Interpreted by love - the Vicar
Interpreted by Love. It’s the final line of one of the verses of Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, which we sang at a wedding here yesterday:
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity,
interpreted by love.
Some hymns are so familiar you don’t even register the words anymore. You think, sure, it’s familiar words, a pretty tune; Reminds me of school, or chapel, or my father; But read it again some time. It’s all words about noise and quiet. And more particularly the exchange of noise for quiet. Those who heard the call beside the Syrian sea: They rise up and follow thee, without a word. Our strivings, strain and stress are calmed by drops of quietness, Till we find the beauty of thy peace. The noise of the earthquake, wind and fire, are made dumb by the still small voice of calm.
Then in the middle verse, in rest and calm, Jesus shares the silence of eternity, interpreted by love. The great actor Kevin Cline was on Graham Norton this weekend, describing how acting Shakespeare outdoors in Central Park, he’d known moments in the middle of that great city where the intensity of the drama had created meaningful silence – the intensity of deliberate quiet, a pregnant silence, Concentrated in a moment of drama, shared by a large gathering.
Evensong may not contain a great deal of silence. But it’s intended to create a time of prayer, a time where words are not just words but ethereal, bourn on music; As St Augustine famously said, ‘the one who sings prays twice’. We are setting aside noise and desire, sense and the flesh, Our strivings, strain and stress, our anxiety, Our foolish ways; To find in the music of prayer, the prayer of music, the beauty of thy peace. But I’m more struck by the line I began with: Interpreted by love. I challenge anyone here to come up with a better summary of Christian faith than those three words: Interpreted by love.
What we call the theology of the Incarnation, the joy that remains ever popular in the anticipation of Christmas, the absolute veneration that abounds in Europe for Mary, Jesus’ mother, derives from our experience of the agony and hope and joy and fear and the wildness of physical birth: Interpreted by love. Our Christian hope, the terror or equanimity, our striving for peace, our grief, the experience of love and loss, our faith and uncertainty, derives from our experience of death, interpreted by love.
We celebrate weddings here, as we did yesterday (demonstrated by these gorgeous flowers), out of our experience of love and sex and our need for companionship and desire for a family, interpreted by love.
And actually the challenge of our faith is to keep looking at the world as interpreted by love. Because yes, we look at the great questions of physics, of conflict in the Middle East, of Le Fez nightclub, of the lonely grind of a day without joy, and we can interpret it as simply the laws of things hitting each other till they break or fall still – Newton and his apple.
Or we can interpret them by love. Which isn’t the empty platitude that everything happens for a reason. But it’s looking at the world and trying to make it better. It’s having hope that everything can be redeemed and made sense of. It’s trusting that it will end in neither a bang nor a whimper. It’s having the strength to start again and lay the first brick. It’s not giving in to fear, or apathy or despair. But trying to make music out of noise, To still the beating of our hearts and the noise of the guns. Visiting the sick – Encouraging a friend – Praying for peace. Life interpreted by love.
And isn’t our annual celebration of Harvest, a tale as old as time, also this: to give thanks for what we have received; To see the gifts of the land and those who work it, interpreted by love. Whether it’s a good harvest or a poor harvest, it is still celebrated. It’s an act of love to give thanks. It’s an act of love to share what we’ve received. Our Harvest celebration is our labour interpreted by love. And that is what it means to be rich towards God. Amen.