Week beginning 13th February

 

The Love of God:

Song: God is Love, let heaven adore Him

ABBOT'S LEIGH-GOD IS LOVE - YouTube

Prayers:

Song: O Love of God how strong and true

O Love of God, how strong and true (Horatius Bonar) - YouTube

Isaiah 53: 1 - 9

Song: Love divine

Love Divine All Loves Excelling - YouTube

John 3: 11 - 21

Song: Come let us sing of a wonderful love

Come let us sing of a wonderful love - YouTube

“Love” is a strange word. Try walking up to stranger and saying “I love you”. It could get all sorts of responses; you might be offered violence; you could be reported for sexual harassment; it might lead to shows of affection, or even passion; it could lead to offers of marriage, although that could lead to complications if you are already married!

It might be safer to say that “ I like you”, although some of will remember a comedian called Dick Emery, who used a line “O you are awful, but I like you!”, with comic consequences.

Can you love somebody you don’t like? Can you like someone you don’t love?

Perhaps the answer to these questions depends on what we mean by “love and “like” in the contexts of the sentences.

Considering that English has somewhere approaching a million words, and the typical native speaker knows about 40 000, we are quite impoverished when we try to talk about love. Some other languages can be more explicit about this subject because they have different words for some of the different ideas behind the word.

Greek, the language of the N.T. has 4 words.

Storge; Usually translated as “affection” of the expected and familiar. Probably the commonest form of love we experience, and yet often ignored or dismissed.

Philia: Often translated as “friendship”, the bible translators usually use “love”. A kinship developed over something in common. Friendship is usually about something. A hobby, a like of something or somewhere.

Agape: Sometimes translated as “charity”, sometimes as “love” . The unconditional love that God shows towards mankind.

Eros: Romantic love. Much more than friendship, lovers are always talking to one another about their love, face to face, absorbed in one another.

Bible only refers to two of these, Agape and Philia, although mit is not always clear in translation which is referred to. Sometimes a book such as an interlinear testament can be useful. Helps to understand the reference.

Most frequently, Agape is the love referred to and expected. It is seen as higher and deeper than Philia.

There is a story from John 21, where Jesus askes Peter “Do you Love (agape) me?” twice, and gets the response “You know that I Love (Philia) you” Twice! The thhird time Jesus asks the question he uses Philia. He is settling for what is on offer. But he would rather have the higher love, the love God showed to humanity.

When we talk of the “Love of God” we are referring to Agape, the selfless love which put others first.

In our reading from Isaiah, we read of one who was despised, and rejected, acquainted with grief. Famously the subject of an Aria in “The Messiah”. This prophecy of Jesus depicts him as one who will come and know suffering. This is important for our understanding of God’s love.

When God came to earth, to restore the relationship between His creation and Himself, He did not come as a mighty, superior being. He came as a human, one of us, who experienced everything that we experience. We can never say to God “You don’t know what it’s like.” “You haven’t suffered what I have suffered.” God knows what we go through; joys, sorrows, pleasures and griefs, gains and losses.

John tells us that sending Jesus to the world was a demonstration of the extent to which God loved the world. And an illustration of the love we are called upon to show to others.

John tells us that the love of God is not to condemn but to save (or heal).

Last week, we were talking about our Christian response to the current problems with the environment issues, and made the point that it was important to love people into cooperation. To show God’s love to people in order to show them the way of the kingdom. In the past, there have been sections of the church which have sought to condemn people into cooperation. The church became very heavy on the “Thou shalt nots”, and was seen as a joyless place. Recently I took it as a compliment when a colleague at work said “You haven’t got a bad sense of humour for a bible-basher!”

We are called upon to show the love of God to others, so that they can see the love of God for themselves. To answer a question I asked earlier, this does mean that we can love someone who we do not like.

We will be following in the footsteps of Jesus, because we will be going to places we might not want to go.

C.S. Lewis, the author and theologian, said “we are made to love and we are in want of it. If we play it safe, we are not living out the Gospel, but burying the coin in the safe ground, as the parable says. Lewis reminds us:

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.

But we experience this in the sure knowledge that whatever we experience, God has been there before us, and is there with us.

Song: The love of God comes close

474 The love of God comes close - YouTube