You may know the reading we’ve just heard – its very often read at weddings, and pretty often at funerals too – and at Christenings! In fact at any time that we celebrate human lives and relationships.
I say to you all now that I very much hope it won’t be too long before we are hearing that reading, not just at services of blessing for dear friends from the LGBTQIA+ community, but for full marriage services too!
Really, our service here tonight, in fact every service that ever happens here – is all about love.
Now falling in love is easy.
Living in love, (let alone in love and faith!) is much harder!
When you’re falling in love, it can be wonderful, glorious, exciting, exhilarating – it can be scary, overwhelming and painful too – it makes life more intense, more passionate, everything becomes shot through with gold, with light – we feel things more fully, notice things more acutely, sometimes it seems like we are truly alive at last!
And when we are falling in love, we do mad things…….just think about it for a moment…
And the one we love becomes absolutely lovely to us….
Sometimes just the sound of their voice will have us tingling all over!
But carrying on living in love – well that can be challenging – it can be all of the above still, but sometimes the things we begin to notice more acutely start to become the things that irritate us more and more madly….just think about that for a moment too….
And the one we loved becomes anything but lovely to us….
Sometimes just the sound of their voice can set our teeth on edge!
And this is true for lovers and for friends – its true too for how we relate to any living creature – your dog’s bark and your cat’s miaow!
Its true for every relationship we ever form.
And we’re very reactive creatures – we respond to what comes at us – and if we sense that someone’s love for us is waning or dwindling then we can’t help but feel that so deeply and start to stop loving them back.
When we feel rejected, disapproved of, or unloved – we might start to feel that we are unlovable – and what started out as something full of wonder and joy turns to dust and ashes – to bitterness and recriminations – and we become diminished – less than all that we really are.
But Jesus said – I have come to bring you life, life in all its fullness.
God’s plan for us, every single amazing gorgeous precious one of us – is that we should all become ever more all that we were made to be, all that we already are in God’s eyes – because God made us and knows us even better than we know ourselves.
Let’s stop and remember what love is and where it comes from…
Love is…. patient and kind, not jealous, boastful, proudor rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, keeps no record of wrongs, it does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices in the truth.Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures no matter what –
love no matter what – lasts forever!
Love comes from God who made us in love and always loves us, forever, no matter what!
No matter what we do, no matter what other people do, no matter what they might say about us, no matter what we think of ourselves, God loves us and pours this love over us every day, like a blessing, we are draped in it, beautiful with it, radiant because of it – lovely through and through!
Just look at you! Look around you – see how lovely and beautiful we are – inside and out!
Can we come to see ourselves like this, as God sees us?
Can we see others this way too?
Mirror – now we see imperfectly like reflections in a mirror – but the time will come, God promises, when we will see more clearly – face to face with God we will finally see how lovely we are – how loved we are.
God has made us in all our wondrousness and beauty – each unique, each different, each chosen, precious, needed, called by name and known fully and loved because of this, not despite it – loved and held safe, each lovely and each loved.
When we know, accept and claim this for ourselves and for each other, then there is nothing that can harm us or separate us – ever.
So maybe the answer to the difficulty of living in love?
Is to look in the mirror every day and fall in love over and over again – with ourselves, as God does, every time God looks at us, and to fall in love with everyone we meet, everyone we live with, everyone we think about, talk about, hear about – to reflect that amazing, unconditional, everlasting love so fully, to shine with it, so that everyone and everything is bathed in the radiance of such loveliness, that we truly see the world that God has made – for the kingdom of God, the everlasting love of God, is all around us.
See how lovely you are! Amen.
Service: Reverend Michelle Dalliston. 29th June 2023. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)
Readings: 1 Corinthians 13