[A sermon delivered to the members of Harris Manchester College, Oxford on Wednesday 19th February 2020]
(Readings: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 and John 17:20-26)
Our reading from the Hebrew Bible today was taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes, said to be by the pseudonymous author Qohelet [Koh-HEL-ith]. I never cease to be amused by the stances various biblical commentaries have on this book. One of the Anchor bible commentaries on the book opens with the following: “Ecclesiastes is the strangest book in the Bible.” While the SCM Queer Bible Commentary simply opens with, “Qohelet is queer.” If this is indeed the case, it is certainly true that like many queer people I know, myself included, Qohelet cannot fully contain their writing within prose and – like the best in musical theatre tradition – breaks out into verse. Indeed, if you would like a musical rendition of our Hebrew Bible reading today, I do encourage you to listen to the Byrds ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ which captures it beautifully.
Incidentally, I personally owe a lot to that reading we heard today as it was one of the readings that I chose for my short 15-minute audition service when I interviewed to train for the ministry here. It evidently worked as I stand here as a ministry student now.
Someone else who knew how to say the right thing, in the right moment, under great pressure was Jesus!
In our reading from The Gospel of John today we join Jesus in prayer. Before we look at any of the words we need to get the context fixed in our minds to properly understand what is going on here. Our reading contains the tail end of what has been referred to as Jesus’ Farewell Discourse. This takes up about one fifth of John’s Gospel and I believe that proportion to be relative to its great importance. The discourse takes place within the context of the last supper that happens to be pictured above the alter behind me. After this discourse and the prayer that closes it, if we were to continue reading, we would follow Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane where he is betrayed by Judas and arrested by the authorities of the day who then proceed to kill him brutally.
From reading the events of the last supper as described in the Gospel accounts we know that Jesus knows what is about to happen to him, that one of his friends has already agreed to betray him and that the rest of them will be so scared they will scatter like the wind and denigh even having known him at all.
At the prospect of this fate is it not reasonable to think that Jesus might well have gone off people? That is faith in humanity, not to mention God, would be crushed under the shear weight of the oppression he must surely have felt in this moment? I mean I nearly lost faith in the goodness of those around me after I was asked to write not one but two essays on Hegel this year!
Yet who is Jesus praying for in our reading today – at his time of great need? He is praying for us – that we might live in unity with each other. “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” Yet this oneness does not imply sameness, as John Wesley once said, “we need not think alike to love alike.” Jesus closes his prayer with the hope, “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
We are commanded to love – not just God – for God loves us all and we cannot compartmentalise the love of God and the love of those he loves. God must be loved in all His doings, in all His friends, and in all His creatures.
Yet we all have, are, and will fall short of this vision at times. Maintaining this love will not be easy and the powers that be in this world will throw everything at you to get you to deny it and treat your neighbour with less than the love they deserve.
Essay crisis will come, heart ache will come, illness will come, bereavement will come, microaggressions will come, death will come, and – if you are very unlucky – multiple essays on Hegel will come. There will be times in our journeys though life when we feel we cannot sustain that love and we will fail to show that love. There will be times, under the pressures of life, were will break.
Yet the one thing that never fails is the fact that you are loved. Even in those times and places were love feels so far away – or you feel like you don’t deserve it – you are still wrapped in love.
With the steadfastness of that love lies the ground of our very being, even when we get it wrong, from that ground we can pick ourselves up and try to show that divine love again.
Amen.
