Costly love

It seems to have been several years since we observed Mothering Sunday in Holy T - if my files of past Intercessions are anything to go by, we've stuck to Lent 4 for years, and I had nothing to plunder for my prayers for today. In the event, it took me some time to think about and produce same, but it was a rewarding sort of time. The readings helped, of course - that wonderful line at the end of the Gospel: "And a sword shall pierce your own soul also", and the story of Moses in the basket among the reeds.

Why did these strike such a chord? I was thinking of the costliness of the love shown by mothers across the ages and over today's world. I was thinking of mothers who had to watch their children die or suffer; I was thinking of the lines of women leading tired children to a hazardous safety in Jordan, leaving behind the ruination of their lives in Iraq. I was thinking of how many mothers will do anything for their child, and how letting the tendrils of love for each new life twine around the heart is taking a step that will never be retraceable. And I thought of how often we forget to tell our own mothers what they mean to us - forget until it's too late. And I thought of how that kind of love would know anyway. But I still wished I'd said something explicit.

But people like me don't say these things explicitly. Where they emerge is often oblique, there to be seen if you look hard. And sometimes poetry has to do it. It was poetry that summed up the enormity of what that Levite woman had done to save her baby son, poetry I wrote the last time, I think, that we read that lesson in church. I've published it before, on Frankenstina, along with a picture of the font we floated our messages on in paper boats, but because I used it today I'm putting it here.

ONCE ...

In the hot silence
while he slept
and only the flies sang
she made the basket
strong with love
to hold this one most precious thing
and gave it, dry-eyed,
to the waiting flood.
© C.M.

Deeply satisfying

A couple of weeks ago now I finished reading Vikram Seth's An Equal Music - though if I'd read the review published on the Amazon page to which that link takes you, I don't know that I'd have bothered. This book is another of several lent to me by a good friend who knows my taste to such an extent that if she thinks I'd enjoy one I tend to give it a go, and so came to this book cold, as it were, with very little handle on what it was going to turn out to be.

It's a story of music, of love and of loss. The hero, Michael, plays second violin in a string quartet, and though he has a girlfriend - who is a less than satisfactory pupil on the violin - he is filled with regret and longing for the girl he loved when he himself was a student. So in that respect it is a love story, in which I felt he involved himself almost without will, as if he was unable to prevent any of the actions he took after seeing Julia on a London bus. It is significant that it is not the bus he is on at the time - they are bound in different directions and the tension of the situation builds gently but inexorably through the story.

The main player in this novel, however, is music. The tension between the members of the Maggiore quartet rings true, their individual temperaments as taut as the strings of their instruments, the differences between them sublimated in their combined music or - occasionally - wrecking it. I felt I knew these musicians and their constant preoccupation with their art, the way everything is seen in terms of how it will affect their music. When Michael is threatened with the loss of his violin, it is like an impending death; when a fridge in the house where they rehearse makes a noise somewhere between two notes it is identified and it disturbs. Bells sound a perfect G and music enters dreams. And when the Maggiore decide to play Bach's The Art of Fugue it takes over their lives.

The sense of loss permeates the story from the start, although at first I was not sure whose loss it was going to turn out to be. I'm not about to give away this most telling feature, but it works. Seth has brought off the feat of writing about music in such a way as to convince someone who is involved in music-making. And that is where I'll leave this deeply satisfying book.

Sermon: Love one another ...

This is what I preached today. It went down well with many people, but explosively badly with at least one other. It's in this awful bullet-pointed format because that's what I use - there is no ordinary joined-up copy of it on my computer. It's here for the people who don't use Facebook.

