WHAT IS LOVE BUT A WAY OF SEEING
A sermon preached at St James' Piccadilly, London (Easter 6, Year A; Gospel John 14.15-21)
Perhaps some of you, like me, make a point of reading the broadsheet obituaries. This is not a ghoulish activity, but more to do with curiosity – indeed a genuine desire to learn about other lives. It is a shame that it tends to be the celebrities of public life who get the attention in these columns, for every day, at every moment, the world must bid farewell to countless ‘ordinary’ people (‘ordinary’ in inverted commas) who lived extraordinary lives and left their mark. If you are a reader of The Guardian you may know their parallel column entitled Other Lives in which just such women and men are remembered.
Fortunately we are judged not on whether we make the broadsheet obits but rather – in the words of St John of the Cross – on our loving. Something intimated in today’s Gospel.
Of these many years of Obit-spotting, the one I recall most vividly and learnt most from occurred one week-day lunchtime over a sandwich at my desk at work. I read about the life of a man called Colin Mackay. The impact of what I read moved me to tears. It said: “Colin Mackay, who has committed suicide aged 52, two days after completing his autobiography, dismissed himself as a poet, and I'm sure destroyed many poems before he died…".
It went on to recount some aspects of his life. He was born in West Lothian. He attended a local secondary school, then Edinburgh University. Both experiences were abhorrent: he hated school for the barrenness of the curriculum, the ignorance of many teachers and the bullying; he hated university for what he saw as a lack of commitment to what mattered about literature and ideas.
His parents - Hugh, a dedicated socialist and atheist, and Margaret, a practising Christian - were both librarians, and were to have a profound influence on Colin's views.
He developed a deep concern over the injustice of the world, and in 1991 felt called to act rather than merely fret about it. Feeling guilty that all he did was to write in his spare time and work as a nightwatchman at the Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh, he set off with a friend who owned a van to take provisions to then war-torn Bosnia. Apart from seeing at first hand the horror of civil war, he also had his first experience of reciprocated love. He met and fell in love with Svetlana, the Serbian widow of a Muslim who had died fighting for Bosnian independence.
His intention was to bring Svetlana and her children back to Scotland, marry her, and to create a shared life together. But having travelled to Sarajevo to arrange their transportation, he arrived back at their village to find it blitzed and all the inhabitants dead. He found the bodies of Svetlana and her sons himself. The obituary noted that his own death was meticulously planned.
This is not a sermon about suicide, but rather about seeing. Seeing is, really, everything. ‘Seeing’ that is, in the sense of registering what is happening and seeking to understand its meaning.
I find reading obituaries to be nearly always a reminder about the importance to our human lives of seeing. The one I have recounted had that effect. It opened my eyes to a life of obvious stature and worth. And to a person who (from what was said) did not regard himself very highly. He had ‘low esteem’ to use that clichéd phrase. As I say, this is not intended as a reflection on suicide, but for what its worth, my own view is that to end one’s life may in some circumstances be the only tenable course in a set of untenable circumstances. We regard suicide too harshly, and too readily judge those who have recourse to it.
But there is perhaps another message for us here – and that is that the best way to avoid distress after such an event is to practice preventative measures before it. In other words, to get better at loving, understanding, affirming and tending one another. We are so fragile, each one of us. Not weak; not pathetic; fragile. The fragility often co-exists with strengths, but that’s beside the point. The point is that we are called to care for one another, as best we can and to the limit of our ability. And of course that means listening to the story of one another’s lives whilst they and we remain around to speak and to listen.
Don't hear this call to love one another as a prescription from a sentimentalist, it's not. Christ’s commandment that we shall love one another is central to the entire thrust of the Gospels. Our culture may tend to side-step this call; one can always find ‘expedient’ reasons to do so. Some sneer at it, and also at Christians because they (we) so often make such a cack-handed mess of living it out. Yet there it is, a straight forward call, from Jesus, in the gospels, not only said by him but exemplified by him. We seem good at letting ourselves off its demanding hook with excuses. ‘Lord, there are so many people – and many of them are not lovable’. Both of these things are true. But neither will wash, will they?
