Podcast Summaries

The reading is taken from the first letter of John, chapter 4, starting from verse 7, and this can be found on page 260 of the Church New Testament. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love doesn't know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us. He has given us of his Spirit, and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love of God that he has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us, so that we will have confidence on the day of judgement. In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God, yet hates a brother or sister, is a liar. For whoever doesn't love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command. Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, good morning. Lovely to see you all. It's the last time I'll stand up and look out here and be able to see each one of you. Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. God is love. And I just noticed in that reading how important it is to love your brother and sister. Well, if I had read this at the age of five, I would have been acutely dismayed, because I certainly didn't love my brother. And it has taken a long time to come to love my brother. It's easy to say that God is love, but how difficult we can find it to actually grasp that, for it to get from our heads to our hearts. It's a long journey. Maybe our experience of love has been inadequate or faulty. Yes, we should respect God in that sense of fear, but we often tend to be afraid of God in the wrong way. That is, until we get to know him. We have to get through that barrier. Our image of God could be of a poor father whose family, at the worst, experience a reign of terror. Trust takes time to build, especially when it has been broken. How could God explain that he was not like that fierce father? How could he correct that image? How could he show himself as the good and loving father he is? We often just didn't and still don't always get it. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, shows how well he understands this, because he prays for the Ephesians that they will really be able to grasp just how wonderful God's love is, how high, how deep, how wide. He tells them to be rooted and grounded in love. A few of us here meet weekly online with other Christians for an hour of poetry. We call our group Belief in Poetry. We grapple with poetry written over the centuries, poems dealing with faith or the lack of it, poems dealing with love. Now, Andrew Smith is kindly coming to read us a poem by one of our favorite poets, R.S. Thomas. Now, don't panic if you don't immediately get it. You're not thick. It's amazing how long our group can spend trying to understand a poet or poem. This poem is perfect for Advent as we draw ever so close to Christmas. It's called The Coming. God held in his hand a small globe. Look, he said. The sun looked. Far off, as through water, he saw a scorched land of fierce color. The light burned there. Crusted buildings cast their shadows. A bright serpent, a river uncoiled itself, radiant with slime. On a bare hill, a bare tree saddened the sky. Many people held out their thin arms to it as though waiting for a banished April to return to its crossed boughs. The sun watched them. Let me go there, he said. And God the Father did let his son go there or come here to show them, us, what he was like, what love was like. His only son. How else could he explain his love? This is what I'm like and this is how much I love you. This is how precious you are. Let's try another tack. I have a short story to tell you. That might be easier. There was a farmer who lived in a remote place and I'm imagining that remote place was somewhere in the middle of the prairies. And one night there was a violent storm. The farmer was warm and safe inside but the storm battered his windows. And as he opened his curtains, a flock of birds whirled desperately seeking shelter. They hurled themselves against the window, attracted by the light, time and time again. The distressed farmer wanted to tell the flock of birds that they would find safety in the nearby barn where the door was wide open. But they kept trying to enter his home through the window. How can I explain

