A sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook and Byers Green Methodist Chapels, 13th May 2012
My attic is full of stuff; I venture up there two or three times a year to have a clear out. Sixth form essays, sport science text books, Christmas decorations, two tents and a camping stove, sleeping bags, bags of teenage clothes, football boots, African masks and wooden giraffes as well as my late parents china tea sets and dinner services, photographs, brassware. My attic is full of stuff; there are too many boxes of memories and accumulated stuff. But what do you do with it all? What do you do for example with boxes of letters from friends and family? I had intended clearing them out but very soon I found myself reading them: rediscovering stages and experiences I had almost forgotten and bringing them alive again. And then, as I was doing this rewinding, I suddenly saw the handwriting of one of my best friends from the days I worked in Kenya as a planning officer, he was an architect working with me for Mombasa Municipal Council, and my heart leapt. At the time it had seemed like a normal letter, telling news, expressing friendship and the hope we would meet together again, but now as I re-read this letter I hung on every word. For my friend had since died, I did the eulogy for his funeral, age 51. He seemed to be speaking beyond a time and particular context. I was filling those words with the knowledge of his death and his words had a new significance and meaning. They seemed precious – words from beyond death, as if from eternity. They filled me not with grief but with a sense of hope and courage that somehow our friendship continued beyond death and I wanted to read his words again each time discovering something new. Gosh! did we really dream we really were going to build a new world; new buildings and towns in those idealistic, swinging days at the beginning of our profession. The hopes we had were much too high; way out of reach, but we have to try. The game will never be over; because we're keeping the dream alive. The game will never be over, because we're keeping the dream alive, so sang Freiheit, a German rock band in 1988.
Our Gospel for this week is like that letter but even more so. It is Jesus’ farewell words to his disciples before his crucifixion and death, when the atmosphere was threatening, time was short and every word counted. For almost four chapters from John 14-17 he speaks to them, he chose his words carefully, what to say and what to leave unsaid; Jesus’ words spiral round and round, returning again and again to themes of love and parting - his relationship with God, his relationship with these his friends and disciples and through them us. Eternal words. His longings for them, his hopes, fears and the desire that those he most loved will not be lost. Those words of love that would later hold and sustain the disciples through the tumultuous life of the early church, as they were appointed and bore fruit that has lasted through the centuries.
As is my habit I read Christ’s words through from today’s gospel several weeks ago with that initial panic of not knowing what I would speak about. But as often happens with scripture, if you give it space, if you give it time, it’s not really about what you will say but about what it says to you and how these words speak across 2000 years, speak across a terrible death upon a cross and through the knowledge of resurrection. For Christ’s words are waiting for each one of us to complete them in our own lives and the more we think about them, the more they open up for us.
And the words which kept returning to me again and again throughout the last few weeks of this most joyous Easter season were these: As the Father has loved me so I have loved you. Abide in my love. And I found myself holding on to those words “abide in my love,” as I stepped out of the car to do some visits at West Lodge, as I prepared Pentecost material for the C club/Messy Church, as I looked forward and planned surprises for my wife’s birthday - live in that love, stay with that love, hold onto it, don’t abandon it, it is why you are here.
Abide is such an old fashioned word. I can’t remember the last time I heard it used outside church circles and crossword puzzles. My grandmother used to occasionally say that she “couldn’t abide” something but she’s been gone a very long time now and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone else use it in conversation.
It’s a complex word—abide. What does it mean to abide in Jesus’ love? To me, to abide in Jesus’ love is to live in it; to surround ourselves with it; to bask and revel in it; to have the opportunity to be both gently wrapped in it and to dance in it with rejoicing. To abide in Jesus’ love is to let it be our armour and our security blanket. To abide in Jesus’ love is to let it be where we seek rest and peace as well as refreshment and renewal. To abide in Jesus’ love is to know it as the solid and unchanging base of our lives in a very transitory and changing world.
To abide in Jesus’ love is to live mindfully, always aware that we are loved by Jesus’ as much as he is loved by God the Father. Think how loved that is. God could not love Jesus anymore than he does—and Jesus loves us just as much. To abide in Jesus’ love is to remind ourselves over and over and over again, as many times a day as necessary, that Jesus loves us—always and forever. I think that old children’s song Jesus loves me gets it right: Jesus loves me when I’m good, when I do the things I should; Jesus loves me when I’m bad, though it makes him very sad. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so. Yes, Jesus loves us. To abide in his love is to know that love, always. Dr. Karl Barth, Swiss theologian and one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all those volumes. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
To abide really means staying with, it implies notions of reassurance, permanence, stability. But our lives are often anything but stable, permanent, things in my/your life change - like moving, like changing jobs, like learning a new set of skills, like leaving behind people you care about, like leaving a church you have worshipped in, people you have loved and enjoyed, like a parting, a death: humbling experiences, that remind us of our vulnerability and the impermanence of our lives, yes experiences all of us at times will face - and yet beneath that changing surface, beneath the confusions and the anxieties, the unease and disquiet, Christ’s words to his disciples are “Abide in my love.” It is like a call to deeper level of belonging, to be in the right place, a deeper connectedness. Of course all that is around us seems to demand our attention and our time, and often seems to consume us.
