'Lord, Teach Us to Pray': Reflections for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost

 

RCL Proper 17C [i]

27 July 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

Introduction

            About the year 150, a Christian scribe in Alexandria found himself in possession of two older Christian documents.  One was a catechism or a collection of teachings about how a person should live their life.  This collection of teachings probably began its life as a Jewish document that a later Christian edited to suit a Christian audience.  The second part was longer and was a guidebook to how the Christian community should conduct its communal affairs:  baptism, eucharist, church organization and prayer.  This second part likely began its life in the rural areas of western Syria.  Our Christian friend in Alexandria put the two documents together and called it, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles”. [ii]

            

            In the second part the original writer responds to a question from their community:  “How and how often shall we pray?’  The writer’s answer is wonderfully simple:  Pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day – when you rise, when you are in the middle of your working day, when you bring the day to an end. [iii]  Pray as our Lord taught us in the Gospels according to Matthew and Luke.

 

“Father, . . . “ [iv]

            With this one word the evangelist Luke reminds us that prayer is a conversation that is based on our relationship with a living and personal God – not a set of rules, not an abstract philosophy – but a relationship with the One who created all that is, seen and unseen, the One who knows the hairs on our heads and the needs of our life.

 

            Now, it is no secret that calling God ‘Father’ is not easy for everyone.  Because this is about a relationship with God, how we talk about God is important.  For some, ‘Father’ conjures up memories of safety, nurture and compassion.  For others, ‘Father’ brings up past traumas, disappointments and pain.  For more than thirty years I have been involved in our church’s efforts to find language that is faithful and fair, life-giving and hope-creating, so that we can all join in prayer and thanksgiving.  This is a task that will never cease.

 

            But I will say this.  As important as it is to find words that help us talk to the One who made us, who redeems us, who sanctifies and sustains us, there is something that is even more important.  What is more important is that we do talk to God.  If we are uncertain about what words to use, then pray with the words we have.  God, who knows the secrets of our hearts, will sort things out.

 

“ . . . may your name be revered as holy . . . “ [v]

            One of the words used frequently these days is ‘whatever’.  When my children were younger and I was trying to make a point about something, one or other of them would dismiss the point I was trying to make by saying, ‘whatever’.  I quickly and firmly banished that word from their conversations with me.  ‘Whatever’ means ‘I don’t care’ or ‘Your words don’t matter’ or ‘It’s all irrelevant’ or something to this effect.

 

            Just as words matter, names matter as well.  A name brings a host of associations that we make when we hear it.  Speak the name of a national or provincial politician and watch the reactions around us.  Speak the name of a loved one who has died, whether recently or in the past, and we can quickly be overwhelmed with memories of what they looked like, what they loved to do, what they said to us at important moments in our lives.

 

            When we speak about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses and Jesus, the God of Peter and Paul, we are releasing into this moment all the stories, all the memories, all the hopes that are bound up in this name.  To speak of God as ‘creator’ is to remember that all that exists is holy and loved by the One who created it.  To speak of God as ‘saviour’ is to remember that we have ‘erred and strayed’ from the paths of life and that the One who saves us brings us back on track.  To speak of God as ‘Spirit’ is to remember that in every moment of every day the One who breathed life into Adam is breathing life and new possibilities into the world.

 

“Give us each day our daily bread.” [vi]

            We live in a world filled with anxiety.  For many people in this world, it is an anxiety about food and shelter and safety from violence, oppression and conflict.  For those of us who live in place of relative safety and prosperity, we worry about whether we will have adequate retirement income, about whether the traditions and communities we have loved for so long have a future, about whether our children and grandchildren will enjoy good lives.

 

            God knows the depth of our anxiety as well as how some of it is generated by the choices we make or do not make.  To pray for ‘our daily bread’ is a prayer that we grow in trust and in confidence.  It is only when we have trust in God and confidence in the gifts God has given us that we are able to transform anxiety into hope and hope into action.

 

“And forgive us our sins, as we forgive everyone indebted to us.” [vii]

            When I look at the world around us, I see people and societies that are unable to forgive.  It is as if the only treasure some people and some societies hold is the wrongs that have been done to them.  By holding on to these ancient wrongs, they are actually preventing genuine healing and reconciliation.  They are caught in a web spun by the spider of resentment and revenge.  In that web they shall soon be consumed from within.

