Spoiler Alert: Love Wins

There is a line from the movie “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” that has been running through my mind over this last week. The hotel manager Sonny Kapoor says, “Everything will be all right in the end, so if it’s not all right, it’s not yet the end.” These words of hope from a Hindu hotel manager have been a kind of mantra for me as the world has spun ever increasingly out of control. I’ve held them close in an attempt to stay sane and hopeful.

As I read the responses to the recent death of Charlie Kirk, who was exercising his right to speak his mind on a university campus, it felt like I was standing at the edge of a vortex of selective anger and hatred. It was a struggle to turn away, to avoid being sucked in, because I have an almost pathological desire to straighten out falsehoods when I read them, and heaven knows there is a lot of misinformation out there on the internet. People are willing to grab hold of unexamined “facts” if those "facts "agree with their world view. And repeat them. It is the curse of the internet, the tyranny of the misguided and uninformed.

To be clear, I am almost diametrically opposed to much of what Charlie Kirk stood for, even though we both call ourselves Christians. I can’t imagine Jesus saying some of the bigoted and hateful things he has said. And I’m sure he would not have thought I was a true follower of Christ either. And the fact that we would be at odds is ironic, and even tragic. The one thing that Jesus prayed for at the end of his life, according to the Gospel of John, was that we might all be one. But instead of that we are becoming more and more divided.

The Gospel lesson in churches that use prescribed readings for this last Sunday was from Luke 15: 1-10, where Jesus tells the grumbling Pharisees and scribes two parables. (If you are not a church goer, bear with me. There is a reason for this exegesis). He tells them that God is like a shepherd who on losing one sheep, leaves the other ninety-nine and searches until he finds it. Then he carries it home, rejoicing. The other is a domestic tale of a woman who on losing a silver coin, lights a lamp and sweeps her house until she finds it. When she does find it, she calls her neighbors, and they rejoice with her. The underlying truth of these parables is that God loves every one of his sheep/coins and will go to tremendous lengths to bring each one of us home to him, and all of heaven will rejoice.    

What is the value of one lost sheep, or one small coin to God? Each of them is worth going to enormous effort to find.

What is the value of the life of one democratic Politician and her husband? What is the value of the life of one far right influencer and activist? What is the value of the lives of those thousands of children who have died as the result of gun violence?  What is the value of the lives of those that were taken in the fight for civil rights, or LGBTQ rights?

The answer is the same in each case. They are, every one of them, of infinite value because they are beloved of God.  

Love and forgiveness are deeply intertwined themes in “Bound by an Oath”. The novel is primarily a love story between two people who are not free to be romantically joined. Nevertheless, they love each other deeply. Today when we hear the word “love” we probably think of hearts and roses, and throbbing pulses. However, the Greek philosophers recognized several different kinds of love, including Eros (sexual love), Philia (deep friendship), Storge (familial love), Pragma (enduring, practical love), and Agape (unconditional selfless love). You may be able to find some of these other forms of love in “Bound by an Oath”. What develops between Aethelreda and Blaedswith, for example, is philia. The late-in-life love that blossoms between Blaedswith and Graeme is pragma. The storge love that was between Blaedswith and her brothers was disrupted by the violence of revenge but is restored by the healing balm of forgiveness at the end of the story.

I don’t know what is ahead of us in our violent and brutal age. I admit that I often feel overwhelmed and fearful. But when I remember that everything is not right, but it's not yet the end, I can continue to live in hope of better things. One thing I hold on to is that in the end, the agape of God will win.