St Mary's

If one searches the gospels for common phrases the one which appears most often is NOT “love your enemy” or “love your neighbour as yourself”, even  though they are very much part of the Christian message. The most frequent command, order, suggestion in a great variety of situations: angelic visitations, rough weather, empty stomachs, sick children, death  and strange apparitions is ….

WAIT FOR IT

“Don’t be afraid”

and its literary variations: “fear not; be not afraid; let not your hearts be troubled, be of good cheer” etc.

The three readings today are linked by the celebration of Christian love and its subsequent challenges to the accepted wisdom and experience of today’s world.

The   gospel reading, using Luke’s version of the beatitudes, contains the essence of the Jesus message with its exposition of what love demands if one is to take Jesus seriously.

The second reading contains the concluding lines from a famous children’s story by Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince,  a deceptively powerful parable with biblical allusions.

The first reading is the famous 1 Corinthians 13, a poem about love, so popular at weddings of course, but it makes similar, if not impossible, demands on true believers as the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that phrase from the movie The Castle “He must be dreamin’”.

The human heart is by nature restless as attested by all the philosophers and poets and mystics since history began. It wants peace and happiness and security. Is religion the answer?

The claim that one is “born again”, or “saved”, or “I am one with Jesus” should arguably be indicated by an absence of fear which has been replaced by love. We can be full of paralyzing fears: fears of spiders, failure, MSG, red Smarties, of what others think of what others say, of fading beauty, grey hair, a lack of material possessions, not to mention cyclones, tsunamis and global economic crashes. Mark Twain remarked, as an old man, that he had had many fears and most of them never happened. But awful things do happen, yet Jesus told us not to be afraid, “I am with you always”.

Our noble leader once said that there were only two emotions, love and fear. So true love should drive out debilitating fear, a fear which stops us from trying to live up to the Micah challenge; to live justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with the mystery of God.

I selected the Happy Prince excerpt because  the generous love of the two main characters replaced the fear of loneliness and death which had troubled them in their relationship (I suggest that  you revisit  the whole story to discover how their relationship developed). But wait, there is more.

The argument among the town councillors (who craved respect and feared anonymity) about who should have a statue built in his own honour is quite pharisaical, and indicative of their  blindness to and ignorance of the real love and beauty around them. Jesus had a lot to say about blind self seeking.

Let’s not forget the learned Art professor who dismissed the statue of the prince, “As he is no longer beautiful, he is no longer useful”. He must have feared growing old and wrinkled. What a tragic statement in the light of Jesus’ proclamation of the value of the individual. Remember our Eucharistic prayer:

To you, each of us, as each blade of grass and each star, is an    irreplaceable treasure, a companion on this journey of love.

Oscar Wilde could have drawn on his own experience because he found, after being sentenced to prison, that the rich friends among whom he had lived and moved before his trial found him “beautiful” no longer and treated him like a leper, only God’s poor whom he had once ignored if not despised, accepted him now that he had joined the marginalized. The suffering in goal and the witnessing of an execution motivated the author to write the classic poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”.  He died friendless and was buried in Paris.

The beginning of the Christian manifesto n today’s gospel “Blessed are the poor in spirit” was certainly realized in Wilde’s final years. He is remembered today for his poetry and dramas but his so called friends are long forgotten.

For Christian love and forgiveness requires enormous courage and many dismiss the beatitudes as an impossible dream. (The film “The life of Brian” had one hearing impaired listener believing   Jesus said “Blessed are the cheese makers”!)

Some might even like to rewrite the beatitudes: e.g. ‘Blessed are the rich and powerful for theirs is the kingdom of earth. Blessed are the warmongers for they shall improve the economic situation for arms manufacturers….’

Is it really possible to live up to the radical challenges of the Beatitudes? A famous writer once remarked that real Christianity had not really failed, it just had not been attempted; or maybe the original simpler message had been lost in the proliferation of divisive creeds. The earliest Christians were notorious in the public domain for their love for each other and their care for the widows and orphans. One could wish for no better eulogy for SMX  than a community of faith and love who tried to live out their dream without fear .

Let me conclude with a humorous but thought provoking paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13  love as  applied to  academics by an American professor:

If I have a PHD and can fathom all sorts of mysteries and significant amounts of knowledge, and if I have the commonsense to know that “faith can move mountains” is only a metaphor, and has not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I have to the poor and surrender my body for the purpose of scientific research or organ transplants, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I have knowledge of biology sufficient to keep me from falling into young-earth creationist claptrap and intelligent design pseudoscience, but have not love, I am but a prattling primate or a chattering chimpanzee.

If I have an understanding of biblical studies to rival the most famous scholars, and publications galore on my CV, but have not love, all I have written is like a hypothetical source lost in the sands of time.

Love is patient, love is kind etc (and then it continues)

Love never fails. But where there is scholarship, it will go out of print, where there are discoveries, they will be superseded, or else will become as familiar as common knowledge and seem ho hum to future generations, where there is knowledge it will pass away…

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a chrome bumper bar, then we shall see face to face….

And now these remain, faith, hope and love. Oh yeah and knowledge, at least for the time being. And wisdom. But at any rate, even if the list went on forever, the greatest of these is love. Amen.”