 

            Forgiveness is not forgetting.  Forgiveness is choosing to create a future that is not defined only by our past.  Forgiveness means acknowledging both our sins and the sins of others, but then taking the risk to build new relationships that are not simply repeating old patterns.  Forgiveness means that we will not allow ourselves to be held hostage by what has gone on before.

 

“And do not bring us to the time to trial.” [viii]

            It is not always easy to believe in a living God who is actively at work in the world to bring about a new heaven and a new earth.  I do not doubt for a moment that almost every Christian, if not every Christian, has had a moment of trial, a moment of doubt, perhaps even a moment of despair.  But those moments come, and we must face them with hope and in the confidence that God is at work in us, through us and even despite us.

 

Conclusion

            Almost fifty years ago, my teacher, Bishop Michael Ramsey, spent a whole day pondering two words:  “Our Father”.  He knew what the writer of “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” knew:  In these few words we find all we need to nurture our relationship with the Creator, with the Christ, with the Spirit.  So pray them three times a day.  Pray them slowly, phrase by phrase.  In the silence after each phrase let our hearts, our minds, our souls reach out to talk with the One to whom we are praying.  And we will find the faith, the hope and the love we all seek.

 

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[i] Hosea 1.2-10; Psalm 85; Colossians 2.6-15; Luke 11.1-13.

 

[ii] “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, Commonly Called the Didache”, edited and translated by Cyril C. Richardson in Early Christian Fathers, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, PA:  The Westminster Press, 1953), 161-179.

 

[iii] Didache 8.2-3.

 

[iv] Luke 11.2b (NRSVue).

 

[v] Luke 11.2c (NRSVue).

 

[vi] Luke 11.3 (NRSVue).

 

[vii] Luke 11.4a (NRSVue).

 

[viii] Luke 11.4b (NRSVue).

 

Measuring Up in the Mean Time: Reflections for the 5th Sunday after Pentecost

 

 

RCL Proper 15C [i]

13 July 2025

 

Saint Anselm’s Anglican Church

University Endowment Lands

 

         Throughout my career as a pastor, priest and teacher, I have always been interested in what words have meant in the past and what they mean in the present.  Just recently I finished reading a short book re-visiting the question of whether Christians in the first three hundred years of our history owned or modified or built buildings for worship and prayer. [ii]  One of the ways the author re-visited the evidence was by tracing how the word ekklēsia or ‘the assembly’ changed from referring to the Christian people gathered for worship to meaning the building in which Christians worshipped.  I remember well teaching David, our oldest, who first worshipped in this building, to say ‘We are going to where the church worships’ rather than ‘we’re going to church.’

 

            Over the past few years I’ve been pondering the different ways we can interpret the word ‘meantime’.  Most if not all of us hear this word and think, ‘the time in between’ or ‘a time of waiting’.  But lately I’ve been hearing this word differently.  I’ve taken to putting an intentional pause between the first and second syllables – ‘in the mean-time’.

 

            I don’t think that it’s very difficult to explain why I’ve been doing this lately.  All any of us need to do is to read whatever news source we tend to read, and what will jump out at us is how ‘mean’ our times seem to be.  Whether we understand ourselves to be on the left or on the right or caught in the middle of contemporary partisanship and social issues, it’s very hard to find people speaking well of those with whom they disagree.  We seem very skilled these days at finding scapegoats for all our ills – political leaders, scientists, radicals of one form or another, immigrants, refugees – the list goes on and on.  So it’s quite apt to hear this familiar parable from the Gospel according to Luke during this ‘mean-time’.

 

            For example, we can quickly criticize the expert in the law.  He should have stopped asking questions after Jesus praised him for knowing the right answer to his own question:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.” [iii]  Then he asks that fateful question:  “And who is my neighbour?’ [iv]  Yet, how often do we want to know the precise meaning of a commitment we’re making?  Perhaps the legal expert would have fared better if he’d asked, ‘How shall I love my neighbour?’.

 

We can also quickly condemn the priest and the Levite.  That’s what Luke, a non-Jewish believer in Jesus, wants us to do.  But it becomes a little more difficult to be critical when we realize that they’re doing what all of us do from time to time – they don’t want to get involved.  Robbers along the Jerusalem to Jericho road often had one of their members play ‘possum’ at the side of the road to lure travellers into an ambush.  Why should either man take the risk? Both men have religious duties to perform that require them to avoid any contact with blood or with the dead.  If they stop to take care of this man, will they be abandoning their traditional obligations to God?

