Say what you like about the Liturgy department here at Southwark (and on a Sunday which tries to carry as much as today does, you might want to say quite a lot) but we don’t run away from a challenge!
Combine Holy Cross Day with 4 Baptisms and throw in a
special focus on the environment for Green Communion Sunday? Sure! Why not? Bring it on…though as we tried to
create something that reflected all those genuinely important priorities, I did
feel rather like a deranged bake-off competitor, determined to use every
ingredient provided for the technical challenge, regardless of the flavour.
So, if you’re feeling a little bewildered by the sheer variety of things going on this morning – well, we sympathise.
But, you know,
there is a place where all these themes come to rest…A verse of Scripture that
is so well known you may actually not have heard it at all this morning, though
I promise you that Michael did indeed read it
GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY SON
God so loved the world.
That’s surely what has drawn Ray and Raina, Django and Ruby to baptism. A longing to
respond to that love which has always been there, waiting for them…A love that
is so intense for each of them, that had any one of them been the only person
who had ever been born, Christmas and Easter would have happened just for them…or
for you…or for me
Who wouldn’t want to learn more about that? To find a family
that is committed to making space for love in every way? And to hear that the
ultimate destination of all those beloved of God is to enter into eternal life.
Ray, Raina, Django, Ruby - You’re making great choices today
Our Old Testament and Gospel readings pair two images of healing…the bronze serpent
lifted up to become an antidote to snake bites, and “just as Moses lifted up
the serpent in the wilderness”, Christ himself lifted up as an antidote to the
forces of hatred, anger, death…everything that challenges God’s way of love. We
know, as those listening at the time did not, that Jesus would be lifted up,
not on the shoulders of supporters in a lap of honour but on the cross, an
instrument of death transformed into the gateway to real life, - life lived in
relationship with God.
That, of course, is why in a little while our baptism
candidates will have the cross traced in holy oil on their foreheads. It’s a
reminder of the shape of life they’re called to, in which personal agendas are
overtaken by the commandment to love as we ourselves are loved. It is a way of life that has nothing whatsoever to do with the crosses painted so defiantly, aggressively, on the faces of the far right groups who marched yesterday. It's a way of life committed to this ongoing work of loving and being loved.
God so loved THE WORLD – more than that….you could see world
in all its diverse beauty as a physical expression of God’s love. Jane Williams
says that as God’s creation, the world came into being out of the exuberance
and sheer vitality of God’s love. Love that could not be contained – there was
simply too much of it...so God made the world to delight in sharing love with
it.
But of course, that has implications for our own
relationship with the world too…Creation waits and groans and it does not seem
that we know how to love that gift entrusted to us. Of course when Paul writes
about creation in bondage, he’s not imagining the profligate abuse that we have
subjected the planet to in recent years…He’s simply reflecting on the natural
cycles of life and growth, death and decay, and concludes that the “glorious
liberty” that is God’s plan for humanity is actually God’s plan for all that is
made. But we need to reflect urgently on the interdependence of all that God
has made…to remind ourselves that we have no official permit to use, abuse,
squander the world’s resources…that we are a beloved part of God’s design, but
only a part.
God so loved the WORLD.
That love infuses everything.
It is the air we breathe and the light we see by. Trying to
measure it is as futile as trying to catch the wind and put it in a box. There
are no limits..God’s love spills over from the eternal exchange between Father,
Son and Spirit to transform simply everything – EVERYTHING
The world.
We might glimpse what that means for a moment, perhaps in
worship here, perhaps on a beach at sundown, or on a mountain top in spring…We might briefly find ourselves
caught up in the great creative dance that shapes and holds everything in
being…but we are oddly reluctant to submit to it, to lose ourselves in wonder,
love and praise. Rather we choose to rationalise contain, constrain, confine…and
condemn
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world
– but we look around and see much that we think deserves condemnation. We
judge. We diminish. We divide, proclaiming some people, some aspects of
creation of more value than others.
We create borders and declare that only those we choose can
cross them. And, what’s worse, in recent days some have chosen to highjack the
cross to support those sad divisions…Just this weekend, you may have heard the
phrase “Christian values” misappropriated by those who seem intent on sowing
not love but bitter hatred.
And yes, I know there is pain as well as anger, fear as well
as violence playing a part in the ugly demonstrations, the hateful rhetoric
which sounds so loudly across the national stage right now. I know that God,
being God, loves those who seem intent on propagating violence and division as
much as God loves those who tirelessly seek peace. That is extraordinary, challenging but true.
And I know that, as a work in progress, I can’t love like that…not yet though
that may be part of the glorious liberty of the children of God that will one
day come to pass.
But even so, I am confident that the way of exclusion and
anger is not the right way…that true Christian values will always be rooted in
reconciliation, in making space for new friends at the table, in hearing their
story and learning from them, as we try to practice self-emptying love TOGETHER.
That’s the journey we’re called on, wherever we are in life
and in faith. Good news for humanity, good news for the planet,
God’s invitation to each of us is to a new order of being in
which all things are reconciled…through that unconditional, self-sacrificial
love that Christ reveals when lifted high on the cross…for it is here all
things meet and are subsumed in the love that holds creation together.
We adore you O Christ and we bless you, because by your holy
cross you HAVE redeemed the world.
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