17 After Trinity 2022
‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’
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A friend of mine once remarked that it’s a good thing Jesus gave this as a commandment and not as a piece of helpful advice, because sometimes, it can be hard to love someone.
The most obvious example of this fact comes when we try to follow another of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples, to love our enemies. What on earth can it mean to love someone who wishes us harm, or, to whom we would rather see no good come.
Hearing stories of the heroic acts of love put into practice by others can be humbling, even intimidating. I’m thinking here of communities like the people of Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, who, out of love, forgave the man who entered their church and killed members of their congregation.
It is my dear hope and fervent prayer that no one here tonight has been or will ever be put in the position to contemplate such an unthinkable position. But still we will each find ourselves some day in the position of being called upon to respond with love to those whom we rather despise. It is not an easy thing to do, but the promise is that in offering love instead of hate, not only migh the one for whom we pray be changed, but we, too will be transformed: no longer shackled by loathing and fear, but free to will good to all our fellow creatures.
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But it is not only to love one’s enemies that demonstrates how hard loving can be.
Sometimes, the ones we love we see no longer.
Any fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe who watched the follow-up miniseries Wandavision will remember the admonition with which the story culminates, that grief is nothing other than love persevering.
When love is cut short by death, the reciprocality which characterises love is likewise cut off. Loving the one we see no longer becomes a painful exercise in memory and recollection: literally a gathering together of the essence of the one who has died so that we can continue to care for them as we did in life.
There are times when this act of love for those who have passed beyond our sight is activated in surprising and breathtaking ways. I believe this was a part of what was going on some weeks ago at the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as millions participated in one way or another in mourning for a monarch who was in some cases not their own and whose life had barely influenced theirs.
There is a feeling at the death of a loved one that, as WH Auden put it, we must ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’, that life must stop to bear witness to the depth of what has occurred.
Most of us are not afforded this means of grieving, of playing out the love that we still feel for the one who has died. But there was a sense in the death of the late Queen that our own grief could, in some small way, participate in that more public act of mourning. I say this as somone from a country that went to some lengths not to have a monarch, indeed not to have this very monarch. And yet I, too, found myself strangely moved.
Love can be difficult, but it can be aided by the help and presence of others who will share it with us, carry it with us.
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And then, love can be difficult even within the bounds of living, lively relationships, be they friendships or family bonds or romantic partnerships.
We all know that even in the most delightful and long-lasting relationships, there can be squabbling and rows and even fallings out that are eventually healed. But none of these necessarily represents the greatest hurdle to love in an otherwise caring and affectionate relationship.
No, the greatest peril to love in an otherwise loving relationship is the eventual settling of love into something assumed.
Friendships that are deep and that last are characterised by ongoing engagement and though expressions of interest and concern. How many friendships can each of us recount that has simply ‘faded away’.
Likewise in romantic partnerships, an ongoing attention is necessary to maintain the life and nourish the soul of the relationship. In the Marriage liturgy of the Church of England, the vows require each of the couple to promise not only to love but also to cherish the other: to live out in discernible ways the love that is felt and practiced by the couple.
It is a task not without its own rewards, but it remains a matter worthy of considered and careful attention.
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And finally, there is love for those whom we barely know or do not know at all.
It might be much to ask for each of us to muster the kind of love that Jesus describes for those whom we have only just met, but it is, in the end, the archetype and true vocation of love itself: to wish good and offer care to others not because we are already in relationship with them, but simply because they are themselves also a beloved child of God.
It is my hope that by now any of you who are new to the Lincoln community will have begun making friends and finding yourself integrating into what I have always found to be a very collegial College.
But it is this love for those whom we do not know or do not yet know that makes the life of the College so collegial indeed. By caring for the life of the College, for one another regardless of whether or not we have yet met, we help to make this place the welcoming, supportive, homelike place that it is.
By loving one another, by placing the needs of the other at at least the same value as our own, together we will make our life together something beautiful indeed: a community of self-offering love.
May we have the courage and the grace to make it so.
Amen.