‘Seeing’ and ‘loving’ are related. ‘Seeing’ is a common theme in the Gospels – remember how they speak of people who are blind, and those who see, and seeing then act and are changed. John’s Gospel especially is about this kind of – well, I think we might call it spiritual vision, for it is about something very much more than light and images hitting the retina. It is about seeing and understanding with the heart; the thing the ancients call wisdom. William Blake – baptised here in this church well before his own astonishing ability to see was awakened – noted: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to (hu)man(kind) as it is, infinite.”
How we see one another, ourselves and the world is critical in how we respond to it. Most collective hatreds - racism, misogyny, homophobia for example – have their root in blindness. And we have to be not only blind but stupid to read the gospels and not understand that what is demanded is something new inside, a new way of looking, of seeing – of perceiving - which alone opens our hearts to not only the Holy Spirit but God’s astonishing purpose of our liberation and our healing and wholeness.
We use the word repent in church-talk, and it means little – practically - to the ordinary world. The Hebrew word for repent [shuv] means to turn around. One of the consequences of turning around is that we see differently. We get a different perspective. Turn around! It's brilliantly simple. And available free at a store near you.
But even with that marvellously practical step, ‘seeing’ is far from straightforward. Let me give you an example.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. "Watson, look up and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars." "And what does that tell you?" Holmes asked.
Watson pondered for a second. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. From the position of certain stars, I deduce that the time is about a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Why, what does it tell you?" Holmes replied: "Someone has stolen our tent."
I like the way the story shows that we see things differently. It also makes the point that we need one another to develop our ‘seeing’.
What is the Gospel but a call to love? And what is love but a way of seeing? And what is life but the constant deepening of how we see? And what might the Holy Spirit be but God’s active participation in our truly opening our eyes?
A sermon preached at St James' Piccadilly, London (Easter 6, Year A; Gospel John 14.15-21)
Perhaps some of you, like me, make a point of reading the broadsheet obituaries. This is not a ghoulish activity, but more to do with curiosity – indeed a genuine desire to learn about other lives. It is a shame that it tends to be the celebrities of public life who get the attention in these columns, for every day, at every moment, the world must bid farewell to countless ‘ordinary’ people (‘ordinary’ in inverted commas) who lived extraordinary lives and left their mark. If you are a reader of The Guardian you may know their parallel column entitled Other Lives in which just such women and men are remembered.
Fortunately we are judged not on whether we make the broadsheet obits but rather – in the words of St John of the Cross – on our loving. Something intimated in today’s Gospel.
Of these many years of Obit-spotting, the one I recall most vividly and learnt most from occurred one week-day lunchtime over a sandwich at my desk at work. I read about the life of a man called Colin Mackay. The impact of what I read moved me to tears. It said: “Colin Mackay, who has committed suicide aged 52, two days after completing his autobiography, dismissed himself as a poet, and I'm sure destroyed many poems before he died…".
It went on to recount some aspects of his life. He was born in West Lothian. He attended a local secondary school, then Edinburgh University. Both experiences were abhorrent: he hated school for the barrenness of the curriculum, the ignorance of many teachers and the bullying; he hated university for what he saw as a lack of commitment to what mattered about literature and ideas.
His parents - Hugh, a dedicated socialist and atheist, and Margaret, a practising Christian - were both librarians, and were to have a profound influence on Colin's views.
He developed a deep concern over the injustice of the world, and in 1991 felt called to act rather than merely fret about it. Feeling guilty that all he did was to write in his spare time and work as a nightwatchman at the Meadowbank stadium in Edinburgh, he set off with a friend who owned a van to take provisions to then war-torn Bosnia. Apart from seeing at first hand the horror of civil war, he also had his first experience of reciprocated love. He met and fell in love with Svetlana, the Serbian widow of a Muslim who had died fighting for Bosnian independence.
