I steal the duvet from my husband. I snore and I grind my teeth when I sleep - sometimes so loud it wakes him up. I leave my shoes everywhere. I like it warm while he likes to open windows.
Sometimes loving someone means having to put up with hardship or annoyance but we will still do it just the same.
The gospel reading we heard today focuses on love; it's a passage many of us will have heard many, many times before and yet too often we can gloss over the meaning found deep within it. We can smile at the notion of such ideal love and yet dismiss it as exactly that; an ideal; something that in the real world isn't really achievable
But Jesus is giving us some valuable lessons not only about what we should be aspiring to, but also about how we need to practise it, how we need to show our faith. It's too important to gloss over.
There's a word that jumps out at me from this passage right at the start - it's JOY.
Now to the average person in this country, how many of them think that we are happy people? Is the image of a Christian one of someone who enjoys himself or herself? Is this how people think of us? As if having a conscience or concern for others somehow turns us into killjoys who live their lives like monks? But Jesus tells us that he wants his joy to be in us and that our joy may be complete.
Jesus wants our lives to be fulfilled, for us to celebrate the beauties that have been created in this world, including the intricacies of loving relationships, to celebrate the beautiful people we really are, regardless of how we or other people view us or label us. Jesus has a plan for us - and part of that plan is that we should feel joy in this world - seeing our place in the tapestry of God's creation and loving every minute of it.
An athlete who trains every day for a sport will have to put up with inconvenience, will have to suffer the aches and strains and the setbacks that can befall them. But they do it for the joy of achievement. Because that joy is something we need. We need it because, as we all know, the life of a Christian isn't always an easy one: on the contrary we are faced with challenges which sometimes hit us at the very core of our being.
Jesus calls
us to respond to these challenges because we have work to do. Jesus says that
we have been chosen and that we have work to do.
He chose us to bear fruit - fruit that will last, he tells us. He doesn't
say what fruit he calls us to bear, but I think that's because there are so
many - he calls us to be living examples in the world of his love. Every one
of us has been blessed differently and we have to use those blessings. We
have to be the best we can be - to stop thinking of ourselves as on the outskirts
of a society that doesn't understand us, and to start living lives that inspire
other people. Entering into a relationship with Christ allows us to rise above
whatever we were before and become someone new, because that's the person
Jesus wants us to be.
The fruit we bear is more than just the things we can practically do for others - though, of course, Jesus is asking us to be compassionate.
By being living examples of what a relationship with Jesus can do - how it can transform our lives - we can inspire and encourage other folk to question faith and embrace Christ - not by bible-bashing or nagging but by showing the peace we can feel when we embrace our creator and the joy we can feel when we celebrate our love.
Jesus' commandment to us to love is a call to share in his work - his campaign to bring all human beings back into friendship with God. And it sounds at first as if we are being asked to do something impossible. He tells us that the love with which we are supposed to love one another is the love with which he has loved us ... in other words, love of the kind which can bring great pain to the lover, judging from what happened to Jesus.
Our relationship with God should underpin our lives. If we are to bear fruit then we have to practise discernment - we have to listen out for what God is telling us and let God lead us in whatever he appoints us to do.
Listening to God and letting him lead almost sounds like someone giving us orders and expecting us to jump when they're given. But from our reading it's clear that that isn't how Jesus sees us. He says we were chosen to be friends not slaves. He wasn't just talking about the disciples, the people he recruited and inspired with his earthly life - he's talking about US.
There's no shame in being a servant of God - Jesus himself was humble before other people, but the relationship that he says he wants with us is of friends and not servants. A friend communicates with friends, sharing knowledge and involving them at a deeper level. This is what Jesus offers us, not a manipulative relationship but a healthy and supportive one. Jesus offers himself to us a friend who will keep every confidence we entrust him with; who will encourage us when we are at our lowest ebb and who ultimately is prepared to take the consequences for when we fail to love - to the point that he laid down his life for us.
'Loving somebody' means 'caring for somebody'. No-one needs reminding that with some people we are challenged to dig deep to be able to love them but it is what we are called to do. 'Loving God' means doing what God wants us to do. Which means making the world around us aware of God's presence and God's power.
Sometimes love does indeed hurt, but the rewards can last forever.
(Dan Joseph)
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.