“What a world would
this be, were everything beloved as it ought to be!”[1]
Those words, printed out on a scruffy scrap of paper, are
stuck above my desk in the vicarage, so that I see them every time I raise my
eyes from my laptop. They’re the words of a seventeenth century poet and
priest, who was largely unknown until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Some of his works were literally rescued from a smouldering rubbish heap by a
passer-by looking for spare parts for his car.
The writer’s name was Thomas Traherne, and he knew what he
was talking about in this passionate plea for a world more aware of love. He
lived through one of the most turbulent times in our nation’s history, the
English Civil War. He was born in 1637, and died in 1674. He grew up in the
midst of bitter fighting between Royalists and Parliamentarians. Families and
communities tore each other apart. Traherne was the son of a shoemaker from
Herefordshire, who went on to study at Oxford, and then became vicar of the
parish of Credenhill at a time of fervent and often brutal religious dispute.
By all accounts, though, he was a gentle and much-loved pastor. The worst
criticism anyone seems to have had of him was that he was “so wonderfully transported with the Love of God to Mankind…that those
that would converse with him, were forced to endure some discourse upon these
subjects, whether they had any sense of Religion, or not” [2]
That rings true from his writings, which are full of love
and delight in the world around him. “You never enjoy the world aright, till the
Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and
crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole
world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as
well as you… till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst
equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all:
you never enjoy the world.” [3]These are the words of someone who has seen what hatred and greed can do, and
has come to value their opposites, love and generosity of spirit.
“What a world would
this be, were everything beloved as it ought to be.”
That word “beloved” came up in our Gospel reading today too.
Jesus is baptised in the River Jordan by John. And as he comes up from the
waters, the heavens open, the Spirit descends like a dove, and God’s voice is
heard. “You are my son, the Beloved; with
you I am well-pleased”. “My son, the Beloved.”
We might say, “but of
course! This is Jesus after all! He was a great teacher and healer, a hero with
the courage to endure the cross. Of course God thought he was beloved!” But
this story comes before all of that, before Jesus has begun to preach, before
he has started to heal people, before he has done anything to deserve God’s
praise. He’s just a carpenter’s son from Nazareth.
Straight after this story we’re told that he’s about thirty
years old, and that is significant. Thirty was the age in the ancient world
when men were regarded as fully grown, independent, mature, able to take on the
responsibilities of governing and leading. It was the age when Roman men could
stand for public elected office. It was the age when Jewish men from priestly
families started their work in the Temple. Women, sadly, were never regarded as
grown ups, able to run their own lives, but for men thirty was the magic
number. Jesus is just beginning, says Luke. God doesn’t call him beloved
because of what he has done, or what he will do. He calls him beloved
simply for who he is, because he exists.
That’s good news for all of us, because it’s clear from the
Bible that God doesn’t just feel this way about Jesus. In the Old Testament the
prophet Isaiah wrote to the Israelites in exile in Babylon. They believed that they’d lost the love of
God because of the way they have behaved, that the exile was their fault, but
God tells them, through Isaiah, that didn’t matter. “You
are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you”, he says. They are
beloved, whatever has happened, whatever they have done.
When families bring children for baptism here I often tell them
this story of Jesus’ baptism. Names matter, I tell them. The names they have chosen for their child
matter. There’s usually a reason for the choice they’ve made. It’s a family
name, perhaps, or a name with a special meaning or association for them. But
whatever they have decided to call their child, I remind them that he or she
already has a name, given by God. God names their child “Beloved”, because he
names us all “Beloved”. We’re “beloved” when we’re newborn, powerless and
dependent, when we’ve done nothing yet to be loved for. We’re beloved when we
hit the terrible twos, or the turmoil of adolescence, when we strain our
parents’ patience to breaking point.
We’re beloved when we’ve grown up, but don’t feel it, when we’re making
a mess of life, or losing our way. And we’re just as beloved when we’re aging,
losing our power, maybe going into the blur of dementia. We may look in the
mirror and call ourselves useless, or even forget our names completely, but God
still knows and names us as “beloved”. There are no ifs, no buts about this, no
exclusions in the small print. Our
“belovedness” doesn’t depend on what we’ve done. It can’t be earned or deserved
- and that means it can’t be lost either. God loves us because we are here, and
we are his – for no other reason than that.
Now, I would quite understand if some of you are thinking at
this point “This is all very well, but
isn’t it a tiny bit self-indulgent, sort of “new-agey”, warm and fuzzy…? We’re
all beloved… yes, but so what?” And
you might be right. But I don’t think the Bible goes to such great lengths to
tell us we are beloved simply so we can have a nice, feel-good moment now and
then. It tells us we are beloved because when we know that thoroughly, deeply,
it can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that can, because when we
know that we are beloved, simply because we exist, we have to accept that
everyone else is too. How much suffering
could have been prevented in Traherne’s time if the Royalists and
Parliamentarians had seen each other not as enemies, but as fellow children of
God? How much suffering could be prevented in our own time if we could look at
those around us – especially the ones who hurt or humiliate us and see the
same? “What a world it would be, were everything beloved as it ought to be”
said Traherne. “Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you,” said Jesus to his disciples. But we can
only love others as God does, for themselves rather than for what they have
done, if we have learned that we are loved like that too. If we are still
trying to earn our place in God’s heart, if we’re afraid we’ll lose it if we do
something wrong, then how can we possibly believe that he could love those who
we don’t even like, those we disapprove of, those we think have it in for
us?
“We love because God
first loved us” says
the first letter of John,(1 John 4.19) and it’s the truth. It is the knowledge of God’s love
which sets us free to love those around us.
Traherne said that we are “as prone to love as the sun to shine”[4],
that loving is in our deepest and truest nature, but it’s often a challenge to
believe that in the face of so much that undermines it; the brutality and
oppression and simple carelessness that poisons our world and seeps into our
souls.
Jesus heard a voice from heaven, “You are my Son, the beloved”. We may not have any such obvious
reassurance, so it matters that we keep our ears, and our hearts, open for the
messages we do hear that tell us of our worth to God; the messages of the
Bible, the messages of those around us who carry on loving us whatever we do,
the moments of blessing in our lives, the moments when we see God at work –
even if they are just moments. It matters that we recognise the ways we
drown those messages out too, by putting ourselves down, convincing ourselves
that we are unlovely and unloveable. To do that is like pulling the plug out
when you’re trying to fill the bath – the love just runs away down the plughole.
Believing in our belovedness, and the belovedness of others,
doesn’t mean that we don’t need to take seriously the things that are wrong in
our lives or that we don’t need to challenge what is wrong in the world around
us – to be truly loving means to do both of those things - but we need to know,
and affirm, and trust that nothing we, or anyone else, can do can destroy God’s
love, for us or for them.
“What a world would
this be, were everything beloved as it ought to be!”
This season of Epiphany is a season of revelation – that’s
what the word “Epiphany” means. The
stories we hear at this time are all about the love of God being revealed in
Jesus; revealed to the Magi, revealed to wedding guests at Cana when Jesus
turns water into wine, revealed to Simeon and Anna in the Temple in Jerusalem
when they see in Jesus the light of the world. But all those stories happened
long ago and far away. The most important revelation of God’s love we need in
this season of Epiphany is the one we find within ourselves and within each
other, the discovery that we, and all the world, are called beloved. That’s
what transforms us, and when we are transformed the world around us is
transformed too.
Amen
Amen
[1] Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, 2:66-8.
[2 “Happiness
and Holiness” by Denise Inge, p 9.
[3] Centuries
of Meditation 1.29, 30
[4] Centuries
of Meditation 2.65.
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