If

My latest offering for the Parish Magazine:

Being a kind, generous, open-minded sort of a Rector, I allow wedding couples to choose their own readings – within reason. The law states that they have to have at least one Bible reading, and I make some recommendations, but they can have whatever they want. I might add in another one if they chose something very obscure! And they can pick any other reading they want, as long as it’s not indecent or blasphemous.

If…

On Saturday (as I write) I’m taking a wedding where the couple have chosen St Paul’s famous words from the Bible in his first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter  13 – a classic exposition of true love. And If, by Rudyard Kipling.

Kipling can, of course, claim to be a local(ish) boy. And it’s a great, great poem. The Nation’s Favourite, according to the BBC poll, no less.

You’ll remember it says:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

…

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

“If you can….” The problem is, you haven’t, you can’t and you won’t! Even the best of us fail in a myriad of ways. None of us is the person we hope to be. If we can’t live up to our own standards, what hope of living up to Kipling’s or, more to the point, God’s?

We all need God’s forgiveness and help. An inspirational poem is not enough.

And the poem is fascinating for its view of masculinity too: what makes a true man? A controversial subject in our age!

Only Jesus truly fulfils 1 Corinthians 13 and If. He is the most loving man who ever lived. And also the most manly man – not in a machismo way, but in the sense that he had great power under control, strength that he used to bless and serve others, not exploit or tyrannize them. Jesus is the antithesis of the cruel, lazy or absent male. He was the True, Proper, Ultimate Man, the true Son of his Father, the Second and Last Adam. Let us engage ourselves in his service.