Sunday Sermon - 10 August
"Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love.
Open our ears to hear your Word, our hearts to receive it, and our lives to obey it,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
God comes to us in some amazing, surprising and beautiful ways.
We have a parishioner who Bev and I visit every few weeks and, without exaggeration, every single time we visit her, she is either actively reading this same book or has this very same book on her bed because she just set it down. She reads this same book over and over. In fact, when I asked her how many times she thinks she’s read this same story, she says she couldn’t say… but “it’s like a hundred.” The book is well worn, the covers have been read right off of the binding. It is well loved. And no, the book she’s been reading over and over is not the Bible. It’s the romantic novel, The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks.
Now, I’m not usually into romance stories, novels or movies but like I said, God comes to us in some amazing and surprising ways.
For some reason, this weeks’ readings just kept bringing me back to our parishioner and her love of reading and rereading the story of The Notebook and I had no idea why. I couldn’t see an obvious connection, I could barely remember the plot. In fact, I’m pretty sure I had it confused with Message in a Bottle (by the same author - the movie starred Kevin Costner). A completely different, but equally tear jerking, love story. So, yes, right up until Tuesday, when I began working on this sermon, I was preoccupied by a story that I didn’t even really know.
The Notebook, for those of you, like me, who aren’t really sure of the plot, is a story of ‘the struggle of love’ between a young couple. One, a wealthy young female aristocrat, named Allie and the other, a poor country boy, named Noah. They fall in love one summer while Allie is vacationing at her summer home in Noah’s hometown of Seabrook, South Carolina.
What was initially a summer fling becomes serious and Allie’s parents, who obviously don’t approve of their daughter seeing this poor country boy, ask them to break up and end their summer vacation early to go back to the city. It’s the classic (and typical) love story - kind of cliché actually - though this story, beautifully written, is inspired by the real life couple of the author’s wife’s grandparents.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why this story, of all things, kept getting in the way of my thoughts as I prepared for this sermon. Like I said, God comes at us in some amazingly surprising, and even kinda funny, ways.
The story isn’t really just about these two young lovebirds. It is actually about the couple in their later, aged years. The story is narrated, and told as a retrospective, many years later.
Allie is now an old woman, living in a care home, with dementia. She has no recollection, no memory of her past. She doesn’t know who Noah is, she doesn’t even know who her own children are, she doesn’t even really know who she is. Noah, who is also old now but has all of his faculties, chooses to live in the care home with her and every day he reads her the story of their love - how they met, fell in love, were torn apart and eventually reunited.
Noah never stopped loving Allie, even in these later years when she had no idea who he was. He loved her so much that when their kids asked him to move back home because they were worried about him he said ‘No’. When the doctor told him that her dementia was too advanced and she would never remember him so he should stop reading to her, it is futile, Noah replied sharply; “Science goes only so far and then comes God.” He would never stop believing. He would not give up.
Noah had to keep reading to her because he believed that eventually the story of their love life would prompt her memory and she’d remember who he is and the love they shared, even if for just one last time. He wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. His love for her was all enduring, all consuming, all that mattered.
I prayed on why I was so preoccupied with The Notebook this week. Like I said, I’m not even a big fan of romance novels or stories. I kind of remember watching this movie with Janice many years ago, when it first came out in 2004, but again, I am pretty sure I had it confused with Message in a Bottle when I first saw it in our parishioners room. Anyway, I was so preoccupied I actually ended up watching it on Wednesday night. I had to pay for it, to rent it, even! There I was, watching The Notebook, all by myself - I called it “sermon preparation” - with tears streaming down my face. I felt only a little foolish, all the while questioning; “God, what is it with these readings and this movie? What’s the connection?”
In The Notebook, Noah shows up every day and reads the same story to Allie — not because he knows she’ll remember, but because he believes in the love they share. He acts in hope, not in certainty. He acts out of faith, a conviction to their love. Faith in Action.
Like Noah, we are called to live faithfully, lovingly, and generously, even when we don’t see immediate results. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews calls us to that kind of trust: believing in what we can’t yet see. Like the characters in Hebrews 11, Noah doesn’t live by what he sees. He lives by what he believes to be true: the love they shared, the promise they made, the identity of the one he loves. Paul wrote; “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The conviction of things not seen.
