Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words from The Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). words by Laura Dobson.
We light our chalice candle as a symbol of the light of love.
The light reminds us that love is the greatest power in the world,
the love we share and bless each other with,
here in our beloved community;
the love we take out into the world,
bearing and sharing the light,
wherever we are and whoever we are with,
every day of our lives.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us as we gather for worship,
Each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
Even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
In this world in which Covid has not yet gone away,
And the clouds of war and climate change overshadow us.
May we keep in touch however we can,
And help each other,
However we may.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
Who are grieving, lost, alone,
Suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading by Cliff Reed
In the face of earthquake, wind and fire,
the disasters we call ‘natural’,
we turn to prayers of desperation,
prayers for deliverance.
Is there ever an answer?
It sometimes seems so,
and we call it a miracle.
But such miracles are all too few.
So where is God in the midst of disaster?
Where is the God of love?
Within nature? In the vast and empty void,
insouciant and unfeeling?
It hardly seems so.
But there is a strange and wonderful potential
in the Great Mystery.
We see it revealed in humanity as love
and courage, compassion and wisdom,
mercy and integrity…
It is where we find and recognise
Divine Love, the transcendent
spiritual reality that redeems our
weak humanity and our cold,
indifferent universe.
God is not the Deus Ex Machina ,
emerging from nowhere to stop
the earth from shaking, the towers from falling,
the disasters from happening.
That is not what God is.
God is in the people, not above them.
God is in the rescuers, the relief workers,
the medics, the selfless volunteers, the
men and women digging in the rubble
with their bare hands…
And God is in the generosity and heartfelt
sympathy of people far away, doing, giving
what they can. God is in the true miracle
of human goodwill. This is where prayers
are answered and God is made flesh.
The love of God acts in the loving deeds
of humanity.
The voice of God speaks in the call of
conscience, the call to care.
And it speaks against the weakness that
is human corruption and dishonesty,
meanness and selfishness, ignorance
and folly…: the evils which make a
natural disaster so much worse.
Where is God when disaster strikes?
Within human hearts that love their
neighbours wherever they may be.
May our hearts be among them.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust. Amen
Reading from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Then said Almitra, speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant.
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
Prayer by Tony McNeile (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love,
Let us open our hearts to prayer.
Love is the doctrine of this church.
Love that transcends.
Love that forgives.
Love that nourishes.
Love that heals.
Love that reaches out to help.
Love that makes friendships strong.
Let us be thankful for love in our lives.
We may find love in people or places, or pets
or find love alone in the beauty of solitude.
Let our hearts also reach out to those places and those people where there is little love or no love.
Places where love has been denied.
Places where love is a weapon and not a gift.
Let our prayer of love reach into those sad places with hope and strength.
Let our prayer of love reach out to one another today, a welcoming, supporting love, that tells us we are a community who care for one another, support one another in sickness and in health, in joy, and in sorrow.
Let us think of God’s love as a warm light that lives within us, that can shine from us. May that love lift us when we feel down and be praised when we are happy.
Amen
Reading from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love.
When you love, you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love; and to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart
and a song of praise upon your lips.
Time of Stillness and Reflection
Let us now join in a time of stillness and reflection. The Buddhist Mettabhavna, or Prayer of Loving Kindness, is often used in Unitarian services, or for personal meditation. This is my version of it. After each line, I invite you to close your eyes, and pray for the people concerned, using the words given, if you wish…
First of all, we pray for ourselves: May I be well, may I be happy, may I be free from harm, may I find peace.
Next, we pray for our loved ones, those people who are dear to us: May they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from harm, may they find peace.
Next, we pray for someone less well-known to us, about whom we have no strong feelings, but whom we might know better, if we made the effort: May they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from harm, may they find peace.
Next, we pray for people we don’t know, for all the people who are doing their best to make a positive difference in the world, and for those who are lost in places of scarcity and fear: may they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from harm, may they find peace.
Next, we pray for someone we dislike, or find it difficult to get on with: may they be well, may they be happy, may they be free from harm, may they find peace.
Finally, we pray for the world: may all be well, may all be happy, may all be free from harm, may all find peace.
May all find peace, today and always, Amen
Musical Interlude I giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address The Two Great Commandments
For this service after Valentine’s Day, I have decided to ponder the two great commandments which Jesus laid down in Matthew’s Gospel. As we saw in the opening words, the first is to, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second is to, “love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments, Matthew tells us Jesus said, “hang all the law and the prophets.”
So how do we go about fulfilling these instructions? For a start, which of us really loves God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”? How do you love Someone you cannot see or hear or touch? In Kahlil Gibran’s beautiful words, he suggests, “When you love, you should not say, ‘God is in my heart,’ but rather, ‘I am in the heart of God.’” Perhaps that is the answer – accepting that we are in the heart of God, so trying to love Him back, as He loves us is as much as any of us can do.
And what does it mean to do this? In our first reading, Cliff Reed suggested that “God is in the generosity and heartfelt sympathy of people far away, doing, giving
what they can. God is in the true miracle of human goodwill. This is where prayers
are answered and God is made flesh.” So when we strive for “human goodwill”, God is acting through us, and we are responding to His love with an outpouring of our own.
