"Time is how you spend your Love."

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10. 34-42

The gospel reading appointed for today parallels the reading from Luke appointed for a few Sundays ago. Luke 14. 25 -33 is equally disturbing in its language about hating your mother and father etc.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."

In a sermon on that Sunday preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. Jamie Hawkey, Canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, I heard an explanation of these two passages that brought more meaning and enlightenment to these words of Jesus than I have ever heard.

Canon Hawkey began by pointing out how much control we have over our own lives (or lack thereof) and contrasting that with the priorities that are set before us as Christians and the demands set before us in Christian discipleship. Those demands take time, Hawkey says, and they impact all corners of our lives. And then he brilliantly quoted a line from Nick Laird's poetry:

‘Time is how you spend your love.’

Canon Hawkey went on to say,

"Time is how you spend your love.

What we love should shape our time, our experience, our engagement. And if we say we love Christ and one another, well, that love is cross-shaped. It is demanding, life-long, and joyful. What we think of as ‘our time’ can become how we spend a love which is our own, and yet much more than our own. This is Christian time. God’s time. A life which is offered for the life of the world, in which we share through grace."

Canon Hawkey concluded his sermon by saying,

"But if time is truly how we spend our love, the mundane, the everyday, is at least as important as the extraordinary. The Jesuit, Pedro Arrupe, the Spanish Superior General of the Society of Jesus until 1983, put it like this:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than

falling in Love

in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with,

what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning,what you do with your evenings,

how you spend your weekends,what you read, whom you know,what breaks your heart,and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love,

and it will decide everything.

If you would like a full copy of his sermon, please email me at owene_courtney@yahoo.com

You can follow Canon Hawkey and hear more of his sermons on the Westminster Abbey website. His is a voice for the ages, and I plan to listen to his sermons for a long time to come.