Love is all around

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

Embrace

The text of a sermon preached at Guildford Cathedral on Sunday 17th January. In the midst of Epiphanytide, we focused our attention on the wedding at Cana - a celebration of human love and commitment; the first of Jesus' signs recorded by John.  Preaching on this theme in the context of Primates2016 was challenging and I am very much aware that I am on a journey in relation to how we live in Communion.  Recognising we're called by the one Spirit, to witness to the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, yet worshipping and living in radically different contexts. I find myself drawn to a hopeful, challenging, irenic place.  That's costly. It expresses both a range of loves and relationships; it risks a bigger vision of God's Kingdom.  I keep thinking of my late supervisor Dan Hardy - renowned for saying 'it's more complicated than that'.  However, at this point I cannot give up hope for reconcilation, deepening trust and mutual affection. The readings were 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11. The conversation afterwards was stimulating, honest and somehow  oriented to God's future.

The opening airport scene of Love Actually is full of moments of loving recognition: Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, health or status human love is poured out in hugs, kisses, embraces. From Heathrow to Guildford Station, we've all been there: waiting, scanning the crowd, glimpsing love.

The Prime Minister, played by Hugh Grant, says: 'Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere.  Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there...'

To embrace expresses the risk and vulnerability of love - you stand, arms flung wide; waiting and hoping that the other will respond. You embrace, enfolded for a moment in wordless affection. That's but the beginning. For embrace then means letting go, stepping back, moving on. Embracing whatever might unfold.

Embrace risks openness to the other: the lonely, ostracised and busy; the self-sufficient, judgemental and weary. As a Communion, we face most acutely the hope and  pain of being in relationship: the desire to maintain conversation and build trust, the deep hurt  of alienation and the depth of our difference.  Today's  Gospel  of overwhelming abundance meets us in this broken middle.

Jean Vanier in his poetic and prophetic commentary on John, describes marriage as a covenant of love a 'sign of sacred union, enfolded in love, that enables people to grow in forgiveness, tenderness, kindness and compassion'.  Having recently contributed a chapter to a book that seeks to think again about marriage, the fruitfulness of such exclusive intimacy is, I think, important precisely because it looks beyond the bonding of human sexuality.

Jean Vanier: Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John 

That bonding becomes a sign of a love that is radically "more than".  Marriage is a public and inclusive relationship which can be a sign of the abundance of love that cannot be possessed but only given.  The paradox is that as two become one, space is created for a third - and for many others - in hospitality, compassion, generosity. Things extend beyond the couple into a multiplication of love.

Cana is about wine in abundance.  Vast quantities of water are transformed.  The ordinary becomes excellent.  It is enjoyed when the guests have already had plenty to drink.  But this generosity and abundance comes from a place of lack.

The party is in full swing, noone is paying attention to the potential crisis of grumbling guests and an embarrassed couple. One person does notice. It is Mary who pays attention. It is Mary who trusts Jesus. Their exchange is opaque. But perhaps it alerts us to the deep awareness that what is about to happen is not merely the alleviation of a potential social disaster; rather it is sign of the breadth and depth of love, actually.

Yes, this is about abundance of life and joy, which increases our capacity to receive, and therefore give, even more love.

Yes, it is a glimpse of our ultimate reality when God's love will be all in all.

Yes, it reveals our deepest desires to be known and loved.

But, when does this abundance manifest itself?

When the wine runs out, when there is nothing left, transformation occurs.

When we are most vulnerable, most wounded, most broken, most fearful, love is there.

When we lack everything, when hopes are crushed, in the face of terrible loneliness, the anguish of exclusion, even there is love.

When others seek to dominate or control, when the vanities of power, ambition or moral superiority come to the fore, when fragmentation seems all but inevitable; may be love is there.

When walking together seems impossible and mutual affection inexpressible; perhaps love is especially there.

When the cost of our loving is painful, when those who love face prejudice and violence, and when our own lack of love falls short: there, most generously, is love.

None of us can be written out of this story of abundant love.

To return to Jean Vanier, 'our desire for love is not a hoax, awakening in us a thirst for an unattainable, infinite, eternal love that can be quickly crushed by the limits and brokenness in us all. We are not cheated of love; love is possible'.

If this is our ultimate hope, how do we move forward when at a human or institutional level we feel cheated?

In part the answer lies in the moment we see Mary with her son our saviour in the final chapters of John. Jesus' hour has come. The consumption of excellent wine at a wedding reveals the abundance of God's love; the water and blood flowing from his pierced side, reveals the depth and cost of that love.

This is glory: the refusal to refuse to love.

At this Eucharist we are caught up in that - continuing to break bread; continuing to partake of one cup.  We do so in a fearless hope that this is not the end. Just as water was turned into rich wine, so the poverty of our human nature is transformed by the riches of his grace. It is only in the renewal of our lives that God's glory breaks through. And not in the renewal of our  lives alone, but those of our brothers and sisters in America, Pakistan, Nigeria, Australia and Mexico.

On Friday, Michael, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church said: 'The pain for many will be real. But God is greater than anything. I love Jesus and I love the church. I am a Christian in the Anglican way. And like you, as we have said in this meeting, I am committed to 'walking together' with you as fellow Primates in the Anglican family'.

May we remain committed to walk together, bearing the pain, hope and bewilderment.  May we walk together because the marginalised need the prophetic; the persecuted need visionaries; the proud need the humble. As in marriage, so in the church, love is abundant. The more it gives, the more it receives, in order to give.

Radical love cannot be an exclusive club; it has to be an inclusive witness.

In washing feet, the Primates stayed together.  Perhaps what Archbishop Justin has risked in reconciliation, is the possibility of the transformation of the Anglican Communion - where fear and rejection will be replaced by trust and affection, where reproach will be transfigured by grace.

Paul reminded the fragile and fractious Corinthian church  'No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit'. More than ever, we need the affirmation of the varieties of gifts, service and activity; of wisdom, knowledge and healing.


©  Julie Gittoes 2016