Of course, some days it is hard enough to love the people closest to us, to fulfil Jesus’s second great commandment… Yet there is so much beautiful writing which explains how we might do this. Some of which I shared with you in the readings.
Love is an amazing phenomenon. It is fundamental to human well-being. I would go so far as to say that we can only become fully rounded people if we love and are loved in return.
I have been enchanted by Kahlil Gibran’s book, The Prophet, for nearly fifty years. He (the Prophet) has some wise things to say about love. Gibran says that the ways of love are hard and steep, that we may be wounded by it, that its voice may shatter our dreams.
And my goodness, he’s absolutely right! Deep love, true love, to which we commit ourselves with our whole hearts, will “caress [our] tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, [and] descend to [our] roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.” Love is the most powerful emotion in the world. When we truly love someone, we will put their welfare before our own, we will grieve when they are sad or unwell, and share in their joy when things are going well. Loving affects every particle of our being.
Gibran’s Prophet also speaks of love as a force for change and spiritual growth. “Even as he is for your growth, so he is for your pruning.” If we see God as Love at the centre of everything (which I do), it is not surprising that the process of growing in love can be a challenging one. When we choose to try to live in a spirit of love, we are choosing to make ourselves vulnerable, and vulnerability can hurt. Love can only be offered. We can never guarantee that the other person will love us back, or love us next week, next year… or that they will remain healthy and with us. Choosing to love another person is undoubtedly a vulnerable thing to do. Love comes with no guarantees – it is without strings. It involves trusting that the universe is a benevolent place and that the best thing we can do is to love one another as God loves us.
Because without love, our lives would be dry and barren indeed. Jesus recognised this when he described “Love your neighbour as yourself” as one of the two greatest commandments. It’s a cunning phrase, that. Many people only take notice of the first half “love your neighbour”. And so, we do our best, calling on our elderly neighbour to see whether she needs any shopping doing; buying an extra couple of packets of pasta at the supermarket and leaving them in the food bank container; perhaps buying a cup of coffee for a homeless person. Giving regularly to charity. But it’s never enough. We could always do more.
But I’m also fascinated by those two, almost throwaway words “as yourself”. Because if we don’t love ourselves, we won’t believe that we are worthy of the love of others. And operating from a place of low self-esteem, low self-worth, makes it less likely that we will be sufficiently generous with our hearts to love other people. As though love was like a pie – only so much to go round. Which leads to a mindset of scarcity and fear. At least, that’s what I think… Whereas love, especially Love with a capital L, is infinite – there is always enough to go round. Love is infinitely elastic, as are our hearts.
So I would rather try to follow the Prophet’s advice and “wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving… return home at eventide with gratitude; and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.” It sounds like a wonderful way to spend our days…
There are so many ways to show our love for other people. We can phone them up for a chat, drop them an e-mail to ask how they are, post uplifting stuff instead of doom-and-gloom on social media – the possibilities are endless. And we can look out for each other. We can show our love by offering to help those less fortunate than we are.
We can try to adopt a positive mindset towards our circumstances, whatever they are, and spend time with our loved ones, talking, curled up on the sofa with a tub of popcorn and a good film, playing board games, sharing “food and faith and fellowship” on a smaller scale. Rather than endlessly scrolling through the feeds on our phones, which is such an isolating way to live.
Of course, it can be difficult to feel loving, or at least to behave in a loving way, towards everyone, particularly in times of stress. Our instinct is to curl in on ourselves and look after Number One. Yet in the long run, this rarely works. Like I said, we human beings are designed to be in connection with each other – to love and to be loved. Once again, the teachings of Jesus sum up what we should do:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. … Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. … Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.”
This can be hard advice to hear, and harder yet to live up to. But if we want to live in a spirit of love, I believe the attempt must be made. We need to somehow manage to rise above the natural human instincts for revenge and hate, above the feelings of fear and scarcity, and continue to live our lives in a spirit of love.
I’d like to finish with a piece I sent to The Inquirer back in 2018, as it sums up the second great commandment well…
“Loving our neighbours as ourselves” is a tricky one. We need to understand who our neighbours are – not just the people next door, or the folk down the pub, at the school gate, or in the pew; but also the chance-met stranger; and those we are taught to fear by those whose love is for power.
And today, each of us contains a multitude of neighbours – not only our achievements
and plans, joys, hopes and dreams, but also those parts of us we have disowned, orphaned, buried deep: our fears and insecurities, old jealousies and hasty judgements. Somehow we must love them all.
We, each one of us, are the ocean – all the thoughts, feelings, high hopes and despairs of our lives are just waves – fleeting and impermanent. Somehow we need to understand, experience, that God loves all of us, because we are working parts of God.
For God too is the ocean, and we are the waves. Each wave is unique and unrepeatable, but all are part of the same ocean. We must accept ourselves as we are, with all our strengths and weaknesses, joys, sorrows, hopes and regrets, and love the child of God that we are.
May it be so, Amen
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we choose to love well,
not only our God, whatever we conceive Him to be,
but also our neighbour
and ourselves.
May we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
and may we keep up our hearts,
being grateful for the many blessings in our lives,
now and in the days to come, Amen
Postlude Melodia Africana II by Ludovico Einaudi