Sermon preached at Evensong on the Third Sunday before Advent 2023

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.

May the words of my mouth and the mediation of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and redeemer. Amen.

Today, as we mark Remembrance Sunday, we pause our series of sermons commemorating the 25^th anniversary of placing the 10 statues of 20^th-century martyrs above the Abbey’s Great West Doors. Yet, with all that is going on in around us, it is an appropriate day on which to remember the words in a speech given by then Senator Robert F Kennedy 55 years ago on the day that one of those martyrs, Martin Luther King Jr, was assassinated:

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time …, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black—considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible—you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization—black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand…with compassion and love.”

As we look at the wars of today most present on our TV screens and social media feeds—that between Israelis and Palestinians and that between Ukrainians and Russians—it seems that fostering hatred towards the other and the desire for revenge has taken hold. Such sentiments are not restricted to the warzones alone, but are infecting other countries and societies too—including her in the United Kingdom. British history is entwined in the seeds of the current conflict in Israel and Palestine and it is effects are seen in the heightened emotions, demonstrations and shocking accounts of antisemitism and Islamophobia that have spiked in recent weeks. How is it that in this very city you could walk past a bus stop daubed with “kill the Jews”? As RFK asked, what does that say about “what kind of nation we are and what direction we want to move in”? Not one respecting Jesus’ command in the second reading nor abiding in his love.

Yet in all of today’s conflicts, those I have mentioned and so many others that have slipped from our collective attention, there are people on both sides who are laying down their lives for their friends, for their country or people. Just as did those who were remembered at the Cenotaph yesterday (at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month) and at this morning’s National Service of Remembrance to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women involved in the two world wars and later conflicts as well as in the Service here in the Abbey.

Those who volunteered, and many who were conscripted, were usually fighting for a cause in which they believed. They were fighting to protect a way of life, freedoms and values which they held dear and wanted their loved ones and children to have and which, they were convinced, would be lost if “the other side” won.

We remember them and the ultimate sacrifice that they made. As they lay dead on the killing fields of two world wars—and subsequent conflicts - we remember that each one was a parent, a sibling, a child, a spouse, a lover. And so, we call to mind, too, the innocent, the orphaned, the starving children, the ragged and destitute refugees, the blasted land and burnt-out homes, those who return changed and damaged by the unspeakable nature of war. That is part of the point of our remembrance each year, not only to honour the sacrifice, the love shown in the laying down of lives for friends, but also to remember the horrors and effects of war and to renew the promise “never again”. But it is a promise we seem incapable of keeping.

Why? We can blame politicians and state actors for their hunger for power or control and pursuit of short-term advantage, we can blame business and financiers for their greed or we can blame journalists and social media for promoting discord and hate as they thirst after relevance and viewing figures. Everybody else, but what about ourselves? The promises and challenges of Jesus’ command are addressed to individuals. To us. And the command is not just “love your neighbour as yourself” (which appears, in one form or another, in most religions I know as well as the Jewish and Christian scriptures) but “love one another as I have loved you”.

There is not time now to unpack the full import of how God loves us and how we might show such divine love to each other. But it is clear from the way Jesus lived and died that such love must be offered without discrimination of colour, creed, sexuality, ability, economic status or even nationality and such love have to be expressed in practical ways. It is our choice whether to hate or love, kill or heal.

It is obvious from the New Testament that there were people Jesus did not like or feel an affinity with, but he went to the cross—betrayed, mocked and scourged—for all of humankind. He cried out with his dying breath for us to be forgiven. That is the type of divine love with which are loved—Israelis, Palestinians, Russians, Ukrainians and each of us. Loved. Now.

If Jesus’ crucifixion, or the dead of two world wars seem too distant, then remember the distraught face of the Palestinian mother weeping inconsolably on the shoulder of her son after the death of his young brother in a bombing raid, or the anguish etched on the face of a Jewish father whose daughter was killed on 7^th October and her body deliberately and indescribably mutilated. And think, how will I love within that tragedy? How can I love as God loved me? Can you, in Kennedy’s words, make “an effort to understand…with compassion and love” and help others to do the same? Can you recognise others’ hearts breaking even as yours is? When someone from the Jewish or the Muslim community reaches out - wanting to share pain, searching for reconciliation or peace, for a better future—will your hand be there?

Doing that (even in this Interfaith Week) might seem to swim against the majority view, in your community or context, if not in the country as a whole. It takes courage to stand up for that in which you believe, and losing prestige or popularity may feel like death. But, as Gideon learned, numbers do not determine the victory when it is God’s work you do. And as his army also learned, the battle for the future God wills does not need you to carry a weapon—spear, sword, tank or drone.

So, here’s the message—in case you have not heard it in my words this evening—you have a choice: “to love as Jesus loved us”, or not. Remember the sacrifices of those who have gone before, remember that you have been called as a friend of Jesus, and choose well—that your joy may be complete and you may abide in his love.