A Homily for the Second Sunday after Trinity
This is his commandment: that we should believe on the Name of his
Son, Jesus Christ,
and love
one another.
—I
This
Sunday, as last, our Epistle lesson is taken from the first Epistle of Saint
John. This is called a “general” epistle
because, unlike the letters of
Love
was the main theme of
We need to be clear what the word “love” means in Scripture. Love is not an emotion; it is not a sentiment; it is not a feeling; it is not mushiness. Scripture is not concerned with romantic love, still less with erotic love; it knows nothing of Hollywood-love, or Hallmark-love. “Love” is the English word used to translate the Greek word agape, or the Latin word caritas. Sometimes those are rendered in English as “charity,” but that is no longer fashionable.
Agape-love is a virtue. It is infused into our souls in baptism; but it must be cultivated, developed, practiced, and honored in our lives. In an address given in this very church building a few years ago, Bishop John-Charles spoke about agape-love, using the old fashioned translation:
Charity is the greatest of the infused virtues. . . . Charity lifts our love up towards God and out towards our neighbour. Charity is love elevated to the highest spiritual level. Charity draws the soul towards God. . . .
Christian love is supernatural and is revealed through faith. Faith leads us to an experience of God’s love. . . . Christian love is the supernatural infusion which governs all of this. Through the infused virtue of charity, made active through the will and by grace put into action, love is raised to its highest levels: sacrifice, devotion, [and] surrender. . . .
God is the supreme object of all our loving, and we love others in God and for God. . . .
Love is a virtue. . . . It is a gift; that is, we cannot earn it or deserve it. We only accept it, acknowledge it, desire it. We give ourselves through love back to God, the giver of all.
The proper objects of love are God and our neighbours. Love of neighbour flows from and makes manifest the love of God. In the portion of the letter that we heard last week, John wrote: “If anyone says he loves God but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love the brother that he can see, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” And in the portion of the letter that we heard today, John says that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.
In the sentence immediately preceding today’s lesson, John referred to the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel. He wrote: “This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we must love one another, and not be like Cain, who . . . murdered his brother.” Whoever hates his brother is like Cain. Indeed, whoever does not love his brother is like Cain.
But it is so easy to withhold love; so many of the people we encounter every day appear unlovely or unloveable. There is the person who speaks unkind words, there is the rival who takes unfair advantage, there is the driver who cuts us off in traffic, there is the technical support person who just will not believe we have a problem, and the telemarketer who does not care that it is dinner time. And there are worse: the thief, the mugger, the gossipmonger, the false friend. It is perhaps not so easy to hate, but it is a line that we may cross unawares, when we go from not wishing well of our fellows to actually wishing them ill.
Agape-love (Christian love, charity) loves not only the loveable, but even more especially the unloveable. Agape-love wishes well for our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers.
Love can not only be withheld; love can also be perverted, as it is when it is turned toward the things of this world.
The Apostle writes, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hates you.” The same Apostle, in his Gospel, records that our Lord said to his disciples: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” By, the “world,” is meant, those who love the things of this world.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus relates a parable about a man who gave a great dinner party. We are permitted to infer that the host is God himself, and that the dinner party is the heavenly banquet, of which the Eucharist is our foretaste. The host throws the party and invites his guests because of the love he has for them; and the guests, in return, accept the invitation because of the love they have for him.
But in the parable not everyone who is invited chooses to come to the party. Three guests in particular absent themselves, and make their excuses. I have bought land, says one; I have bought oxen, says another; and the third says, “I have married a wife.” These were people who loved the things of this world more than they loved God.
How does the host of the party respond? He extends his invitation of love to the unlovely. He brings into the party the street-people, the poor, and the crippled, and the blind, the vagabonds from the open road, and the homeless people who live under the hedges. The banquet shall not lack for guests.
Our Gospel lesson this morning is taken from the Gospel according to Saint Luke; but there is a similar parable told in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, where it is expressly a parable of the kingdom (one of those parables that begins, “the kingdom of heaven is like . . .”). There the host is a king and the party is a wedding reception for the king’s son. And when the servants go to summon the invited guests, the invitees do not just blow them off—they blow them away. There, too, the host has his servants scour the streets and roads for alternate guests.
But in Matthew’s version there is something more. One of the street people turns up without a wedding garment. It is perhaps a bit odd on the king’s part to expect some homeless fellow or beggar to be able to round up a tuxedo when he gets a spur-of-the-moment wedding invitation. But this is a parable.
What is meant by the wedding garment? What is the indispensable item of clothing when one is invited to the wedding of the lamb? What is it that covers all our faults and flaws and makes us acceptable guests at the king’s banquet table?
It is nothing other than love. Who are we, after all, but those very street people, poor, homeless, crippled, and blind, who are summoned by Love himself—for Saint John tells us in his epistle that “God is love”—to take our place at his banquet table. And how shall we cover up our own unloveliness except with love? Love is the wedding garment, and if we have not love, we shall not have a place at the wedding feast.
The seventeenth century priest and mystical poet, George Herbert, wrote this poem, which neatly weaves the themes of this morning’s Epistle and Gospel lessons:
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Church of Saint Mary Magdalene
17
June 2007
See a list of the deacon’s homilies.