Eternity Sunday - Love Abides

For a few years now we have been celebrating something that we call Eternity Sunday at SJMC. Christian tradition has long maintained that the church-year begins at Advent, with our preparation for the coming of Jesus. So the Sunday before Advent is in a sense the last Sunday of the year. On this day we look back and remember the year that has passed - and in particular those people in our community and in our lives who this year have passed away into the eternal love and care of God. This Sunday we will be invited to enter this space of memory, grief and comfort once more. We will be invited to light a candle in memory of loved ones who have died as we experience together the assurance of God's love and the support of this community.

As I thought about a scripture text for this service, I kept returning to an unexpected place: 1 Corinthians 13 - the love chapter. Unexpected because this has become for most of us a wedding passage. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude..." And yet as you read on, the context shifts easily into our experiences of death and eternity. "Love never ends. But as for prophesies... tongues... knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part... but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end." And then the beautiful closing line of the passage: "And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

Sometimes it's good to dislodge a scripture passage from its usual context. It helps us to see it fresh. What might it mean for love to abide, not only in life but into death as well? And what might it mean for us to love each other - whether in marriages or friendships or any other kind of relationships - with this same abiding love of eternity? The love that abides is, of course, the eternal love of God. This is the love that holds each and every one of us, and it's into the keeping of this love that we entrust our loved ones who have passed away. And this love we know in our earthly lives and relationships too - even if only dimly, in part, as in a mirror darkly.

We remember those whom we have loved because we love them still. Because the love that we have known in the God of Jesus Christ abides in time and in eternity. True love is a relationship not only with another person, but with love itself - with God. And this relationship cannot be severed by time, by death or by any wounds of life. Love abides, thanks be to God. And so we are invited to light a candle.