 

            Then comes the Samaritan.  It is very hard for contemporary Christians to understand the visceral dislike, even hatred, that existed between Samaritans and Judeans.  Both are descendants of the tribes that God brought into the land of promise.  Both suffered at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians and the destruction of their holy sanctuaries at Bethel and Jerusalem.  Both accused the other of failing to be faithful to the law that God gave them through Moses at Mount Sinai.  To Judeans the Samaritans were non-Jews pretending to be Jews.  To the Samaritans the Judeans were Roman collaborators willing to bend the knee to non-Jewish rulers.  Yet Jesus dares to tell a predominantly Judean audience a story with a Samaritan hero.

 

            Knowing something about the context in which this parable was originally told can help us understand what it may be saying to us – non-Jewish followers of Jesus who live at a time when the ekklēsia, the people called to follow Jesus, are an institution more than a movement, a cultural phenomenon more than a revolutionary challenge to the status quo.  We are living in the ‘mean-time’.

 

            When we are living in the ‘mean-time’, do we dare to take risks?  When we are living in the ‘mean-time’, do we dare to lay aside our long-standing traditions to respond to an unexpected need?  When we are living the ‘mean-time’, do we dare stop demonizing the ‘other’, whomever the ‘other’ might be, and see only a neighbour?  These are the questions that confront us and trouble us, but that cannot be ignored.

 

            We cannot ignore them because God expects us to measure up to the challenges of our times and places.  That’s what’s behind the enigmatic reading from the prophet Amos this morning.  We use plumb lines to make a straight, vertical line, essential information if you want to make sure your walls and foundations are properly built.  God is telling the people of the northern kingdom of Israel that they need to measure up; otherwise they are doomed to destruction at the hands of the Assyrians.  We have to be ready and willing for transformation.

 

            During my second year in theological college, I went through a very ‘mean-time’.  Most of my friends and all of the faculty either did not see the crisis or crossed to the other side of the road.  The only two people who didn’t were two women who were studying at the college.  My theological college was not a friendly-place for women; Barbara and Anne faced subtle discrimination within the college and not so subtle hostility from some of the alumni.  They both knew that I had more than ambivalent feelings about the ordination of women.  But they stopped.  They bound up my wounds.  They stayed with me, both in times of silence and in times of conversation.  My ‘mean-time’ was turned into a season of grace in which the loving compassion of these two ‘Samaritans’ transformed me and set me on a path that I could not have imagined.

 

            This is a ‘mean-time’ for Christians such as we who are committed to doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God.  In such a time as this we find ourselves playing many roles – a legal expert seeking precision, a priest or a Levite focused on our traditional roles and duties, a Samaritan travelling on the road – sometimes we are even the traveller on the side of the road, fallen among thieves and ruffians, wounded by the times in which we live and dependent upon the care of others to recover.

 

            But the good news is this – we are not imprisoned by this ‘mean-time’.  As the writer to the Christians in Colossae says, “God has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” [v]  We have hope in a world that is coming into being through us, in us and even despite us, a world for which we wait with endurance and patience and even joy. [vi]  We live in both the ‘mean-time’ and in the ‘meantime’, the ‘meantime’ between the world as it is and the world as God is loving into existence.

 

Glory to God,

whose power, working in us,

can do infinitely more

than we can ask or imagine.

Glory to God from generation to generation,

in the Church and in Christ Jesus,

for ever and ever.  Amen. [vii]

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[i] Amos 7.7-17; Psalm 82; Colossians 1.1-14; Luke 10.25-37.

 

[ii] Alexander Turpin, Did the Early Christians Build Churches?  Revisiting the Evidence, Joint Liturgical Studies 100 (Norwich, England:  Hymns Ancient and Modern, 2025).

 

[iii] Luke 10.27 (NRSVue).

 

[iv] Luke 10.28b (NRSVue).

 

[v] Colossians 1.13-14 (NRSVue).

 

[vi] Colossians 1.5, 11 (NRSVue).

 

[vii] The Book of Alternative Services (1985), p. 214.

 

Perfection is the Enemy of the Good: Reflections on the Feast of Peter and Paul

 

Saint Peter and Paul (BAS) [i]

29 June 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            In the late autumn of 1981 I sat in the basement of my parents’ home in Colorado Springs sending out invitations to my ordination to the priesthood scheduled for the 21^st of December 1981.  I had spent more money than I could really afford on having the invitations printed by a local printer. After I had sealed and addressed about fifty out of two hundred invitations, I realized that I had printed the date and the place of the ordination but not the time.

