Love is Stronger than Death

A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on September 3, 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Song of Songs 8

Suicide is the biggest taboo in our culture, because death is the stripping away of everything that matters. The loss of breath, of our body, of relationship, of consciousness, of memory, of hope, of identity, of capacity, of strength, of life, of love. To die at your own hand is all of these things, but with some added pain. It’s a fearful statement of the utter loss of confidence in life, and in love. And to those around you, even though almost never intended that way, it can be experienced as a profound and unanswerable form of rejection.

Death poses the most disturbing question of all. And that is this. Is life, is this energy and activity and awareness and thought – is all this the most real thing? Or is there something, deep down, beneath it all, that is truer, more permanent, more eternal than life – something called… nothing? It’s the most troubling question, because if nothing is more real than this something, then everything around us is no more than a kind of long-term illusion, a perpetual mirage – which is here today, and perhaps tomorrow, but gone the next day, never to return. It does your head in. It makes you wonder if the reason people keep busy is to avoid ever thinking something like that. It makes you wonder what would become of any of us if we allowed ourselves to sit and think like that for a long time.

And it’s this question that makes people create buildings like this and attend events like this. And the strange thing is, tucked away in a relatively obscure book in an unfindable section of the Old Testament, lies an answer. A challenging answer. Towards the end of the Song of Songs are the five words that address our deepest question. ‘Love is strong as death.’ Or, some say, ‘Love is stronger than death.’ When all things are said and done, and death has done everything it can do, there’s still love – fragile, maybe, battered, certainly, but abiding, nonetheless. Life is more than nothing. The central moment in the Christian faith is when a man went to die – a man who was utterly isolated. Deserted and betrayed by his friends. Apparently abandoned by God. Practically no one was there, besides people mocking him. He went to show that love is stronger than death.

The truth is, we, gathered here today, are in different places about how we hear those words. Some of us are feeling very painfully that love is not stronger than death – because this death, this terrible death seems to have obliterated everything. Some of us are in a slightly different place, a place that has days of hope as well as days of despair; a place that says, tentatively, love is strong as death. The two are in a tussle that feels like it’ll go on a long time. But others again are in a third place, inspired perhaps by the death of the abandoned one or perhaps inspired in other ways, but nonetheless ready to say, through tears and struggle, that – however bleak suicide can be, however isolated, sad, forsaken and neglected a death can be, however much a person taking their own life can seem to nullify life and relationship and hope and everything, at the end of time, love is stronger than death. It’s just five words. Love is stronger than death.

Today isn’t about judgement. It’s not about saying you’ve got to be in one of those three places. It’s about the solidarity of us all standing together, whatever death has done to our sense of love or our ability to love. It’s about putting a gentle embrace around this whole gathering and finding something true together we couldn’t find alone.

Love is strong as death. Some feel able to say, stronger. Some can’t say that. Some can say that some days, but not others. The motivation of those who organise around the prevention of suicide is to create a space where those most profound feelings can be let out and shared and heard. This is the inspiration for people who work in mental health support; for those who create opportunities for people who feel they have nowhere to turn and life is hopeless.

Love is strong as death. Maybe we can say, stronger. It’s the conviction underlying this service. It’s a mission statement for life. It’s what we’re saying by going downstairs and reaching out to a stranger and listening to their story. It’s not something to shout. It’s something to whisper. It’s a way to live.