Funeral soundtrack, they chose Love is All Around.
They knew they could make it their own - and the single entered the charts in 1994.
It remained at number one for 15 weeks. Some radio stations banned the song - because listeners were getting fed up of it.
Despite that it remained the UK’s best-selling love ballad: ‘love is all around’.
We want to believe that; to trust it; to feel it in our fingers and toes.
We long for someone to be beside us; supporting us.
As the lyrics express it: There's no beginning, / There’ll be no end /‘cause on my love you can depend.
We long for a love we can depend on: bonds of kinship expressed between siblings, partners, spouses, parents and friends.
A love that we should feel in the fingers and toes of the body of Christ.
A love that flows from the one who is the beginning and the end.
A love that is the Spirit’s bond of peace.
The great commandment: today’s gospel takes us to the heart of love - faithful and unending; but also particular and relational.
This talk of love comes in the midst of what must have sounded like a cross examination or question time debate.
The Pharisees and Sadducees has been asking questions of theology - about the nature of the resurrection; and also questions of practical ethics - is it lawful to pay Roman taxes. In both cases, Jesus replies to lead them and us to think deeply about God’s faithfulness; and to find a way to live that is neither colluding with or overthrowing the ways of the world.
This leads us to the heart of the matter: the greatest commandment.
Of the 613 laws of the rabbinic tradition, which were to be respected and obeyed, what’s the greatest? Which law carries the most weight and importance?
Jesus goes to the heart of the law: to the shared tradition of the shema.
Love God with heart, mind, body and soul; love your neighbour as yourself.
It could be seen as a mic-drop moment.
This is the heart of the matter.
Love.
Faithful and unending.
Particular and relational.
Our first reading reflects part of the teaching that Jesus was drawing on. The legal codes as set out in Leviticus give substance and shape to what love looks like and what it means.
We’re given sets of practices.
Habits and attitudes that we’re called to live out together.
Our kinship as a body means that loving God does not stand alone as an abstract concept or individual spiritual practice.
Love is a practical discipline: speaking honestly, judging wisely, dealing fairly,
Love shows not partiality; but supports the weak.
Love seeks no vengeance; but cares for neighbour.
As one writer puts it, these two great commands are ‘simple to say without even taking a breath, but utterly absorbing to live out, claiming every breath we take’.
To love God with all that we are - all that we can be, all we can give - also means learning to love ourselves as God does.
That can be as hard as obedience, as costly as service and challenging as worship (especially right now).
To love ourselves means letting go of our self-centredness and self-reliance to discover that we have dignity and purpose. That who we are is held in love by the God who made and called us; and the community we are called to live in.
Jesus: to love and be loved in this way flows from God loving us in flesh of our flesh.
The anthem we’ve heard today expresses the scope of that love; and its presence with us.
All around our life, God is guiding and watching; in the good times and the bad.
Love is all around.
Born in a stable - this enfleshed love brings the light of hope and raises us up.
Jesus sets us free from temptation; restores our good intentions.
Our rock, our salvation, our beacon and our Lord.
Taken from his friends. Mocked and murdered, left to die alone.
This love goes to the depths of a tomb; dispels all our terrors; pointing us forward to new life.
There is not beginning and no end to this love.
Love is all around.
This love is cross shaped; and we too are marked with the sign in baptism.
Jesus knew the cost and shape and depth and substance of his way of loving when he asked the Pharisees his own question.
The Messiah is the son of David; but also Lord of all things.
Love without beginning and end is with us.
This is the love of the Lord of sea and sky;
The love that hears our our crys; who comes to save.
This love sends us into the world.
Love is all around: People need to love and be loved. Jesus takes us to the heart of the matter.
Love is all around.
Faithful and unending.
Particular and relational.
In our world, love needs to be all around more urgently than ever.
If God is love, then we too are to love.
It isn’t a Richard Curtis romcom; it’s more than a sentimental love ballad.
It’s a love that is so real that it will hurt.
We will need to discern carefully within our parish what that love looks like: hungry and refugees; in the tasks we’re call to in our work and homes.
Laying down our personal agendas, we are called to something more.
Through us - through our hands and feet, fingers and toes - may love be all round.
Let us be known by our love
In every word, in every deed honor the son
Let our light shine in every eye
Let us be known by our love
© Julie Gittoes 2020