 

            It was too late to have new invitations printed and I did not the money to pay for re-printing.  So I pulled out my trusty fountain pen and wrote ‘7.00 p.m.’ in black ink on two hundred and fifty invitations.  About ten days after I had mailed them, I received a telephone call from a classmate of mine from theological college.  ‘Congratulations!’ he said, ‘You’ve learned some humility!’

 

            In theological college I was known to be a bit of a perfectionist.  As one of the school’s six paid sacristans, it had been my job to care for the vestments and the chapel, to prepare for daily services, to train the students for their liturgical duties and to plan major festivals.  Some ten years after I graduated, I visited my college.  When I was introduced to some of the current students, one of them said, ‘Oh, you’re Richard Leggett, the last of hard-nosed sacristans!’

 

            My hand-written correction to the invitation to my ordination was a gift to my friends and colleagues.  They were pleased to see that I could be public about an omission and that I had been wise enough to take a simple way of remedying that omission.  I did not hide my failure to proof-read before printing.  And it was okay!

 

            There is a saying in English:  Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Aidan Kavanagh, a Roman Catholic scholar and teacher of worship, puts it this way:  The fear of making a mistake is the biggest mistake of all.  Some of us, perhaps every one of us from time to time, can be paralysed by our fear of making a mistake.  There is no denying that our mistakes can have serious consequences for ourselves and for others.  Throughout our lives we have to think before we act.  But we can never know everything.  We can never guarantee that what we do will be successful or that there are no risks or that we may discover we’ve made a mistake.  But not acting can be more costly than acting.

 

            One of the mysteries of the story of the Christian movement is this:  God uses imperfect human beings as the messengers and agents of the good news that in Christ Jesus we are shown how to be fully alive and fully ourselves as creatures made in God’s image and called to live into God’s likeness.

 

            Today we celebrate the feast of Peter and Paul.  It is because of these two men and all the other women and men who were among the first apostles and disciples of Jesus that we owe our presence here today.  But none of them were perfect.  All of them made mistakes.  But their imperfections did not prevent them from helping to create a movement and communities that have the power to transform ourselves, our friends, families and neighbours, and even the world itself.

 

            Let’s look at Peter for a moment.  How many times in the Gospels do we see Peter getting things wrong?  How many times does he ask the wrong question only to be corrected by Jesus?  Who in all four Gospels is described as abandoning Jesus on that long Thursday night that stretched into Friday morning?  Who hides himself away as Jesus is hanging on the cross?

 

            And yet in today’s reading from the Gospel according to John, it is Peter to whom Jesus comes and drags him away from finding safety in his boat and his nets.  It is Peter to whom Jesus, knowing all Peter’s faults and failures, confides the care of the community of disciples.  It is Peter who risks social exclusion and accusations of consorting with the enemy who goes to Caesarea Philippi to preach to the household of Cornelius, a non-Jewish officer in the Roman army of occupation.  It is Peter who convinces the Jewish-Christian leadership in Jerusalem that God was reaching out to the non-Jews as well as Jews.  And we are here.

 

            Then there’s our old friend Paul.  Who is the man who guards the outer garments of those who stone Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to death?  Who travels to Antioch in order to arrest and illegally extradite the followers of Jesus for trial and possible execution in Jerusalem?

 

            And yet it is Paul to whom Jesus appears and leads him on a new and unimagined path that will end in Rome and martyrdom.  It is Paul who will challenge the prejudices of Jewish Christians towards Gentile Christians and the prejudices of Gentile Christians towards Jewish Christians throughout all of his correspondence with the first Christian communities.  It is Paul who will welcome the many Gentile women who find freedom in following Jesus and who become the benefactors of the Christian communities in the Roman Empire.

 

            In Japan there is a tradition known as kintsugi or ‘golden repair’.  Broken pottery is repaired by mending the areas material using gold, silver or platinum.  Kintsugi treats ‘breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise’. [ii]  From the very beginning of the human race, from the very beginning of the revelation of God to Moses, from the very first days of the Christian movement, God has treated our failures, our betrayals, our incompetence, our misunderstandings of the good news, our mistakes as part of our history and not as something to disguise.  

 

The Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen in his song, ‘Anthem’, writes:  ‘Ring the bells that still can ring.  Forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack, a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.’ [iii]  Friends, we will not be perfect, but we can be good.  We all have a few cracks, but that’s how the light of God’s grace has come into us and how the light shines out from us into our world.