His intention was to bring Svetlana and her children back to Scotland, marry her, and to create a shared life together. But having travelled to Sarajevo to arrange their transportation, he arrived back at their village to find it blitzed and all the inhabitants dead. He found the bodies of Svetlana and her sons himself. The obituary noted that his own death was meticulously planned.
This is not a sermon about suicide, but rather about seeing. Seeing is, really, everything. ‘Seeing’ that is, in the sense of registering what is happening and seeking to understand its meaning.
I find reading obituaries to be nearly always a reminder about the importance to our human lives of seeing. The one I have recounted had that effect. It opened my eyes to a life of obvious stature and worth. And to a person who (from what was said) did not regard himself very highly. He had ‘low esteem’ to use that clichéd phrase. As I say, this is not intended as a reflection on suicide, but for what its worth, my own view is that to end one’s life may in some circumstances be the only tenable course in a set of untenable circumstances. We regard suicide too harshly, and too readily judge those who have recourse to it.
But there is perhaps another message for us here – and that is that the best way to avoid distress after such an event is to practice preventative measures before it. In other words, to get better at loving, understanding, affirming and tending one another. We are so fragile, each one of us. Not weak; not pathetic; fragile. The fragility often co-exists with strengths, but that’s beside the point. The point is that we are called to care for one another, as best we can and to the limit of our ability. And of course that means listening to the story of one another’s lives whilst they and we remain around to speak and to listen.
Don't hear this call to love one another as a prescription from a sentimentalist, it's not. Christ’s commandment that we shall love one another is central to the entire thrust of the Gospels. Our culture may tend to side-step this call; one can always find ‘expedient’ reasons to do so. Some sneer at it, and also at Christians because they (we) so often make such a cack-handed mess of living it out. Yet there it is, a straight forward call, from Jesus, in the gospels, not only said by him but exemplified by him. We seem good at letting ourselves off its demanding hook with excuses. ‘Lord, there are so many people – and many of them are not lovable’. Both of these things are true. But neither will wash, will they?
‘Seeing’ and ‘loving’ are related. ‘Seeing’ is a common theme in the Gospels – remember how they speak of people who are blind, and those who see, and seeing then act and are changed. John’s Gospel especially is about this kind of – well, I think we might call it spiritual vision, for it is about something very much more than light and images hitting the retina. It is about seeing and understanding with the heart; the thing the ancients call wisdom. William Blake – baptised here in this church well before his own astonishing ability to see was awakened – noted: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to (hu)man(kind) as it is, infinite.”
How we see one another, ourselves and the world is critical in how we respond to it. Most collective hatreds - racism, misogyny, homophobia for example – have their root in blindness. And we have to be not only blind but stupid to read the gospels and not understand that what is demanded is something new inside, a new way of looking, of seeing – of perceiving - which alone opens our hearts to not only the Holy Spirit but God’s astonishing purpose of our liberation and our healing and wholeness.
We use the word repent in church-talk, and it means little – practically - to the ordinary world. The Hebrew word for repent [shuv] means to turn around. One of the consequences of turning around is that we see differently. We get a different perspective. Turn around! It's brilliantly simple. And available free at a store near you.
But even with that marvellously practical step, ‘seeing’ is far from straightforward. Let me give you an example.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. "Watson, look up and tell me what you see."
Watson replied, "I see millions and millions of stars." "And what does that tell you?" Holmes asked.
Watson pondered for a second. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. From the position of certain stars, I deduce that the time is about a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. Why, what does it tell you?" Holmes replied: "Someone has stolen our tent."
I like the way the story shows that we see things differently. It also makes the point that we need one another to develop our ‘seeing’.
What is the Gospel but a call to love? And what is love but a way of seeing? And what is life but the constant deepening of how we see? And what might the Holy Spirit be but God’s active participation in our truly opening our eyes?