SERMON PREACHED at St PAUL’S,
ARROWTOWN
& St PETER’S, QUEENSTOWN,
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 28th)
2024
READINGS
1 John 7: 7-21
Psalm 22: 25-31
John 15.18
If you will bear with me while I become a little
introspective, standing almost in the tradition of testimony, when I came to
faith after a few years of grumpy adolescent atheism, I moved briefly in the
sort of circles that spend a lot of time condemning people to hell. Such
branches of Christianity will spend a whole lot of time focused on the branches
that in Jesus’ simple metaphor are trimmed from the vine and cast into the fire.
Such branches of Christianity cannot, if you’ll
excuse the almost-pun, see the wood for the trees. The fires of Jesus’ metaphor
are to do with gardening and pruning, and not with casting wayward souls into
endless torment. If there is anything about purgative fires here it is about
finding the parts of our own life that need a little bit of harsh trimming, and
not about flinging those with whom we do not agree into sulphuric pits.
I sat, as I hope you can imagine, slightly uneasily
with this. I don’t remember the details of the slow transitions that took place
thereafter but I know that a large part of them was a remarkable digging into those
same writings that we have been travelling through in the weeks since Easter.
We don’t need to be great scholars to realise that
the writings that bear the name John are deeply focused on the themes of love
and, although the he does not use the word, tenacity. He uses the word “abide” but
in the interests of simplicity we’ll set that aside for now. A synonym can be a
fine thing.
As a one-time scribbler of poetry, deeply convinced
that I was the next James K. Baxter. That was a pipe dream that I eventually
surrendered when I faced reality. I discovered anyway that I can’t walk
barefoot. But before that I wrote much about love. Lest I lead you astray I was
no Shakespeare, nor was my adolescent scribbling or even my early adult
scribbling identifiable as love poetry. The greater theme was: “what is love?”
As I also came to dabble in the writings of John, who
is of course the recorder of those Jesus words “greater love has no person than
this …” I recognise firmly that we are all very early stages apprentices in
this profound human narrative.
Allow me to spend the rest of my time here – by
which I mean here today, not here in Queenstown for the duration – allow me to
spend the rest of the time on 3 brief events of the last 72 hours.
One of the immeasurable privileges of my work is to
engage in peak moments of human love. The most obvious form that I’m referring
to is of course the privilege of officiating at weddings, or, in this parish,
the frequent renewal of wedding vows. Just yesterday I was able to take part in
two of these occasions. Being very even handed one was at Saint Paul’s and one
at Saint Peter’s. In the first a very western couple, from the United States, renewed
vows that they had made 11 or so years before. Amidst the tears and the
laughter of the very laid-back but I think holy ceremony their love for one
another, for life, and for life together was irrepressible.
Later yesterday I was once again able to be a part
of the blessing of a Chinese marriage. I make no secret of the fact that I
wrestle with these occasions and have even asked couples after the event whether
it is the faith dimension of a church blessing or the romantic Europeanization
of love that brings them across oceans and continents for a blessing. Yet almost
every time I take one of these moments and do my best to breathe something of
God into the clutter of cameras and candles I see love, writ large across each
bride’s eager face (and of course dare I admit it, the groom’s patient
forbearance).
Yet love is love, that slogan must used at the
moment particularly as we wrestle with understanding forms of love that were
once beyond the pale. In the church we wrestle with these questions of love
knowing that we, in our drawing of lines in the sand may have been more wrong
than right. Yet having floated that boat I’m going to leave it adrift on a sea
of unanswered questions.
But there was one other incredibly privileged
moment these past 72 hours as I found myself, unmerited, marching at the front
of the Anzac day parade in Arrowtown. I am, you may remember, a part of the
generation of the 70s who watched such gatherings with misguided near-contempt.
It was only in the decade or so after that that I began to recognize the
courage and the sacrifice that had been entailed in soldiers heading to the
other side of the world to fight in a war that none of us could understand. In
doing so they, voluntarily or otherwise absolutely committed themselves to the
cause, and to the belief that their horrors were experienced in the struggle
for a better world for those who followed after them.
As I marched this year, and as I spoke – and might
I say far less eloquently than the young high school student who was the chosen
speaker – but as I marched and as I spoke I felt deeply that sense that we were
there, and we were able to march and remember and feel so freely, because of
great sacrifices made in the past. Each year I feel a deep unworthiness: not
only have I never struggled in trenches or brutal warfare, but to the best of
my knowledge none of my forebears have either – though I acknowledge my cousins-once-removed
in Australia who dedicated their working lives to peacetime military service.
These thoughts are (after I’d have to admit another
hectic several days) rather random thoughts, but not random, without purpose.
For the source of the materials that bear the name John again and again dares
to say that where love is God is. And where God is love is. The reverse of that
is more nuanced; where hate is God is too, but there God patiently waits and
perhaps waits long beyond the reach of time.
Jesus sets down a difficult command: love one
another as I have loved you. To a person we have fallen short of his command.
But to a person we have seen glimpses, little vignettes in our lives and the
lives of those around us that reveal something of that love.
We are called to embody the lessons of those
vignettes. For me this past week the irrepressible love of an American couple
renewing their vows, the whimsical happiness of a Chinese couple wanting to
express something that their original ceremony did not, the immeasurable love
of those who allowed their lives to be shattered because they wanted a better
world for their descendants. These vignettes give us some glimpse of the task
Jesus entrusts us to.
It is my privilege to have those glimpses but you too
will know of many similar moments and glimpses of immeasurable love, God’s
greatest gift.
No comments:
Post a Comment