Thoughts on love....

The following is the text of the sermon I delivered at a wedding for two members of our church last week.


Some thoughts on love….

1 Cor 13.1-3: “If I speak in the tongue of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my posessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

1. Love is a cliche. It is a word used over and over again so that its meaning is watered down as it flits through our vocabulary almost unnoticed. “Love” floats gently and sweetly before us as some dull and cheap cliche, recycled by teenagers and Hallmark, bumper-stickers and smiling believers. We are told that what the world needs now is love, sweet love, but in fact we are not sure what in the world that looks like beyond vague and sentimental feelings. And, of course, nothing is more cliche than speaking about love at a wedding. Nothing.

2. Weddings are about love. They are. Of course they are! But not the cliche type of love. Not the sentimental love. Of course, if all we know about love is how love is used and over-used in our shallow culture, in vague and general terms, then weddings cannot help but go only as far as this smarmy, pink and frilly love. But weddings are about love, real love; love rich and deep, love rooted in the soil of everyday life. The love that weddings are about, that they should be about--that this wedding is about---is a love that touches ground. Weddings are about love.

3. We don’t know what love means apart from seeing it. There is no “love” floating about above our heads that somehow is what we mean by “love.” We don’t know what love is unless we can see it, touch it, taste it, feel it, experience it and be caught up by it. I can teach you the dictionary definition of love and show you how to use the word in everyday speech. I can tell you what it means but unless you are loved, unless you experience the earthy stuff that makes love, love, you won’t have a clue. We don’t know what love means apart from being loved.

4. God loves us. This is just about as banal and sentimental as any cheesy greeting card. Christianity, however, resists over and over again the urge to become universal and vague. Some religious traditions move in the direction of the dissolution of particularity, the undoing of the ego, the shedding away of personality and identity. Not Christianity. The God of our faith moves in the opposite direction. Instead of being a large amorphous force in the universe, he enters into a personal relationship with his creatures. He becomes particular. He comes close. But as if close wasn’t enough, he becomes a man. God in human flesh. This is love--a nitty gritty particular love. Love made flesh. Love with skin. Love with dirty hands and sawdust in his hair. Love that bleeds. In Christ, God has made his love visible.

5. The Apostle John tells us: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”

6. So, weddings are about love. This kind of love. The kind of love that lays down its life for the other. That’s what makes them interesting. I mean, what would be interesting about a wedding that didn’t involve this sort of risk? Too many weddings these days are based on the feelings of love and when the feelings change and drift the marriage changes and drifts. There is nothing exciting in this. Where is the danger and risk? Where is the excitement? Christian marriage is about a different sort of love, the sort of love demonstrated in a manger in Bethlehem and that made its painful way to the cross on a hill outside of Jerusalem. Christian marriage takes its cue from God’s love. Weddings are about the sort of love that says, “I will lay down my life for you.” That’s interesting! That’s daring! That takes courage! I want to see that!

7. Weddings, if they are about love, are also abut freedom. This is because love is the necessary context for freedom. Too often we assume that weddings are tremendous acts of voluntary imprisonment; acts of giving up personal freedom for a constraining and binding relationship. So we have this backwards and harmful tradition of bachelor parties and bachelorette parties where we encourage the bride and groom to live it up on their last night of freedom! That cantankerous writer Edward Abbey once exclaimed, “how can I be true to one woman without being false to all the others?” And so we have this strange verbal habit of referring to our spouse as “the old ball and chain.” This might be so...except for love! We can spend our lives chasing after vague, fleeting, amorphous images of love, resisting commitment, moving in and out of relationships claiming that we are free...but this would be a lie. Or, we can love, really love; and we can be loved, really loved, and then and only then, are we free to live our lives, not chasing after love, but living in the context of love. Love sets us free.

8. Pat and Wendy, your wedding today is about this sort of love. The sort of love that through the laying down of your lives for each other sets you free to live in the security of love. And so your marriage bears witness to love--real, tangible love. It will stand as a witness to us of what love means. We will learn from you how to love in the way God loves us. That’s a tall order! But that is why we are here. Our love for you will hold you up when you stumble. When your love falters we will be here for you lean on. In this way your marriage is not just about you two, but it is about us as well. Your marriage--this wedding--is a gift to us. By being married in a church you declare that as you give yourselves to each other you also give yourselves to us, and we, in turn, give ourselves back to you.

9. Finally, in his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul elaborates on what love is. Pay attention! He doesn’t leave us with a bland sentimental take on love, but rather with a real life, tangible, and practical take: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” May your marriage today begin to give flesh to these words!