Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John
15:9-17
When teenagers fall in love for the first
time they find themselves suddenly transported to a strange, new, wonderful
world in which everything is different. It’s as though they have been born all
over again and discover that all the many concerns and interests of their life
now revolve about a new centre – a centre with an irresistibly strong magnetic
attraction – a centre called Lucy, or Bill, or Tom.
And driven by this new found love they
begin to use strange new language – ‘You are the light of my life. You are my
sunshine. You are the wind beneath my wings.’ What they are trying to say, I
suppose, is: ‘You are my everything!’
Yes, what we love is our everything. Love
gives life an ultimate meaning and claims our every desire.
We, who are no longer teenagers, know that
there is more to the story, much more. We know that love, so beautiful – is
also fragile - and can be disappointed, hurt, and even betrayed. And if we are
honest, we know that we, too, are quite capable of doing the hurting, the
disappointing and the betraying. What is it that goes wrong?
It seems to me that when we fall in love
we begin at the same time a kind of struggle, a combat with ourselves. Perhaps
we might call it a struggle with self-love.
In common slang it’s called ‘getting over
yourself’ and it’s a lifelong battle – to love the other more than we love
ourselves. In this battle we can expect many defeats but also, hopefully, many
victories.
Every relationship is the same. As it
grows in intimacy it uncovers in the other areas of woundedness,
incompleteness, immaturity, and even sinfulness. These are areas which are not
so loveable and love faces a choice. Do I allow my love to be disappointed and hurt
– do I continue to love – or do I take back my love?
We might call it the ‘pain threshold’ of
love which over the course of a lifetime will normally be strengthened and
refined. All around us are marriages and friendships that have endured and
flourished over 40, 50, 60 or more years – powerful testimony to the invincible
power of love.
In our love for God, too, we meet with the
incomprehensible, the seemingly contradictory and the painful. We will be
forced to question, to reconsider and then either to take back our love or to
reaffirm it, breaking through its limits to a new level of trust and hope.
It is in those bewildering moments of
contradiction, when the God who claims to love us seems to be deserting us,
even hurting us, that we feel rising up within us the overwhelming desire to
turn our backs on him, to punish him. Then we need to hear again his whispered
plea: Remain in my love.
In other words, trust me, stay with me,
don’t desert me, love me: so that my own
joy may be in you and your joy be complete.
When we are tempted to desert the Lord,
leaving his people, removing our presence from among them, we do well to
remember the words of Job (19:25) who was sorely tested by the Lord in every
way. Job complained bitterly but in the end spoke the immortal words: I know
that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
St Peter put it another way: Lord, where would we go? You have the
words of everlasting life.
And, of course, if we consider carefully,
we come to acknowledge what the song says: ‘Richer than gold is the love of
my Lord. Better than splendour and wealth.
So let us love
the Lord through thick and thin, in good times and in bad, for better or worse,
in sickness and in health – so that, in the words of todays' Prayer over the Gifts: purified by your graciousness, we may be conformed to the mysteries of
your mighty love.
Only then will our
love be worthy of the one we love.