Faith is trusting God’s promises even when unseen, like Abraham journeying to a land he hadn’t yet received. Faith is pushing through challenges and life’s obstacles, using the strength and power of our love for God to persevere to our glorious end.
In our Gospel today we are reminded to be ready, “Be dressed for action.” Not because we know exactly when the moment will come, but because we trust in God’s promise, that the day will come and we better be ready for it when it does. In Luke 12, Jesus calls us to watchfulness, not passivity — to be dressed for action, to stay faithful even when we aren’t sure when the Master is coming or we feel as though God is delayed in bringing us our promised Kingdom. We actively wait.
Faith in the midst of the unknown, faith in our love for God, requires that we actively wait, living the love we share in real, tangible, active ways. While we await the arrival of the new Kingdom.
Just like Noah, reading that notebook to Allie, over and over again, actively awaiting the time that she’ll remember and return to him. He’s convicted, with no guarantee that she will remember. He lives out his love, regardless, faithfully and patiently, despite heartbreak, despite repetition, despite the apparent futility of the effort. He doesn’t ever give up and then, in a fleeting and powerful moment (spoiler alert), she remembers. She sees him, she knows him, she feels her love for him. A moment of grace.
The beauty of this story isn’t in her brief recollection. The beauty of this story is in the conviction of his love for her, for them, together.
The beauty of our story, the story of our love for God, doesn’t just rest in the conclusion of our reunion with God in the heavenly Kingdom. The beauty of our story is in the journey of our love, in the moments of our active waiting, our acts of love in this life, for and with others. The beauty of our story are mornings like this when we can come together for the love of God and one another to celebrate our faith together.
You see, it is our faith - our unknowing knowing - that shapes our decisions, informs our priorities and prepares us for God’s future.
Near the end of the movie Noah said this - and I think this is also the point God was trying to make me understand:
“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.”
In the story, the author was referring to the love that he and Allie shared. But I think that Sparks was making a much bigger point about the power of love to his readers and God was definitely making this same big point to me. “The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.” This isn’t talking about romantic love, it’s talking about a deep faithful love - a love, a faith, that demands action.
In preparation for today, I’ve since learned that Nicholas Sparks, the author of The Notebook, is a devout Christian, a Roman Catholic who, unlike other celebrities, does not publicly shy away from his faith. He speaks about his faith on Podcasts. He has a foundation that raises funds to support, improve and modernize education in depressed areas of the United States. Sparks openly shares his own life story which is full of tragedy and struggles, and acknowledges that it was his faith that helped him push through it all. He believes in the persevering power of faith and the importance of loving God and one’s neighbour as a way to make the world a better place. Clearly, his faith, the message of his faith, beams through his work. Sparks says that Noah’s love for Allie, “is a metaphor for the unconditional and everlasting love God has for us.” God is alive in him and his works.
The love that gave Noah the spiritual grit and strength to never give up. The love that emanates through Sparks' work, is the love that we are called to live out, faithfully, expectantly, as Christians. This is our call to action, this is our faith in action.
It’s the kind of faith Abraham had when he left home. It’s the kind of readiness Jesus speaks of — lamps lit, hearts open, lives generous. That’s the faith Isaiah and the Psalmist call for — not performance, but obedience, love, and action.
Faith like that doesn’t shout. It isn’t performative or self-centred. It just keeps showing up.
Faith is more than believing. It is showing up. It is trusting God's promises enough to act on them, even when the evidence is thin and the world says it’s foolish.
Like Noah in The Notebook, we are called to live in faithful, enduring love, even when it is painful or seems fruitless. That’s what Abraham did. That’s what Jesus calls His disciples to do. That’s what God desires of us.
I’d like to end with a quote by Nichols Sparks, from one of his podcasts; “I think the nature of life is that there are challenges and sadness and tragedies and pain and suffering. And hopefully we’ll find a way to love God anyway, because I think that’s what it’s all about. I think God wants you to have faith. That’s the simplest way to put it.”
Thank you God, for helping me to understand your word in the mystery of life’s surprises - calling us to loving faith in action. And thank you God for Marylin Devlin, whose reading of The Notebook brings us all a little closer to you.
Amen.