Creation as an act of Love

 [Sermon preached on 26 September by Andrew Wright]

May the words of my lips, and the thoughts of all our hearts, be now and always acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer.

 

I wonder if you’ve ever been in love. I don’t mean really liked something, such as a fabulous musical or a fine single malt, but really been head over heels IN love. The kind of love that gives you butterflies and can make your whole being ache. Conversely, I wonder how many of us have been the object of such love. Just think about that for a moment, and, if you can, bring to mind some of the feelings that went with it.

 

It’s a funny thing is love – it can lead to absolute ecstasy or complete devastation, to triumph or to tragedy. In his book, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense, William Vanstone suggests that authentic love has 3 defining marks or signs. It’s perhaps easiest to illustrate these by considering the impact of when any one of them is absent.

 

Firstly: If we learn that someone who claims to love us has in fact been keeping something back; a secret maybe, that they have been unwilling to share; then it causes deep hurt. We may know, in our head, that we have no right to whatever this may be, but in our heart the fact that the love given to us has only been partial means that we doubt its authenticity. A love which is limited is merely kindness, and not love at all. Authentic love, says Vanstone, must imply a totality of giving, by which he means: the complete giving of oneself.

 

Secondly: If a person claims to love us but at the same time tries also to control us in some way then, again, the authenticity of that love is brought into question. Love is always activity for the sake of another, and something which is controlled ceases to be independent and its ‘otherness’ is denied.  When we reach out in love, we reach beyond ourselves and in doing so always risk that love not being recognised or received. Authentic love is a precarious endeavour. 

 

Finally: if a person is unaffected when the love they offer is not recognised or, even worse, rejected, then what they offered was not real love at all. If we’ve ever been in a situation where we’ve questioned whether we matter to someone it is because they appear to be completely detached and unaffected by us. Our own experience tells us that when we genuinely love we make ourselves vulnerable and allow another a certain power over us.

 

We have seen, then, that when love is limited, controlling or detached it is not real love at all, and from this we can begin to paint a picture of what authentic love is. We can loosely define authentic love as limitless, as precarious and as vulnerable. Just let that sink in for a moment, authentic love is: limitless, precarious and vulnerable.

 

Well, so what? What has the nature of authentic love got to do with Creationtide, or indeed with the readings we have heard this morning? Put simply, we believe that God is Love. We hear and say it in our liturgy, and we sing it in our hymnody. Furthermore, we believe that, whatever the process, God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. Creation then, is an act of God, an act of Love.  

 

So let’s just take a moment to think about what that actually means. If what William Vanstone has to say bears any truth, and I believe it does, then this means that Creation was no half-hearted time-filler for a wet Wednesday afternoon. This was not God wondering what to do with all this stuff that was lying around needing to be used up, or a little something to entertain and ease the boredom of being. No. Creation was an act of complete and utter self-giving. A perfect act of authentic Love. An act of Love that is not under the control of its creator, for if it were it would not have been created in love. An act of love in which the creator willingly became vulnerable. Just let that sink in… God did not create the world for us. We are a part of God’s creation, along with everything else that is the evolving result of a perfect act of authentic love. Infinite Love, creating an infinite universe.

 

When we become aware of the love that has been expended in anything it changes our relationship to it. That object, whatever it is, takes on a new and added significance. Think, for example, of a gift that is given in love. When we know of the love with which it was given, and recognise that love for what it is, then the object itself becomes much more than its material substance. When we recognise in creation the Love that brought it into being, then every thing that is becomes much more to us than merely its material substance. 

 

This must affect the way that we choose to live within this creation of which we are a part. It cannot do anything else. 

 

Not only does this affect our understanding of the nature of creation, but also it affects the way we understand God. When an artist pours their very self into their work, we see something of them in it. I’m sure that this is something that will be most apparent in the forthcoming exhibition being organised by the Together churches. And so it is with creation. Every thing that exists was brought into being by the love of God, and in every thing we see God. Of course, when we look at a painting by Rembrandt or a sculpture by Michelangelo we may see something of the artist in their creation, but what we see will only ever be the tiniest of glimpses.  So it is with creation. When we recognise the Love of God in all that is we see the tiniest glimpse of the creator. We see, as St Paul put it, through a glass darkly. Many have tried to describe God, but nothing in our experience can ever come remotely close to doing so. An attempt of which I am fond, which has been attributed to many different people, is that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Perhaps it was this very phrase that inspired John Mason in the 17^th century to write the words of his glorious hymn, How Shall I sing That Majesty. 

In our first reading today God’s people were shocked at the audacity of Eldad and Medad when they began prophesying in the camp, and the people begged Moses to stop them. His response – ‘would that all the Lord’s people were prophets’. Similarly, in our second reading it was the audacity of someone healing in Jesus’ name that shocked his disciples. Jesus’s response? ‘Do not stop him.’ When people needed prophets, God’s people became prophets; when they needed signs and wonders, God’s people worked miracles. We live in an age where people need to be shown new ways to live. Ways that recognise and respect Love in and for creation. The question is, do we have the audacity to do it?

 

Now to him who is able to do more than all we can ask or conceive, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

[Image: The Orion Nebula]