Abide in My Love (Holy Union)

Abide in My Love

Holy Eucharist and Blessing of Holy Union

For Paige Diana Haley and Emily Rae Hutchinson
8 July 2012 1:00 p.m.

St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church

Seattle, Washington

Song of Solomon 2: 10 – 13, 8: 6; Psalm 30; Colossians 3: 12 – 15; John 15:9-14

As the Father loved me, I also have loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his or her friends. (John 15: 9 – 13).

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

“Abide in my love,” Jesus says to us in the Gospel Reading today. “This is my commandment, that you love one another.” 

It has always struck me as strange to have anyone commanding us to love someone.  How is it possible to command love?  Love on command is a contradiction in terms.
 

Love seems to come into our hearts on its own, unbidden and sometimes unwelcome. 

Christians, recognizing this, have always taught that love comes into our hearts by an act of God.  In the letters of John we read, “In this, then, does love consist: not that we have loved God, but that He first loved us.”  Gratitude for love first given us is the wellspring of our own love.

“Abide in my love.” Elsewhere in the Gospel of John Jesus says, “Abide in me, and I in you.”

What does it means, “abide in love,” or “abide in Christ?”  Go in pilgrimage to a Holy Place? Seek a monastery and a life of seclusion? Work for social justice and end poverty?  Perhaps, if these are what God places in your heart. But “abide in me, in my love” means more.    

The verb translated as “abide” here, meno, simply means to be present, and to continue to be present.  What Jesus is talking about is not place, but presence.  Not location, but vocation. Not activity, but attentiveness.  Not sentiment, but sentience. 

Jesus is talking about being present to God in our midst, to love in our lives, to those we love. 

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh discusses what it means to be present:  attentiveness, responsiveness, and openness.  Having an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and a heart that feels.

Accepting who you are, learning authenticity and integrity in being that person, knowing your limitations and strengths, all these are a prerequisite to being present to anyone else.

“Abide in my love … love one another as I have loved you.” 

Jesus here is talking about a genuine love, where one is present to the beloved.  He is not talking about the mess of emotions we often confuse with love, those goal-oriented and self-absorbed affections and desires that seek to change the beloved and conform her to our will. 

Thich Nhat Hanh says, “If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs of the person we love. This is the ground of real love.”

Thomas Merton writes, “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image.  Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them” (No Man is an Island).   

Abiding love means sincerity and truth in feelings, consistency in actions regardless of feelings, integrity in our relationships, and of being honest about our own needs and those of the beloved.   It’s why we discourage two people who are not self-aware from getting married prematurely.  We encourage counseling to develop self-awareness and mutual attentiveness.  

This process of counseling and preparing for marriage is very similar to the process of discernment for religious vocations, where you and your community seek God’s guidance and the self-awareness to recognize, in the words of Presbyterian theologian Frederick Beuchner, where your deepest joy meets the world’s deepest need. 

That is why I am so very glad to be here today, celebrating this Holy Union, this marriage of you two, my dear daughters.  Both of you know yourselves well and honestly recognize that this public joining together in love and commitment is the path you both are called to by God speaking in your hearts, despite the disapproval of some bigots, including some self-styled religious. 

I am thankful that the Episcopal Church has followed God’s call in blessing and honoring such unions as yours, such love as yours, thankful that St. John the Baptist Parish, Father Greg, and Bishop Rickle have been so welcoming for this celebration.  I am thankful that my own Trinity Parish in Ashland cheered last week when I announced what I would be doing this Sunday. 

I am thankful for all this because love comes from God.  Your love comes from God. 

St. Irenaeus of Lyons famously said, “The glory of God is the human being made fully alive.”  God made us for joy, for full life, and for love.  Anything less is a detraction, a departure, a diminishing of God’s intent. 

May you find the full joy of growing old together and raising a family.  It is one of the sweet blessings of our life, even with all its costs and occasional pain.  And it is sweeter, and less painful, when we are present for each other.  

Abide in this love God has given you.  Be attentive to each other.  Recognize when the beloved needs more space.  Listen and watch.  Be true to the beautiful image of God left in you when you were created.  Look to see it in each other.  When tiredness or annoyance rob you of attentiveness and being present, don’t beat up on yourselves, but simply act as if you still had them.  They will return.  Share your joys and sorrows with each other.   When things go wrong, ask each other for forgiveness and forgive each other, again and again.   Be present for each other.  And share that being present with others, whether children you welcome into your family together, or guests, friends, family, and neighbors. 

Abide in this love.  Be present. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.