Agape LOVE
Today’s collect for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity is all about true LOVE and emphasises its true value: Pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of Love, the true bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whoever lives is counted dead before You.
True Life is all about Love as without that wonderful gift of Love we are effectively dead – strong words but very true.
In some ways a strange way to emphasise the gift of Love in such a negative way, rather – Lord teach us to do everything in the power of Love.
Love as the play said says, is a four-letter word but in the Greek of the New Testament there are several words describing various forms of love, distinguishing brotherly love from sexual love and from love shown in generosity and so on.
But there is no doubt at all which love has the highest place, and it is the one described in the words of Jesus throughout the gospels and reinforced by his disciples as: agape, self - giving love, the love described in our collect.
This word agape was not exactly invented by the Christians, but they gave it a whole new meaning as it was the word to describe the kind of love Jesus showed in dying for us on the cross -'Calvary love', as someone once called it.
• It is the kind of love Christians are to have for each other.
• It is love which demands nothing in return, its love which is totally unconditional and entirely free.
• It is a love which is expressed above all else in giving.
• It is sacrificial love at the expense of self
There are many examples of Sacrificial LOVE -
A young mother was making her way across the hills of South Wales, carrying her tiny baby boy in her arms, when she was overtaken by a blinding blizzard.
She never reached her destination, and when the blizzard had subsided her body was found by searchers beneath a mound of snow.
But they discovered that before her death, she had taken off all her outer clothing and wrapped it about her baby.
When they unwrapped the child, to their surprise and joy, they found he was still alive and well.
She had mounded her body over his and given her life for her child, proving the depths of her love.
Years later that child, David Lloyd George, grew to manhood and became prime minister of Great Britain, and, without doubt, one of Britain’s greatest statesman.
We then have the other end of the spectrum Lust as expressed in Sexual love (which is probably what some people mean when they use the word 'love') says, 'I love you and I want you and I'm going to have you.'
But Agape love says - as the couple do in the Marriage Service, ‘All that I am I give to you, and all that I have I share with you.'
The two attitudes are, frankly, poles apart. Without agape-love, sexual love can become selfish, demanding and even exploitative.
But with Agape, sexual love becomes a thing of beauty and self-giving love just as God intends it to be.
Jesus said that the greatest love involves self- sacrifice. 'Greater love has no-one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends..' And few of us would dispute that.
Probably the real and final test of love is how far we would go to demonstrate it, and it is impossible to go further than laying down our life.
In his example, Jesus spoke of doing that for a 'friend'-someone for whom we have affection.
But the remarkable thing about the love demonstrated by Jesus, of course, is that He went much further than that. 'God so loved the world that he gave his Son.'
And the 'world' as it was then is the same world today that still opposes God, a society organized as though God didn't exist - the world that rejected Jesus and crucified him.
God so loved the world, so much that He gave His Son for its salvation.
St Paul puts it even more starkly: 'While we were still sinners, Christ died for us' (Rom 5:8).
In this way, Paul argues, that God, demonstrates His own love for us: ‘One will hardly die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one will dare even to die.’
Perhaps that is comparable to laying down one's life for a 'friend'.
St Paul teaches us a lot about love, especially in his first letter to the Church in Corinth, chapter 13.
A passage which has earned the nickname - The Hymn of Love.
If I speak in the tongues[a] 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,[b] 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.
But the collect asks for God's help through the Holy Spirit so that these wonderful gifts of love may be part of our daily lives:
Send Your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtues.
But the love revealed in Jesus - agape love -- goes way beyond that.
It sets no price and demands no returns. It does not love us because we are lovely, but because God is love.
And that is our challenge - about the way we love others.
It is easy to love those who love us but much harder to love those we do not even like.
In fact Jesus calls His followers to love their enemies!
Only true self -giving love can begin to contemplate that.
Two brothers were playing on the sandbanks by the river, one ran after the other up a large mound of sand.
Unfortunately, the mound was not solid, and their weight caused them to sink in quickly.
When the boys did not return home for dinner that night, the family and neighbours organized a search and they found the younger brother unconscious, with his head and shoulders sticking out above the sand.
When they cleared the sand to his waist, he awakened and they asked him, "Where is your brother?"
He replied with tears in his eyes, "I’m standing on his shoulders"
With the sacrifice of his own life, the older brother lifted his younger brother to safety.
The tangible and sacrificial love of the older brother literally served as a foundation for the younger brother’s life.
Only those who understand how great the love of God is, who have looked long and hard at Jesus on the cross, can begin to grasp the true nature of divine love.
And only in response to that Love, the love of God can we begin to learn to love one another with agape love.
If only there was more love like this in our world it would surely be a better place to live in.
Ironically that love has to start with each one of us and that is where Paul's Hymn of Love comes in, if we turn the statements into questions about ourselves and answer them honestly AND do something about it - its a good starting point.
Am I patient and kind?
Do I envy or boast?
Am I proud?
Am I rude, am I self-seeking?
Am I easily angered and score wrongs?
Do I delight in evil and avoid the truth?
Do I always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere?
Send Your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love so that my LOVE will never fail.
Thank God for Jesus, the Love of God . AMEN