• Do you ever think about your tribe?
• What tribe you belong to?
• I want you to think about that now.
• Because you can be sure that your politicians, the people who want you to vote for them this week, have their eyes on you as members of a tribe.
• And they give the tribes names – names you may not even have heard of. Strivers – the aspiring middle classes who want more, better, who are prepared to work all hours to get it.
• Boomers – that’s people like me, all hitting pensionable age, though in our heads we may still be hippies or rockers
• Youth vote – not many of them around, eh?
• Digerati – sounds like an obscure tribe fighting against ancient Rome, but actually first time voters, organizing and being contacted online
• And then of course there’s our tiny tribe of Scottish Piskies
• And larger ones tied to political parties
• And national ones – Scots, English, French, Hungarian …
• And by and large, unless there’s an election on, we tend to mix pretty amicably and not make much of a fuss about our tribes … don’t we?
• And I’ll come back to that idea. Hold on to it.
• The Jewish believers in the reading from Acts were critical of Peter’s actions in eating with uncircumcised men.
• Both circumcision and the dietary laws of the Jews may have begun as common sense for hygiene in a hot country
• But at the time of the Exile in Babylon these laws were extended and firmed up to preserve the unity and the purity of the Jewish people
• So by the first century the Jews felt defined by the laws which the first followers of Christ took on with them into their new faith
• They wanted to maintain their “specialness” – their unique identity
• And here was Peter apparently throwing this uniqueness to the winds, sharing the new faith with all sorts of unsuitable people.
• And Peter tells them his dream.
• Look at how he first answers the voice which has told him “kill and eat”
• “By no means, Lord, for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth”
• Can you hear the tone of voice? Try emphasizing the word “my” – how exclusive, how self-satisfied does that sound?
• Think about how exclusive we can all feel at times … eg -
• Piskies – much better than Presbyterians
• Or think about the fact that there are people, like us, that we never even meet –
• For I found myself saying the other day that these Strivers, these men who spend their lives driving up and down the motorway from Milton Keynes, who hardly see their wives and the families they work so hard to support, who work all hours and make and spend far more than I ever thought of earning –
• I said that I didn’t know anyone like that.
• They are another tribe.
• I was talking then about voting patterns and the electorate
• But I could have been just like the circumcised Christians, couldn’t I? (meaning?)
• So – what is God’s answer to this exclusive behaviour? This exclusive mindset?
• Maybe the answer’s in the second reading:
• A new heaven and a new earth?
• But we have to look at the Gospel for the way to achieve this new earth.
• God has shown the way through the person of Jesus
• God has been glorified in the person of Jesus
• And in turn Jesus is glorified in himself
• And Jesus, glorified by God, with all the authority of God, tells us what to do in this short passage from his last supper with the disciples.
• We cannot follow Jesus on his final journey, we cannot be Jesus
• But we can do this new thing he tells us
• We have to love one another.
• We have to love one another in the way that Jesus loved his disciples.
• Now – remember what I said to hold on to?
• ..that in our own lives we tend to mix amicably and not care too much about the different tribes we belong to?
• The readings today all call us to go further.
• They call us not to the very British politeness that marks our electoral Leaders’ debates
• Not merely to the absence of confrontation – for it is a very British thing to avoid outright confrontation with people we disagree with –
• Not just to be polite to people who are different from us in some way – even if we say what we really think the moment we get away from them (GB)
• Jesus’ words call us not to turn our backs on people who do things differently or have a different lifestyle or background from us
• And right now, Jesus’ words call us not to condone the way our political parties smear their opponents
• Not to condone the way the press smears just about everyone in turn
• Not to let people get on with their own affairs without ever wondering if they need help
• None of these easy options – and I haven’t even mentioned the more extreme “not-to”s like going to war or using Trident missiles or punching people on the face –
• None of these things are what we are called to do.
• No
• We are called to love people
• How much love was there, do you think, in that incident last week?
• When GB described that woman as a bigot and was pilloried for it?
• How much love did the woman show in her complaints?
• How much love did the Sky reporter show for the woman when she tracked her down, told her what Brown had said – on camera?
• How much love did any of us show when we watched Brown’s face fall when he realized what he’d done?
• When we mocked his apology?
• Gosh, we all had fun there, didn’t we – but there wasn’t a lot of love around.
• But we are called to love everyone …
• We are called to love people in such a way that we don’t notice any difference between them and ourselves
• To love them in such a way that we strive to do the best for them in whatever area of need we find them
• To be honest and open in our love, to share not only what we have but also what other people offer us
• To regard nothing as alien or liable to contaminate us
• For God has created us all
• And it is out of that knowledge that we must live, and act – and yes, even vote – even if Christianity is no longer a part of our politicians’ lives
• - even if the Christian message is derided by those who seek power
• We have to live in the way Christ commanded
• We have to love one another
• And in that living, that loving, we shall find ourselves in God’s new creation.
• Amen.