 

Will the Search Committee choose the ‘perfect’ Rector?  Probably not, but they’ll choose a good one.  Will the Property Development Committee identify a ‘perfect’ re-development plan?  Probably not, but they’ll choose a good one.  And God will repair any cracks with silver, gold and platinum, so that the world will see and know that God raises up what has fallen, makes new what has grown old and is at work bringing about the world as God imagines and loves it to be. 

 

 

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[i] Ezekiel 34.11-16; Psalm 87; 2 Timothy 4.1-8; John 21.15-19.

 

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi accessed on 28 June 2025.

 

[iii] https://genius.com/Leonard-cohen-anthem-lyrics accessed on 28 June 2025.

 

Unfinished Business: Reflections for the 6th Sunday of Easter

RCL Easter 6C [i]

25 May 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            One of the first things that I learned during theological college was to look at the world as ‘the already but not yet’ kingdom of God.  This way of looking at the world had and has had a powerful effect upon me.  We sometimes speak as if the kingdom of God is something in the future and, because we do this, we fail to see the signs of God’s kingdom in the present.  In the forty-four years since I was ordained, I have seen the Anglican Church change in its attitude towards the role of lay people in decision-making and worship and broaden its vision of who is in the community – divorced Christians, women, LGBTQ persons, young people, indigenous people and people of colour.  In each of these I have seen the signs of God’s kingdom in the here and now of our lives.

 

            But at the same time, I recognize that the kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness.  I can celebrate the signs of the kingdom that I just mentioned, but I must be clear-headed enough to acknowledge that we have far to go before we can say that we have arrived at the kingdom.  I only need to read the daily news to see that justice is still not being done to all of God’s children, that loving kindness does not touch every one of us, and that humility is an attitude that has yet to take root among us.

 

            Living in ‘the already but not yet’ of God’s kingdom means that there is always unfinished business.  One of my mentors, perhaps the mentor who influenced me the most, greeted every sign of the ‘but not yet’ of God’s kingdom by saying, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’  The knowledge that we, as disciple of Jesus, are co-workers with God and that God has work for us to do, can be a source of hope and of power.  I remember a cartoon of a man carrying a sign – ‘Jesus is coming soon.  Look busy.’  I’m more tempted to carry a sign – ‘Jesus has come and is coming.  Don’t look busy.  Be busy.’

 

            When I use the word ‘busy’, I mean being committed to our ‘business’ not to ‘busy-ness’.  Our business is 

 

·      to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

·      to teach, baptize and nurture new believers

·      to respond to human need by loving service

·      to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every king and to pursue peace and reconciliation

·      to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. [ii]

 

That’s enough work for any person or community.  It’s work that will be unfinished until God chooses the moment to fulfill the promise of “a new heaven and a new earth”. [iii]

 

            When Moses reached the summit of Mount Pisgah and looked out over the land the Israelites were about to settle, he knew that he would not set foot upon it.  I have no doubt that he experienced feelings of disappointment.  But he also knew that he had accomplished the task that had been given to him – to bring the people out of bondage and to give them an identity as a people in covenant with the living God.  I hope that Moses was able to say, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            When the disciples heard Jesus tell them that he was leaving them, they had little to no idea of the immense task he was placing in their hands.  I wonder if Jesus pondered, if even for a moment, whether God might let him continue for a few more months, for a few more years.  But that was not God’s plan, and Jesus had to let go of this.  There was still much unfinished business, but Jesus had to say, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            As I begin my last week as your interim priest in charge, I am deeply conscious of what I have done and what I have left undone.  This is one of the more difficult aspects of being an interim priest; we always leave just when things are about to become really exciting – a new priest with new gifts and insights to work with you in shaping the future of this congregation as well as the possibility of the physical re-development of the property to serve the neighbourhood and the Parish more effectively.  And as my mentor would say so often, ‘Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.’

 

            Some people may find it difficult to live in the ‘already but not yet’ and would prefer a more settled life.  I admit that there have been many times when God’s ability to tolerate ambiguity and incompleteness is quite frustrating to me.  I’m confident that you’ve had similar moments. 

 

            But then there are the moments when I catch a glimpse of the world as God is moulding it to become, and I find that I’m able to tolerate the incompleteness.  What is coming is more than we can ask or imagine.  Thanks be to God.  There is still work to be done.

 

 

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[i] Deuteronomy 34.1-12; Psalm 109.21-31 (BAS vv. 20-30); Acts 16.9-15 ; John 14.23-29.

 

[ii] https://www.anglican.ca/ask/faq/marks-of-mission accessed 24 May 2025.

