Agape

My planned sermon for the Sunday to come . . . (now slightly edited - 23/4/16)

It’s a shame that we don’t make space for the third reading at our communion service, because the today’s, from Revelation chapter 21, is  reading I quite like. In his great vision of the end of all things, John writes: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and I saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband.”

We might need a new earth. The other day I saw a programme about the nature of Hawaii. Not a place I’ve been, or ever likely to go, but from the point of view of its wild environment Hawaii is very special - a place of huge scientific importance. There are many endemic species found nowhere else on the planet, and immense volcanoes that can help scientists decode the geological changes that shaped the early days of our planet. Offshore it provides a haven for many rare fish, birds, turtles and reef corals.

All of that was on the programme I was watching; but it also homed in on the mess humanity is currently making of this unique set of habitats. In particular, there is plastic rubbish that’s perhaps spent anything up to fifty years travelling the Pacific only to end up on Hawaiian beaches, where it just sits, and doesn’t decay. A lot of plastic gets eaten by the albatrosses, clogging up their digestive systems so that many of them starve to death. To an albatross, anything floating on the sea looks like food, and gets eaten, including all kinds of disposable plastic.

Disposable to us, but not to the planet. Disposable things don't really get disposed of, they just end up out of our sight and therefore out of our minds, but in places where they still do damage. The programme provided a glimpse of what we don’t usually see: how the way we live has consequences, and often they’re not good ones. What makes life easy for us here seems to be having an unguessed-at impact on the other side of the world. This should be of immense concern to everyone, but especially to Christians, for all created things speak to us of God and are precious to him.

In the Book of Revelation John shared his vision of how things would be in the new age, when pain and tears would be no more. The Church that first heard his words knew a lot about pain and tears. It was living under persecution; Christians were being put to the sword, or set upon by wild beasts in the arena. Some would have recanted their faith rather than face such terror, persuaded perhaps that they'd been wrong ever to have put their faith in Christ. For how could God let such awful things happen to his faithful people?

Yet right from the start Jesus had warned his disciples to be ready for the persecution that lay ahead, for days when they’d be arrested, dragged into court, betrayed by family and friends, put to death even. He’d told them that those who look for an easy life here had already received their reward, and advised them not to lay up for themselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal, but instead to lay up treasure in heaven. For, he said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  I thought of those words as I watched the distressing images from Hawaii, of earthly treasures turned into dross that clogs up our waterways and pollutes our planet. God made us stewards of creation, and we’ve let him down.

The readings we did hear this morning urge us to take a global perspective. In the reading from Acts, Peter is taught a lesson. Good Jew that he is, he’s horrified at the thought of eating food that isn’t kosher - but that’s what he’s commanded to do in the dream he had. And he begins to understand that the message of life and salvation entrusted to him is for the whole world, for non-Jews as well as Jews, not confined by any human boundary. And in the Gospel reading, Jesus tells his disciples, "Love one another as I have loved you." It’s through the witness of our love that the world gets to see that the message we bear is true. Words only go so far - it’s in our loving and Christ-like action that God is shown to the world, and we are identified as his people.

Love. English is a language of great and poetic beauty, but it  falls short of that greatness perhaps when we come to that little word 'love'. For that one word in English translates several different words in Greek, the language of the New Testament, and they are these: eros, which is the sexual or romantic love between two people; philia, which is the love between friends, which also forms the words philadelphia, love between brothers, and philanthropia, our duty of love towards neighbours and visitors. And then there is the word used in this passage from John and elsewhere in the Gospels, the word agape.

Now this is or should be a special word for Christians, and it’s therefore worth unpacking. Agape is love without limits or boundaries; you don’t have to behave in some particular way, or to be a member of some particular group, or to be related to me, in order for me to show you agape love. Agape is an unconditional love that is expressed in our helping and treasuring and upholding the thing or person loved, without desiring it as a possession, or hoarding or consuming it. It’s love the respects the freedom of the other, it’s love that is fundamentally selfless, expressed in free gift and sacrifice, it’s love that is the deliberate decision of those who wish to continue and share the love of Christ.

Agape describes both the love God has for us and for his world, and the love by which we may glorify him. Agape is the currency of that new heaven and new earth in John's great vision; it will be triumphant over all that is ungodly and selfish. John encourages the persecuted Church of his day to be strong and steadfast, and not to give up on agape or on God. For Agape is also the new heaven and earth among us now: the love that will transform our living together as human beings and our care as stewards for the natural world around us. Agape is love that lives for tomorrow within the world of today, that finds its expression in service, and strives for what is good, challenging us to recognise God in our neighbour, and his imprint in every fold and furl of creation.