He thought, if I went out there, they would be afraid of me. But if I was to become one of them, I could guide them into the barn into safety. We can make love complicated. And I very nearly did. I attempted to re-read C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, in preparation for this sermon. C.S. Lewis was a very bright man. He taught at Oxbridge and his thoughts are definitely higher than mine. With all his intellectual, academic and philosophical rigour, he explores love in a small but dense volume, The Four Loves. What exactly is love? Well, he divides love into different categories. Storge, affection, philia, friendship, eros, romantic love, agape, gift love, the purest kind of love, God's love. I decided that since I am not C.S. Lewis, I will simply commend his book to you if you would like to go deeper. Mine is a simpler approach. God is love is mystery enough for me. During this past week, I have seen everything through a lens of love. And this is a diary of love through the prism of others. On Monday, I had a WhatsApp message telling me that Grace Payne had died. Peacefully in her home on the 35th floor of the Barbican at the age of 101. Who was this Grace Payne? Well, I was born on her 21st birthday, which always gave us something of a bond and made it easy to calculate how old one another were. She became my guardian from the age of 16 to 21, when my parents were abroad. But I first met her when I was 14. We were moving house and she and her husband and three children were to be our new next door neighbours. But they already lived close to where we were going to live, where our new houses were being built. In order to make the transition for me easier than it might have been, school-wise, Grace invited me to stay with her family for about three months before we actually moved. Later, living next door, I spent a lot of time with Grace, who provided something of a role model and broadened my experience of love, warmth and relationship, as well as encouraging me in dressmaking, appreciation of classical music and watching the programme some will remember, Tonight with Cliff Mitchellmore. She was not a Christian as we know it. She and her husband, both scientists, would have probably called themselves agnostics or atheists. They came to my ordination, but I think it was a complete mystery to them. But when I went to boarding school in the Lake District for a year, at the age of 17, it was Grace who jumped in her little sports car to come down to see me from Glasgow, and she took me out for a meal. It was sheer grace. She didn't have to love or care for me, but I believe it was God's provision at that time, in that rather bleak time where I had lost my home for the time being. As far as I know, she was not aware of the source of her love. It certainly wasn't forced. She was living in the unforced rhythms of grace. It's a mystery. Where does that love come from? Love is from God and love never fails. God's light shines in the darkest corners of our world and of our lives. And that light or love has never been put out. The love of God remains a mystery until we experience it, which is why we're told to love one another. Show one another what my love is like, says Jesus. Show one another the selfless love which gives of itself because God is love. Jesus came to rescue and to save, to guide people into the safety of the barn in the storm of life. On Tuesday, we, the weekly Connect Group, met for our Christmas Do. As usual, folk were welcomed with a smile and a cup of coffee or tea as they trickled in. When everyone was sitting comfortably, we listened to an Advent meditation on the theme of light. It was a quiet time of reflection. Then it was time to have a bit of fun, swapping gifts in a game of Secret Santa. A couple of people had prepared some homemade soup for 23 of us. Not just any old soup, but lovingly prepared with trimmings. And then we shared in a simple but lovely lunch. The atmosphere was a heartwarming mystery, a demonstration of love. A barn where we could shelter from the storm. On Wednesday, I took the funeral of Eileen Stonebridge. We mourned her loss but celebrated her life, which demonstrated God's love in many ways. God's love for her and her love for the created world and for others. Eileen was responsible for founding the nature reserve in Sneep Park by transforming a bit of waste ground. Had Eileen not known the love of God for her and continued right to the end of her life at the age of almost 90 to experience that grace and love, I don't think she would have been the hospitable and caring person she was. Her ministry included lots of tea and cake. She needed love, but she was also a channel of God's love to those who cared for her. More tea and cake. On Thursday, the meditation group put on a tea to wish me farewell. It was better than the Ritz. We remembered together some of the things we'd done over the past 30 years. There was an atmosphere of love and gratitude on a winter afternoon. Friday and Saturday have both added to aspects of love mediated through God's servants. Each day in some way I've been shown and have experienced the love of God through others. Thank you. Hope you got that, Jason. I've often pondered this verse. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. Yes, love expels fear. How do we learn to rest in God's love and to trust it? I think it's a bit like learning to float. Do you remember how difficult that was to start with? Gradually you learn to trust that the water will support you. You have to try it and to relax. As you float on the ocean of God's love, the more confident you become in your salvation and acceptance by God. And this confidence leaves no room for anxiety or fear of condemnation. Our image of God is often too small or faulty. I used to imagine God as a ton of bricks God. i.e. if I did anything wrong, he would come down on me like a ton

bricks. And I think this was something I learned from my childhood, sadly, where my parents were very strict, too strict really. So it's taken me a long time to unlearn that and to learn that God is different. I'm still discovering the depth of God's love, his kindness and slowness to anger. We have to be rooted and grounded in love and that understanding of God's love needs to go very deep. I've been in this church a long time now, since 1993, and I'm very glad I came here. In fact, the reason why I came here partly was because Paul Berg at Christchurch where I was said you should go to your local church. Well, I was living up on Church Road, so this was definitely my local church. But at that time there was a board outside the church which said a verse about loving God and being in the congregation. And somehow that spoke to me and which was an extra encouragement to come in here. It's often the people I meet, not necessarily in church, who mediate God's love and kindness. As I prepare to move to a new place in the new year, I'm grateful for the ways I've experienced his love here over many years and through many people. New every morning has been God's love and faithfulness. Thank you for being his servants and channels of his grace and love, wittingly or unwittingly. In Jesus' farewell discourse, as it is called, in the Gospel of John, he reminds us to abide in him, to abide in his love and to continue to love one another. How? Well, as he has loved us. A bit of a tall order, but if we ever run out of love, he's always there to provide what we need. As our reading began, dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. I'm going away for Christmas. I'm going away tomorrow and I'll appreciate the time and space to savor the love of God so richly and recently experienced. And I hope you will be similarly warmed as you give and receive gifts and ponder the Christmas mysteries. God's coming to earth to be one of us, to be with us. Amen.