 

[iii] Revelation 21.1 (New Revised Standard Version updated edition).

 

Looking for Love: Reflections for the 5th Sunday of Easter

'Jesus Washing Peter's Feet' by Jim Forest

RCL Easter 5C [i]

18 May 2025

 

Church of the Epiphany

Surrey BC

 

            This morning I am sharing with a work in progress, what one of my colleagues at Vancouver School of Theology called ‘from text to sermon’.  I have not yet reached the sermon that I would want to share with you, but I hope that you will be patient in listening to me working my way towards that sermon.  What I am sharing with you is more like an oral Bible study.

            There was a revealing moment during the first interview given by Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spence after the announcement of their engagement.  A reporter asked the couple, ‘Are you in love?’  After a moment of awkward silence, Prince Charles answered, ‘Yes.  Whatever being in love means.’  Over the following years we witnessed the fact that theirs was not a love-match.  And it fell apart in the full view of the international public.

            Trying to answer the question, ‘Are you in love?’, is a universal human experience.  We all know of or have experienced ourselves the painful task of ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’. [ii]  We have probably asked ourselves the question, ‘How do I know that I am in love?’

            In today’s short reading from the Gospel according to John, Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” [iii]  And for two thousand years we have sought an answer to the unspoken question of the disciples:  ‘How do we love one another as Christ has loved us?’

            It is beyond the scope of one sermon to share the many answers that Christians have given to this question, but there is one answer to be found in today’s reading from Leviticus.  Christians do not often turn to the Hebrew Scriptures to find an answer to the question of how to love one another.  Generations of anti-Jewish propaganda, the active persecution of Jews by Christians and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians have created a subtle but pervasive blindness to the richness of the wisdom to be found in the ancient Hebrew texts.  They are the source to which Jesus himself and the earliest followers of Jesus turned.

            For the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures love is an action, a conscious choice, not an emotion.  If I want to know if you love me, says the writer of Leviticus, then I will look at how you treat me, how you speak to me, how you speak to others about me.  Today’s reading lays out clearly what it means to love our neighbour including the ‘alien’, another word for ‘immigrant’, to love as God has loved us and continues to love us.

            1.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will not allow our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be, go hungry.  Hunger leads to desperation and desperation leads people to act on their ‘worse angels’ rather than their ‘better angels’. [iv]

            2.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will not steal or deal falsely or lie to our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be.  Stealing, dealing falsely, lying leads people to become suspicious and suspicion leads people to face others with fear and hostility.

            3.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will respect the dignity of every human being, especially those over whom we may have power, whoever that neighbour might be.  Misuse of power causes empathy to evaporate and the evaporation of empathy leads us down a path where we use other people callously rather than lovingly.

            4.  If we are trying to love our neighbour as ourself, then we will do justice to our neighbour, whoever that neighbour might be.  Injustice leads to people to violence, whether physical, emotional or political, and violence destroys both the one who uses violence and the one who suffers it.

            5.  If we are trying to love our neighbour ourself, then we will recognize that neighbour is a descendant of the same ancient parents from Africa, whoever that neighbour might be.  To harm a neighbour is a form of self-harm and self-harm destroys someone who is beloved of God, made in God’s image and striving to live in the likeness of God.

            During my final year of theological college, one of my classmates asked Bishop Michael Ramsey what to do when one does not feel like praying.  Bishop Michael answered, ‘Pray.  And if that does not help, then pray to want to pray.  And if that does not help, then pray to want to want to pray.’  My friends, loving is never easy, whether we’re talking about our family, our friends or the next-door neighbour who plays their music too loud.  But loving is like praying – it is something we do more than it is something we feel.  Loving is something that God has designed us to do, as difficult as it is to believe this when we know the suffering of people throughout the world.  But loving begins with the choices we make this morning, then this afternoon, then this evening, and then we begin again tomorrow.

“Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. . . . And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” [v]

 

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[i] Leviticus 19.9-18; Psalm 24.1-6; Acts 11.1-18; John 13.31-35.

 

[ii] “Lookin’ for Love” written by Wanda Mallette, Bob Morrison and Patti Ryan (1980) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookin%27_for_Love accessed 17 May 2025.

 

[iii] John 13.34-35 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition).

 

[iv] The phrase ‘better angels’ is taken from the 1^st inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln on 4 March 1861.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_first_inaugural_address accessed on 17 May 2025.

 

[v] 1 Corinthians 13.8-10, 13 (NRSVue).