Love is…

Some of us remember the 1970 film Love Story, and its famous line: ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry’. I don’t actually agree with that. So what does love mean?

I put up ‘Love is…’ on the whiteboard in the Chapel. Here is what people have written…

Some of those comments echo Paul’s famous chapter on love from his First Letter to the Corinthians:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13

That reading is often chosen for weddings, but it isn’t just about that sort of love. It comes in the middle of a letter to the church in Corinth, in Greece. People in the church were falling out – they were getting excited about their new spiritual gifts, but that led to them thinking they were better than each other. Paul explains that they are all like parts of a body – every part is important, even if it seems weak or embarrassing, and when one part suffers they all suffer. And then he says ‘Now I will show you the most excellent way’ and he then completely changes his approach, and writes this wonderful passage about love.

Paul was someone who valued words, and writing, and knowledge – but all of this is nothing, he says, compared to love. Prophecy, faith, and even self sacrifice are worth nothing without love. Love is the one thing that really matters.

And in case his readers think this love is just a feeling he describes what this love is and isn’t like. It doesn’t do others down, it isn’t always angry, it isn’t envious or resentful. It is patient, kind, persevering, faithful.

Love – as my whiteboard says – is a doing word. For me the central purpose of life is simply the giving and receiving of love. And this is where we find our fullest connection with God. As another of the New Testament letters says: ‘God is love, and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.’ 

I think this means that whatever the beliefs someone may have – whatever faith they belong to – where they are connected to love, where they are giving and receiving love in their lives, they are connected to God.

The writer Kahlil Gibran says this: ‘When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather’ “I am in the heart of God.”

One other thing written on my whiteboard, right next to the red heart with ‘Love is…’ written in it, was the word Jesus. I wasn’t sure about that. I wanted everyone to feel free to write on the board, not think that because it was in the Chapel, it was just for the religious people.

But for some of us, it is true that our way into a deeper connection with love is through our connection to Jesus. For us, love is seen above all in the self giving life, and death of Jesus – in the way Jesus treats people in need, seeing them fully, accepting them, showing them such care – and in the way Jesus changes the way we think about God, from a God of fearful power to a God of fearless love.

You make like to spend some time reflecting, and then bringing your reflections to Jesus in prayer…

Where have you seen or experienced love in your life…?

Lord of love, for the love that we have seen, for the love that we have known, for the love that we have received, we bring you our thanks.

Where have you allowed God’s love to flow through you…?

Great Heart of our own heart, we thank you for the times when your love has reached out to others through us.

Where do you long for love to be known more, to be shown and shared, given and received?

Lord of love, we long for your love to bring transformation in the world and in the lives of those we know. May we be part of the answer to our prayer.

Amen.