1 Cor 13:1-13, John 15:5-15

Gorsedh Service, 8 September 2024

Over the summer we went to stay in a friend’s house while they were away. One of the pleasures of staying in someone else’s house is picking books off their bookshelves and reading things you’d not normally read. The husband of the couple whose house we used is a botanist, and amongst his many books on animals, plants, birds and nature, was one with the grand title ‘Europe; the first 100 million years’ – which caught my eye. And it was great – full of fascinating information about the geology, flora and fauna of Europe from the days of the great dinosaurs right up to today. If you’re into that kind of thing, I recommend it – the author is called Tim Flannery, by the way.

And there was a throw away comment in it that made me think – in a section on the geology of Europe, Tim Flannery points out how the rocks of the Western European Celtic lands are remarkably similar. And it’s true – a geological map of Europe shows clearly how closely the rocks of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Galician Spain and Cornwall are related.

And I’m no geologist, but I understand more of the tectonic reasons why that’s true, now that I’ve read the book.

But it made me wonder about the connection between geology and culture. Because we know that what’s beneath our feet affects what grows above the ground, and how geology affects the landscapes that we see around us, and we know that the economy of a place – as in Cornwall – can be massively affected by what we can dig out of the ground,  but it’s less obvious how the rocks beneath us connect to and shape our culture.

Are there ways in which the ‘way we do things round here’ – which is the simplest definition of culture – are connected to the rocks beneath our feet? And specifically, are the similarities between the language and cultures of the Celtic lands somehow to do with our shared geology?

I guess the question Tim Flannery’s comment really asked in me is – what does ‘what’s below ground’ have to do with ‘us who walk on it’?

And here we are, celebrating the Gorsedh with its deep love of Cornish language and culture, and its deep love of the Cornish landscape. And of course those go together. Language and culture are deep things, rooted in history and in tradition and planted in real places, with complex layers and substrata of meaning, value and purpose.

Like a kind of cultural geology, the Gorsedh is a celebration of deep down things, as well as of what grows from them. And I expect that some of you here have thought deeply about exactly this – how the geology and deep down things of Cornwall have moulded and shaped us, who live on the surface.

In the two readings that we have just heard, we have been given an insight into the deep down things of God. Like geologists sharing the results of core samples taken from the rocks beneath us, St Paul and St John share with us the substrata of faith. And both of them tell us that the key constituent of the geology of faith, is love.

And like a geologist who analyses the rocks they bring out of the ground, so St Paul analyses love – and what he tells us he has found is that love is not a warm, fuzzy feeling, nor the commercialised red hearts of Valentine’s Day, but a power that is strong enough to resist the human tendencies towards envy and arrogance; that is generous enough to rejoice in what is true; that is broad shouldered enough to bear all things and believe all things; that’s brave enough to hope, and to hope and to keep on hoping.

And St John goes even deeper. He tells us what Jesus said about the deepest of deep down things. He tells us where love comes from, and how we stay connected to it. Like a Vine that only produces good fruit if its roots are in good soil, so Jesus tells us it is by ‘abiding’ in him that we will know ourselves loved, and can go on to love others in turn.

And that word ‘abide’ is a good one. It means to live, or to be at home in, or perhaps, to be deeply rooted in. Jesus’ words might be summarised as – ‘be rooted in love, and you will grow in love and you will bear fruit in love’

The deepest of deep down things is love, and it’s by sending the roots of our lives, individually and together, down into the deep substrata of God’s love, that we discover who we are, what we need and how we can share it with others.

And he’s surely right isn’t he? That the thing we need more than anything else is to be loved. That deep in our very being, we need to know that we are both loveable and actually loved. And the deep geology of the Christian faith, the deepest and most ancient layer of rock on which faith is founded, is that God is love and that he loves us. That love isn’t a feeling that God has, or an emotion that comes and goes depending on his mood – it’s who He is. That love is what makes God, God.

And so Jesus’ invitation to stay close to him, to be rooted in him – to be at home with him – is an invitation into that love. It’s not a shot of love for when we’re feeling a bit down, or a clever technique for living well in a difficult world, it’s an invitation into the deepest of deep down things; to know that God is love, that God loves you and that there is nothing more true than that.

Tim Flannery asked, what does ‘what’s below ground’ have to do with ‘us who walk on it’?

Cornwall’s ancient rocks shape the lives and cultures of us, who walk above them, and this Gorsedh is a celebration of that truth.

And Scripture says that the deepest divine geological strata, on which we all are privileged to walk, is God’s love for us, and that we are, all of us, invited to root ourselves is that love; to be be loved.

And I pray that blessing for each of you, and for every Bard of the Gorsedh and for the whole of Cornwall. That individually and together, we will be rooted in God’s love, and will bear the fruit of that love; a love which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.

Amen