Sermon: Do we mean love, when we say love?

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 13th October 2013

Service:

Choral Evensong

Readings:

Nehemiah 6: 1-16

John 15: 12-27

Listen:

Download Recording (MP3, 14.3M)

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Samuel Beckett’s work often has a tragicomic edge to it; but in this deceptively simple question, he forces us to consider something complex and intimate. He names our deepest desire and our greatest fear: do we mean love?  He acknowledges our potential to flourish and squarely faces our capacity to disappoint: when we say love?

For someone who was regarded as a pessimist, Beckett’s engagement with life’s struggles does not end in despair.  There is a sense of hope and elevation of humanity.  He expresses it in Waiting for Godot as a prayer; a ‘vague supplication’. He articulates human determination to live and our capacity for resilience in The Unnamable which ends:  ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’. 

Words are an attempt to express what we know or long for; what we remember or fear.  We think we know what we mean by love. We know what it feels like: the confusion, the assurance, the angst, the pain, the delight; the habits it shapes, the forms it takes.  Love delights and wounds; it affects interior lives and our ways of relating. 

Hanif Kureishi’s latest film Le Week-end, is an attempt to think about what we mean by love.  Meg and Nick have returned to Paris 30 years after their honeymoon.  On the cusp of retirement, these empty nesters are either escaping or rediscovering each other; spite, fondness, disappointment and longing give a raw edge to intimacy and commitment.

We see them walking through a cemetery; standing at Beckett’s grave; contemplating their future.  Nick quotes the line: Do we mean love, when we say love? It’s not the musing of a philosophy professor but of a husband seeking to recover his identity, his purpose, his love. 

At a dinner party celebrating the achievements of his (celebrity) colleague Nick says that ‘love is the most interesting thing; far more interesting than sex and harder to get right.’  It is love that enables us to become more fully ourselves; whilst enabling the other to become a better person – more generous, more kind or more patient. It is also love that causes us the most pain; that prompts us to count the cost.  It is love that inspires and disappoints; that exasperates us and sustains us.

Do we mean love, when we say love?

Our human subjectivity may lead us to say: yes, no, not always; or even it is more complicated than that.  Beckett’s question and the answer given by Kureishi’s script, acknowledge the frailty of human love and its potential to transform.  Intimacy is more than sex; commitment can be generative; love can be risky, mundane, and fraught with difficulty; it offers a glimpse of the eternal; forms its own legacy.  Today’s readings take the question and sets it on a broader canvas.

Nehemiah faces twin challenges: reforming a community and rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.  He challenges those who were oppressing the poor.  He presents a vision of justice and righteousness, rooted in God’s mercy. The subsequent cancellation of debt liberates the people. 

Opposition to that vision is projected onto the construction of the wall.  The crisis point occurs when he is accused by Sanballat of planning a rebellion against Artaxerxes.  Prophets and messengers and leaders conspire against him: lies, intimidation and taunts do not dissuade him from his task.

The walls are built in the face of opposition; but the esteem is not given to Nehemiah, but to God.  It was not Nehemiah’s vision, but God’s.  The establishment of security and stability was made manifest in city walls; but it was the establishment of a legacy in the lives of the people that was equally important. 

Such a legacy took time; it called for resilience. Such a legacy points to something that transcends our human endeavours.  Do we mean love as liberation, justice and hope? When we say love is it generative?

Part of the disappointment and frustration faced by Meg and Nick is the extent to which their relationship has been, and will continue to be, fruitful.  Are they going to spend the next years of their marriage discussing bathroom tiles, or is there something more? In taking time and being resilient, they have the chance to re-evaluate the legacy of their love and commitment.

Kureishi’s film circumvents this challenge, which is frustrating. Does love in the face of mortality mean recreating the excitement of youth by spending the kids’ inheritance?  Or is there something more altruistic and transformative – a vague supplication and hope that we can go on, the glimpse of something eternal?

In an article published in The New Statesman Robert Peston gives love as the answer to the question: what makes us human?   He writes of his grief following the death of his wife Sian Busby.  He takes pride in her achievements and her bravery; he delights in his soulmate.  She revealed a love that was mutual, intimate and social; love that collaborated with others and love that continues to shape his internal dialogues of heart and mind. 

Peston names the search for the eternal that many people place at the centre of life; his quest for truth as a Jewish agnostic led him to ‘something that transcends physical existence’.  His love for another human being; love in the midst of life and in the face of death; love with a legacy forged patiently, over time; love that is resilience and creates the capacity to love others.

That is the kind of fruitfulness that Jesus speaks of.  His words, like Peston’s, are words spoken in the midst of life and in the face of death; words spoken honestly about opposition; but also offering us hope to persevere.  Jesus says love one another as I have loved you.

Jesus doesn’t say love; he embodies it. Love that is fully human and fully divine; love that bears betrayal and grief; intimacy and consolation.  Love means laying down his life for us; in calling us friends.  Such love is fruitful, often in the face of opposition; and it endures for ever.

The love that Jesus embodies challenges not just the quality of our personal relationships but their purpose.  The law of our land recognises committed relationships which afford stability and intimacy. To be fruitful such love is not limited to the couple, but overflows to family and friends in hospitality and support. 

Our relational status isn’t a limit on love or our capacity to bear fruit; for we are all called friends. Together as the body of Christ we have the capacity to love beyond the scope of nuclear family. We are all called to love: to leave a legacy that builds up and bears fruit.  We can only do that if we place our desire for God first. His love makes sense of our human desires.   It is God’s love for us that overwhelms, forgives and reshapes us; and which equips us with vision, energy and persistence in our words and acts of love. 

It is love that channels our cries of lament into prophetic action; that same love draws together our joys into acts of celebration.  As we embrace art and music, as we engage in conversation with others asking what it is to be human we give meaning to love.  This Cathedral is dedicated to the Spirit who is our advocate, comforter and inspiration; the Spirit enables us to love – and for that love to be extended to others in the face of opposition.  The relationships we form, the dialogues we facilitate and hospitality we offer mean we have the opportunity to transform the world, rather than be conformed to it.

Like Nehemiah we face two challenges: we are called to secure a building and we are called to form a living community.  As disciples and friends, we are to take courage from Jesus words and to consider prayerfully what our legacy will be and how we can contribute to it in generous giving and costly service. 

Our legacy over the next generation is not simply a Cathedral building; our legacy is to be a fruitful community of love.  Embracing those with whom we disagree; equipping people to engage in the world; challenging decision makers and drawing alongside the vulnerable.  We do all this in the hope and conviction that transformation is the fruit of love. That is what survives us.

Do we mean love, when we say love?