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Love was His Meaning

 Second Year of Online Contemplative Worship

Wherefore
gird up the loins of your mind,
be sober,
and hope to the end
for the grace that is to be brought unto you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

As obedient children,
not fashioning yourselves
according to the former lusts in your ignorance:
But as he which hath called you is holy,

so be ye holy
in all manner of conversation;
Because it is written,
Be ye holy; for I am holy.


This was the text we used for the first OCW a year ago. It seems wroth revisiting it today as we begin - after a week off - our second year.

The demand of the text is still what it was - the pursuit of holiness. Imagine is instead of "the pursuit of happiness" the American Constitution had said that it was an inalienable right of every human being to pursue holiness!


Well, it is part of the Constitution of the Kingdom of God, which Kingdom is our first loyalty before any earthly nation. It was a profound moment in the King's coronation when the about-to-be-crowned-Monarch admits tis fact and in answer to the question from a child.


And this past year we have in all sorts of different ways looked at what the pusuit of holiness actually is. I almost wrote "looks like", What does something "look like" was a favourite phrase of those challenging the church of 50 years ago - what might the parish look like, what might misistry look like. It's phrase that has come to grate on me a bit - because we're not in the business of looking "like" anything. Holiness isn't a look, the Devil might wear Prada but Jesus' followers have given away their cloak. We are what we are, we don't look like, we just are us. Either we are holy, or we're not. Holiness doesn't look like anything, it is, and it does. It is and is our new nature, it does and it changes the world. It is grace - as the KJV version above puts it... be sober,

and hope to the end
for the grace that is to be brought unto you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

Hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Grace, holiness are not things we manufacture or deserve, they are the gifts of God coming from the end of God, the meaning, the purpose of God. To use a technical phrase they are eschatological, the come from the end, the eschaton. God's end... not a historical moment in the calendar but the purpose and meaning of God.
And what is God's meaning. Well a deft change of key to introduce some words from Mother Julian of Norwich, a 14th century English mystic about whom we know practically nothing, but who left us an amazing book called "Revelations of Divine Love". Chapter 86... and the whole book... closes with these words:-


Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning.

And I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked, nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works; and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us; and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning; but the love wherein He made us was in Him from without beginning: in which love we have our beginning. And all this shall we see in God, without end.



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