Where Only God Can Be The Lover

John 16:12-15 Rom 5:2  Luke 15:11

Many years ago now, the evangelical churches in Haywards Heath arranged a meeting at which they would be addressed by the well known speaker Canon Michael Harper. An invitation was duly sent to the Church of England Team Ministry in the town. None of the team was especially keen to go, it being a Saturday afternoon in July, and Harper, a bit too evangelical for their liking, but it was important that someone from the clergy should attend and as I was the junior member of the team, the lot fell upon young Father Andrew.

 The meeting was held in a huge garden in the centre of the town, and I had my eye on sitting in the back row and then slipping out towards the end.

But the church leaders were at the gate ready to welcome me. “Thank you so much for giving up your time” they said as they pumped my hand with great enthusiasm “now come this way and we’ll find your seat”, and I was led straight to the front. Someone went and got me a cup of tea and someone else produced a great slab of sponge cake with a silver fork to eat it with”

You really don’t need to….” I began, but they weren’t having any of it.

“You just sit and relax” they said.

Then a young woman came up to me looking all starry eyed “ I’ve heard you speak and you’re very good” she said “Can I just say” said an earnest looking young man hovering behind her “ that you have such a wonderful turn of phrase”.

“Well thank you,” I said, sitting there lapping it up. ( as you can imagine)

Then a techie sort of chap came towards me with a microphone “Do you mind if I put this here” he asked, most politely. I didn’t mind in the slightest.

It was going to be very difficult to slip away early though.

Then there seemed to be a great disturbance at the entrance and several raised voices and same elders and leaders who had welcomed me so warmly now marched towards me with great intent.

“Excuse me” one of them said brusquely “ but who actually are you”

When I told them I was Fr Andrew from the CofE, they became slightly irritated.

“You’re not Canon Michael Harper?..we just thought with that dog collar, you had to be him, I’m afraid you’re going to have to move, and we’ll take the tea and the cake if you don’t mind. look you can go and stand over there..they said pointing to the middle of nowhere.

And no one else spoke to me, and I did slip away early.

Ever experienced that sort of thing? Warmly welcomed with high expectations, only to be discarded.

Ever done that to anyone? Thought they were something special only to be disappointed in the end, and conveniently moved them to the edge of your life.

Thank the Lord for our families and those special friends who have come to know us for who we are, and still want us and still love us, but there are a whole mass of relationships we are encouraged to put our trust in, which so often end in disappointment. The whole celebrity culture. Newly elected politicians. The newly appointed boss. The recently arrived Vicar, and those who are best friends for a while and then it all falls away., and what are we all going to say about Fabio Capello if England don’t win the world cup!

People we have high hopes in and put them on pedestals, only to realise that we were mistaken.

We spend a great deal of time looking for people to fill gaps  in our lives and the truth is we can’t do it,  because, I believe, that there is a place in our hearts only God can fill and our hearts will always remain restless, until we find our rest in him.

I’m drawn back to the prodigal son story. He was the one who took his share of the fortune and tried to find fulfilment in wine, women and song in a far off country, and when he was at last on his beam end he made that vital discovery, there was a part of him, bigger than he ever imagined, that could only ever be ministered to by the Father’s love.

Now it’s Trinity Sunday and you should be expecting some erudite teaching on that great doctrine of how Father, Son and Holy Spirit fit together but I’m coming to the conclusion that its meaning is academic – unless you and I have a place within it.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yes….but… and me and you.

It is in the name of the Trinity that we were baptised, so it is in to the life of that same Godhead that you and I are drawn.

The family we would cherish on earth, that place where we belong with other people who accept us as we are, has a counterpoint in eternity, our place within God’s heart.

The work of loving all that he had made was begun by the Father, That love was given flesh and blood in the life of the Son and that love is set free in us by His Spirit all around.

 Jesus in our Gospel reading talks of that Spirit coming to us and making its home in us. Do you see we are being incorporated into God, so that we might love him as he love us. It is our resistance to this truth that sets us at odds with each other as we look for that perfection in loving purely just within our human relationships and never make room for the divine.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus says mysteriously “ He will take what is mine and declare it to you”. These are not just in words on a page or a voice in the air, but in a spirit which touches and transforms and leads us towards that fullness of love for which we have spent our life time searching.

My ears pricked up this week to the news story about loneliness and how so many people feel it in our society. We each feel lonely when someone in whom we had invested hope of love deserts us or lets us down. Loneliness comes from the gaps in our lives that people don’t seem to be able to fill.

 Listen though to these words from an obscure mystic quoted by Henri Nouwen

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly

Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you,

As few human or divine ingredients can,

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes soft. My voice so tender.

It has made my need for God absolutely clear  (Shams al din Hafiz)

I was not Canon Michael Harper, and those church leaders were indignant

It was mistaken identity. You can go and stand over there somewhere they said.

What a relief to learn that neither you or I are God.

That when people consign us to the margins, that’s precisely where the living God meets us.

That when people disappoint us, it’s not that they are bad, its just that we were looking for them to be God for us, instead of us having the courage to embrace God himself.

It is the greatest thing to know that the love that binds Father, Son and Holy Spirit, binds you and I too, if we would start looking in the right places.

RH 30.5.10