heart with no companion

My colleague Gerald Hobbs preached last Sunday at University Hill Congregation. Afterwards he sent along the text of the sermon. In it Gerald quoted the first two lines from the lyrics of the song "Heart with no Companion" by Leonard Cohen. I found both the sermon and Cohen's poetry powerful. Here is a paragraph from Gerald's sermon on I John 3:1-13 followed by the lyrics of the song.

"Within this short paragraph lies a profound description of who we are, as followers of Jesus, and what we are becoming, what is our final destiny: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are". The book from which these words come is short. No author’s name is given it, although traditionally it has been ascribed to John, author of the fourth Gospel. The author seems to be elderly; he (if it is John) refers to the people to whom he is writing as “my little children”. At the very heart of his whole message is this word “love”. What remarkable love! He starts off here. People who make studies of such things have done the arithmetic. In this tiny book that does not represent more than two percent of the New Testament, the author has twenty percent of all the occurrences of this Greek word "agape" in its various forms. Twice the author states that God is love. Now it has become something of a commonplace of contemporary spiritual seekers to affirm the love of God. For our author – let’s simply say John – this affirmation is not some general philosophical principle, or a vague sentimentality. When John says: "What remarkable love!" John means a love that did not baulk when it came to suffering betrayal and death on a cross, in order to win to world to God. I think of the extraordinary lines of Leonard Cohen:

'I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair,

With a love so vast and shattered, it will reach you anywhere'."

Here are the lyrics of "Heart with no Companion" -

I greet you from the other side
Of sorrow and despair
With a love so vast and shattered
It will reach you everywhere
And I sing this for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled

For the heart with no companion
For the soul without a king
For the prima ballerina
Who cannot dance to anything

Through the days of shame that are coming
Through the nights of wild distress
Tho' your promise count for nothing
You must keep it nonetheless

You must keep it for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled

For the heart with no companion ...

I greet you from the other side ...