Romans 12.9-end / Matthew 16.21-end
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Over the past few weeks I have spent rather a lot of time with people in our local hospices.
They are some of my favourite places to dwell within.
That may sound a surprising thing to say, but in a hospice life is stripped back to what matters – and those walls, that bed side, can become places of extraordinary love.
A place where life is affirmed, and celebrated and rejoiced in – even if the earthly life remaining for someone is short.
In a hospice all the worldly things that we spend years building around ourselves fall away.
How successful we were at climbing the property ladder seems rather irrelevant. So do the amount of possessions we have amassed, or the title or status we acquired at work.
And when all that is stripped back what remains is love. The love we have given, the love we have received. The people we have loved, the people who have loved us.
A hospice is a place where we begin to understand afresh what St Paul meant when he wrote in the reading we heard earlier this morning, “let love be genuine”.
Not performed. Not sentimental. Not merely spoken. Genuine.
Paul does not tell the Christians in Rome merely to feel love. He gives them a picture of what love looks like when it gets up off the page and enters the world.
“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”
And he keeps going: “bless those who persecute you; do not repay evil for evil; feed your enemy if they are hungry; give them something to drink if they are thirsty; do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”.
This is not easy love. This is costly love. Genuine love. And it is needed.
St Paul knew that – and so do we.
We live in a wounded world.
We see it in the news, and we also see it in our streets, in our families, in our workplaces, in our churches, and sometimes in the quiet places of our own hearts.
We live in a world scarred by conflict and seemingly ever more by the wounds we have inflicted on our climate.
Children grow up knowing the wound of sirens and explosions. Families are separated. Homes become rubble. People become refugees because the place they called home is no longer safe.
There is a temptation to let the sheer scale of suffering overwhelm us.
What can one person do? We cannot stop every war. We cannot heal every wound. We cannot carry every refugee across every border. We cannot halt a climate crisis.
But St Paul’s words ask a different question – “What does genuine love look like here?”
It looks like refusing to become indifferent. It looks like allowing another’s suffering to enter our hearts. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep”.
Christian love does not require us to have an answer for everything. It asks us to remain human. To see the person. To remember that behind every statistic is a life beloved by God.
And it asks us to not to hate.
St Paul said: “Hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good”.
There is a difference between opposing evil and dehumanising the person who stands on the other side.
Love can be fierce – it can speak when people are oppressed, protest when human beings are treated as disposable, it can refuse racism, exploitation, violence and cruelty.
But it also refuses to allow hatred to have the final word.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”.
Love breaks the cycle.
It does not wound because it has been wounded.
It does not hate because it has received hatred.
This genuine love spoken about by St Paul is costly. It is not easy. But it is vital.
Vital because it is at the heart of the Gospel – it is the very way of life which Jesus spoke about when he called his disciples in the reading we heard earlier to take up their cross and follow him – to lose the life they have become caught up in and to rediscover the life they are called to.
Stripping away all that hides the core of our vocation to genuine love.
And it’s a love already we know if we look deeply enough.
We know it because we have received it from the God who created us and loved us into being.
We have seen it incarnate in the Christ who touched the untouchable, who welcomed the outsider, who wept with those who grieved, who fed the hungry, confronted hypocrisy, who forgave, and refused to answer violence with violence.
When we speak of genuine love, we are not talking about being nice.
We are talking about become more like Christ.
Imagine what would happen if the church became known for this kind of love.
Not because we always agreed. Not because we avoided difficult questions. Not because we were indifferent to injustice.
But because even in disagreement, we refused to dehumanise one another.
Imagine a church where the lonely know they would be noticed. Where the grieving knew they would not be rushed. Where refugees knew they would be welcomed. Where the poor were not treated as projects but as neighbours. Where creation was cherished rather than consumed. Where people wounded found healing. Where justice and mercy were not enemies. Where truth and love belonged together.
That would be a powerful witness.
Not because the church had all the answers. But because the church embodied a different way of being human.
Return with me for a moment to that hospice room.
The room that reminds us that one day our lives too will be stripped back.
And when we see God face to face the question will not be how busy we were, or how important we were, or how impressively we achieved. It will be whether we loved.
Whether we genuinely loved.
So, friends, let our love be genuine.
Let it be courageous.
Let it be truthful.
Let it be generous.
Let it cross borders.
Let it embrace the wounded.
Let it protect the vulnerable.
Let it care for the earth.
Let it refuse hatred.
And when the world asks whether another way is possible, may our lives become the answer. “Do not be overcome by evil,” Paul said - “Overcome evil with good.”
Amen.