Father Bart Gage

John 13:31-35

Sunday evening my wife (Faye) and I drove up to Boston and stayed at the Marriott right in the heart of the MIT campus. Faye went off to her conference early Monday morning. I slept late, had brunch, and went out and sat on a bench in a large plaza opposite the subway entrances at Kendall square. I read a bit of the paper and stoked up my pipe when I noticed a thirty-something couple seated on a bench about three hundred yards away. Their conversation was lively and every so often they leaned forward and kissed. They would then continue their conversation. Now I am not a voyeur, so I finished reading the paper and spent about an hour praying. The plaza was busy with noon-time lunch passers-by. Some read. Others ate. A few rested. Most looked harried, distracted, lonely, or unhappy. Throughout this period of two hours, the couple continued their conversation, pausing occasionally to lean forward and to kiss. I got up to get a cup of coffee. When I returned they were gone.

Like Rodin’s statue “The Kiss,” my couple defined the space and dominated the moment. Together they gave life and passion to an otherwise stilted scene. Here, in the heart of an institution that honors Newton and Darwin, where there are temples to abstract reason, logic, objectivity, and science, were two people being human. Their kiss was not vulgar, lascivious, or crude. It was warm and gentle, desirous, and considerate, friendly and loving. Where passers-by appeared distracted, dour, busy, and dispassionate, a man and a woman made a statement with a kiss that was part eros and part philos, part desire and part friendship. They reminded us that behind reason, science, and logic there lies a vital force that is creative and recreative, powerful and beautiful, gentle and soaring.

To love one another is to live the life that Christ lived for you and me. It is to see our lives as embodiments of His spirit and work on earth. You and I are commanded by Jesus to love one another. It is a command to open our lives to each other and to His love. We share that agape love in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and in the fellowship of our common life together. When you and I love one another, we make our statement in the midst of a preoccupied passer-by world, that the source of all meaning in life transcends the forces of friendship, desire, and intellect. With the life of Jesus Christ, we discover a reconciliation brought by God. Justice and peace have kissed each other. In our Easter message of the miracle of redemption and resurrection, do you and I not in effect confess that God has reached out and kissed mankind? Amen.