Hello –
My sermon on Sunday about love had at its center a quote from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. I thought I would share with you some of the paragraph from which the quote came so that you can continue pondering this compelling description of Christian love.
First, though, I want to repeat last week’s invitation. Please consider joining the crew going over to the San Rafael Health Care Center on Sunday, June 2nd, right after church. They’ll sing the songs from that Sunday, a folk Sunday, to bring joy and community to the Health Care Center. They’ll go over about 11:15 and be done before noon.
Here’s the word about love from Rowan Williams, now professor at Cambridge: Christian love “means finding a way to speak to (our neighbor) that resonates with the creative word working in their depths. Love is not a feeling of goodwill toward the neighbor but the active search for that word- so that I can hear what God has to say to me through the neighbor, and also so that I can speak to what is real in the neighbor, not what suits or interests me and my agenda.”
In my sermon, I supplemented one of the phrases to read “the active search for the word from the Word working in their depths.” Searching for that word is Christian love. I proposed the simile of sonar as a way of searching that is like the reverent search for the word of God in the mysterious depths of our neighbor.
Blessings,
Christopher
p: (415) 456-4842