Now that my neighbouring university students are back for the summer term, one thing which has struck me is how busy Durham is! Longer than normal queues at Tesco’s, in banks, coffee shops, bars and restaurants. One night last week I lay awake listening to shouts and voices, partying students, drunks and sirens, and later street cleaning lorries, dustbins and reversing delivery trucks. But of course it is not just Durham which is busy it is our lives too: lives more driven than ever before as we rush to fit in everything that is expected of us. Instant communication requires instant answers with no space for a turn around; then rushing to get the children to school; to fit in the planned activities, to arrange the logistics of the day, evening and weekends; to answer the e-mails and facebook messages, the answer phone and the mobile text messages; to down-load more information, more films, more music, more channels, more news on the hour than ever before; the workouts, the weight training, the twenty four hour supermarkets and consumer parks replacing a simple walk in the park. And amongst all this frenetic activity Jesus says “Abide in my love.” Stay with me.
Christ is calling us not to abandon the world but to find at the very centre of our lives his presence and his love. And this requires a conscious decision on our part during each day to make a place and a space for Christ. W B Yeats writes that “When the falcon cannot hear the falconer things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.”
Our lives need that centre, that still point where we are grounded, where we can listen for and discern truth. The late Brother Roger of the Taize Community in France, over and over again uses the image that our faith in Christ is like “a wellspring in the desert” and that it is from this well spring of Christ’s presence that we receive the water that will give life and meaning to everything we do. And this spring is pure gift.
Most morning at the cathedral I join in Morning Prayer. It’s a special time … quiet … a sacred time. The light floods through the east window above the altar and a simple prayer is offered. Abbot Jamison, (who is the abbot of Worth Abbey who some of you may remember from the television programme The Monastery a couple of years ago) calls this space for God “sanctuary” derived from the word sanctus meaning holy, holy space, sacred time. Sanctuary also means a place of refuge, a place of safe-keeping. That refuge is not an escape from the world but Christ’s gift to us at the very heart of the world. Jesus says: If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love… This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” The love of Christ for us is the source of our love for the world. God’s salvation through his Spirit is for all the world – not just for our own corner of it. Love involves reaching out to people we don’t know and will never meet, and working for the good of the whole world. We shall demonstrate this love and commandment in our collections and activities this week in our support for Christian Aid.
When we hear the word commandment we tend to think about rules and burdens; about demands and requirements but this commandment of Jesus is not a burdensome one, but is rather a joyous opportunity. Love demanded or required is not true love; only love that is generously shared is real love, the love that Jesus gives and asks for.
And that is how we abide in his love, by joyously sharing the love that he has already given us with our neighbours and friends. It’s not drudgery—it is a privilege. And just as Jesus loves us all the time, so we love one another all the time. It’s a process, a way of life, not a quantifiable result. As we abide in Jesus’ love by wrapping ourselves in it, we also share it with others, and that’s how we manage to live in our sometimes painful and often difficult world. Christ’s love, received and shared, is what gets us through; it is what makes sense of most things and lets us live with what doesn’t make sense. The love of Christ, received and shared, makes life not just bearable but joyful; not just manageable but exhilarating, not just alright, but extraordinary.
In the middle of our busy lives, in thanksgiving, in humility and in awe we seek again the sanctuary of Christ and abide in his love. Pope Benedict XVl took love as the theme of his first encyclical letter. He ends that letter with this prayer: “Show us Jesus. Lead us to him. Teach us to know and love him, So that we too can become capable of true love. And be the fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.”
Have no doubt that Jesus’ loves you. As he said to his first disciples, so he says to us: You did not choose me but I chose you. We are his chosen—we’re the ones he picked; we’re the ones he wants, whether we choose him back or not. Jesus chose us to love and to share that love with others. He chose us to abide in his love, with all that that means. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you,” he says. “Abide in my love.”
Amen
1 John 5 v1-6; John 15. 9-17
Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit
No comments:
Post a Comment