Sunday 29th October - last Sunday after Trinity: Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 and Matthew 22:34-end
+You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Image credit: Daniel Bonnell - Jesus Wept
How do we love in a time of fear? How, when two peoples, as one writer puts it, ‘with deep wounds, howling with grief, are fated to share the same small piece of land?’ [Freedland here]
Pain is both particular and vast for Israelis and Palestinians, the pain of Holocaust and Nakba and the cycles of trauma and fear of annihilation. The anxiety and grief that exists within communities in Barnet too, and a longing for safety and empathy. A pain so relentless and unquantifiable it breaks our hearts.
Yet we must find a way of loving because the world is both too dangerous and too beautiful, too broken and too holy, too unjust and too full of possibility for anything else.
The alternative is unending loss; the horror of conflict limits the range of our human sympathy or solidarity we can end up in a dark place; a place where more hatred is birthed; further harm conceived.
Our readings today invite us into that hard way of loving that allows for humanity and hope, empathy and justice, those things which make progress towards peace. Even when, especially when, our prayers are cries for resolution, pleas for freedom.
You shall love.
Leviticus reminds us that this is a command that flows from the very nature of God.
You shall be holy for I the Lord your God are holy.
Holiness revealed in human lives looks like just judgement - without partiality or deference or slander; without vengeance, grudges or hatred; without profiting from the life of a neighbour by their blood.
I am the Lord. I am the Lord.
You shall love.
Such love is a matter of effort and practice rather than a feeling or preference. It is a commandment. A matter of obedience.
It means vulnerability and trust; it means crossing boundaries.
It seems beyond our human capacity. And it is. Yet we find hope.
Jesus himself says you shall love, not as a social nicety but in the context of having silenced critics, amazed others and being tested by some. Betrayal, arrest, denial, condemnation and death are but days away for him.
There can be no more demanding context within which to say to friend, enemy, follower or critic: you shall love.
The love of which he speaks demands our all: heart, soul and mind. A whole-person attention God’s inexhaustible self. God’s love makes our love possible.
It means an acceptance that we are loved in order that we can love neighbour. That first step perhaps the hardest needing constant renewal in order to overflow to others.
In Jesus, the fullness of God’s love has flesh and bones, blood and breath. Love going to the cross and grave and depths of hell; love rising again to reach beyond locked doors and warm fearful hearts.
To walk that way of love is to weep and laugh, touch and feed; to welcome, set free and forgive; to comfort, confront and guide; to listen, to wait and speak.
Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, reflecting on solidarity in a time of fear writes on being kind or loving, from the Hebrew ‘Chesed’. [Rabbi Wittenberg's blog is here]
Such 'enduring kindness’ he says ‘sounds weak in response to terror. It’s not, it’s a way of life… it requires constancy, generosity, forbearance and the courage to stay present amidst pain. It demands our time, commitment and heart.’
You shall love.
It is our way of life too. Life shaped by our prayer- by placing infinite love at the centre of our hearts. Life shaped by our community - by gathering around our Lord’s table.
It is a life that requires much of us: our time, our commitment, our hearts.
Writing to the Thessalonians, Paul spoke of the courage to walk this way of love and to share it with others, despite his own suffering and maltreatment. He shared good news of God’s love without flattery or greed, deceit or trickery but with gentleness.
His words and actions drew on a reservoir of divine love: loving God whole-heartedly, and being loved absolutely, had shaped and tested his human heart - so that he could express a deep care for for the other, to those he did not know.
Rachel Goldberg, the American-Israeli mother of one of those taken hostage, addressed the United Nations yesterday: she spoke of pain and hope and the courage to resist hatred; to not let it erode our humanity [the link is here].
She also speaks of the Bedouin Muslim who stood in front of the shelter where her son and others hid. He tried to negotiate with the militants to
save them, telling them his family were in their and not to search it. He was brutally beaten by Hamas.
The Muslim broadcaster Remona Aly spoke on Radio 2 about life and love which bring hope out of despair, like suns rising after darkness. She sees ‘suns rising’ she said ‘within people who bravely, vulnerably reach out to share each other’s pain.’ [Here is the link to Remona Aly's pause for thought]
We don’t not find ourselves outside Israeli shelters or Palestinian hospitals; nor are we negotiators or aid workers, but we are neighbours. And our neighbours need us to have forbearance and courage, generosity and constancy. To be there to listen. To not other them.
Love is not weak but it is strengthened in prayer: turning to a loving God that our hearts might have the capacity to be alongside our neighbours. It begins with our silence, our cries. Let us pray, in words shared by Archbishop Justin:
God of compassion and justice, we cry out to you for all who suffer in the Holy Land today. For your precious children, Israelis and Palestinians, traumatised and in fear for their lives. Lord, have mercy.
For the families of the bereaved, for those who have seen images they will never forget, for those anxiously waiting for news, despairing with each passing day. Lord, have mercy.
For young men and women heading into combat, bearing the burden of what others have done and what they will be asked to do. Lord, have mercy.
For civilians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, that they would be protected, and that every life would count, and be cherished and remembered. Lord, have mercy.
For the wounded, and those facing a lifetime of scars, for those desperately seeking medical treatment where there is none. Lord, have mercy.
For medical and emergency personnel, risking their own lives to save those of others. Lord, have mercy.
For those who cannot see anything but rage and violence, that you would surprise them with mercy, and turn their hearts towards kindness for their fellow human beings. Lord, have mercy.
For people of peace, whose imagination is large enough to conceive of a different way, that they may speak, and act, and be heard. Lord, have mercy.
Mighty and caring God, you promised that one day, swords will be beaten into ploughshares, meet us in our distress, and bring peace upon this troubled land. Amen.
© Julie Gittoes 2023 (the concluding prayer, Archbishop of Canterbury)
