Love is...
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
This is a talk given at Garry and Rachel Potts wedding in October 2008
Gary and Rachel, you are not old enough to remember the cheesiest movie of all time, but your parents are. It was called Love Story and I don't know how many boyfriends were dragged kicking and screaming into the cinema to weep as Ali McGraw slowly died on Ryan O'Neil. A lot love stories began with a trip to that movie, but even more ended when men all over the country vowed never to let a woman put them through that kind of torture again. The publicity for the movie had a strap line, "Love is never having to say you're sorry" - more proof, if any were needed than no-one in Hollywood has a clue about relationships.
Love is...
How would you finish that line? In the heart of the New Testament there is a famous answer:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
Why do you think Paul wrote this; so that we have something nice to read at weddings? When I look at those words in the Bible I often imagine how we got them.
Paul would have had to buy a package of papyrus from a merchant - it was not cheap it cost real money. Then he needed ink and a stylus. When he sat down to write it was not like using a ballpoint pen on a nice sheet of A4 paper - it would have felt more like writing on corrugated cardboard with the end of a carrot dipped in ink. Then there was the problem of the mail service - how to get this letter to Corinth?
Someone I know recently translated some old papyrus fragments found in an ancient Egyptian rubbish tip - they date from about the time Paul wrote his words about love. One of the documents was an address label. If you had been a Roman postman, this is the kind of thing you would have had to deal with:
From the moon gate walk as far as the granaries and when you come to the first street turn left behind the baths, where there is a shrine, and go westwards. Go down the steps and up the others and turn right, and after the precinct of the temple on the right side there is a seven-storey house and on top of the gatehouse a statue of Fortune and opposite a basket-weaving shop. Shout for Lusius and he will answer you.[1]
Why did Paul go to all that trouble? Not to give us something nice to read at weddings, but to give us something solid to build our lives on - the truth!
Love is the ability to see someone's need and then meet that need, if you see the need but don't do anything about it that is not love, it is sentimentality. We live in a world that has confused sentimentality with real love and people's lives are falling apart as a result. They have poor foundations.
Gary and Rachel, I am taking this opportunity to remind you of what you already know - your love for one-another needs to be modelled on something real, something true. Not the sentimental love portrayed in Hollywood movies but on God's love.
God's love is so powerful it is actually quite frightening. Try this for size:
This is how God showed his love: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.[2]
God's saw our need, our sinfulness and lost-ness; and he set out to meet our need. God's love began with his sorrow at loosing our love and then he acted to meet our need: this is what led to the cross, and that is what I mean by ‘frightening'.
Let's think of it another way:
God is patient, God is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. God is not rude, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, and he keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.
This is love and this is the truth, it is the only foundation that can take the weight of your lives. I think that God would say to you this afternoon, "Even if what you build on this is shaky (and it will be because you are only human), the foundations will be so good it will last a lifetime!"
One last thing about love - you have to say "I love you" all the time, and you have to say it in words and in actions.
If you are old enough to remember Love Story, you must remember Ghost. In this movie Demi Moore is always telling Patrick Swayze "I love you" but the guy can't bring himself to say those words our loud so he just says, "Ditto". Not good enough! You have to say "I love you" loud and clear.
And you have to say it with actions too. And that may mean... Garry, taking Rachel to see a tacky remake of Love Story in 2015 even though you're going to hate every minute of it!
[1] If you are interested: P. Oxy 2719 (III) translated by Peter Head
[2] 1 John 4:9-10