A visitor to a psychiatric hospital found one of the inmates rocking back and forth in a chair cooing repeatedly in a soft contented manner, “Lulu, Lulu…”.
“What’s this man’s problem?” he asked the doctor.
“Lulu. She was the woman who jilted him,” was the doctor’s reply.
As they proceeded on the tour, they came to a padded cell whose occupant was banging his head repeatedly against the wall and moaning, “Lulu, Lulu…”
“Is Lulu this man’s problem to?” the visitor asked.
“Yes,” said the doctor. “He’s the one Lulu finally married.”
We all have our “Lulus” be they in families or in Churches. And we too may be someone else’s “Lulu”.
You may be an aid to the uprooting of self love in your husband or wife or Rector or parishioner!
Churches are voluntary associations. The quality and strength of our association depends on how much of the pure love of God is among us.
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.
Our Lord defines love in today’s Gospel from John chapter 15 not as an emotion but as a costly commitment, the costliest of commitments in fact.
Pure love is centred on the one that is loved. It’s found only in God who loves everything that is, just because it is, including you and me with all our inadequacies.
God loves each one of us as if we were the only ones to be loved.
Each one of us has a unique fingerprint (show finger) to show we are made and loved with a Maker’s special love!
You did not choose me but I chose you Jesus says to us today. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love.
Our gratitude for God’s love is demonstrated in our readiness to love him back and to love our neighbour. The surer we are of his love the easier we can brave the “Lulus” in our world.
Pure love is detached and unselfish. It expects very little back and can deal, as Jesus deals, with those hard to please who give you no thanks for trying.
When I am preparing couples for marriage I always suggest that the popular understanding of the phrase ‘I love you’ is close to ‘I love me and want you’.
Love has an erotic element, a platonic friendship element, but above all it has a commitment element as Jesus sees it and lives it.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus did so – with blood, sweat and tears. Married couples do so for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health ‘til death do them part. This is the ideal – the Christian ideal – a love that can’t be called back again, mirroring the love of God shown to us in Jesus Christ upon the Cross.
Pure love wants the best for the other and has no agenda of its own apart from that.
Such love helps keep marriages together – and churches.
Pure love – the unselfish love of Jesus – makes a church, giving it cohesion rather than cosiness. As our members gain such cohesion we become more effective and collaborative as a body that sees love covering a multitude of sins in its midst, overflowing generously outwards in mission.
Loving brothers and sisters in Christ can be hard because we haven’t chosen them – God has chosen us together. This is why Our Lord promises us the Holy Spirit to help bind us together.
You did not choose me but I chose you the Lord says. Together we are chosen, priest and people, each equally precious to God, chosen to build love in our community so that others may come to God its source.
We all have our own thoughts about what it is to belong to Saint Giles. The great thing is how people in the congregation can live with other people’s sometimes rather different views. Unless our own thoughts are complemented by such understanding and tolerance of how others see things our enthusiasm can get misplaced.
In particular the big difference I would suggest over belonging to St Giles is between those who see it as their church that they go to and those who see it as their church they don’t go to except on rare occasions linked to birth, marriage and death. For the sake of the second group of parishioners, we the first group of parishioners need to build an attractive unity of purpose that’s true to why St Giles was built in the first place. That’s what we’ll be about on 5th July if you can come.
Loving one another means tempering enthusiasms so they flow together. I can’t name any obvious examples but can give you an amusing illustration of misplaced enthusiasm in the life of the church
According to the newspapers, a heat wave was causing fainting spells so a young lady wasn’t surprised to see the middle-aged man next to her in church slump down towards the floor. Quickly she knelt down beside him, placed a firm hand on his head, and pushed it between his knees.
“Keep your head down,” she whispered urgently. “You’ll feel better if you get blood into your head”.
The man’s wife looked on convulsed with laughter and did nothing to help her husband or the young lady. She must be quite heartless the young lady decided.
Then, to her dismay, the man managed to break loose from her muscular hold and hissed, “What are you up to you meddling fool? I’m trying to retrieve my hat from under the bench!”.
We’ve all – if we’re honest – been “meddling fools” on occasions or we wouldn’t be human.
Humour is a good antidote. It’s OK to meddle with and mess up other people with misplaced enthusiasm provided we can say sorry and then laugh at ourselves for the mess we’ve made.
Oh, it’s a hard lesson, but it seems in my own experience to get easier with the advancement of years.
There are definitely two key truths in the Christian religion.
My fingerprint (show) reminds me of the first. I’m special, there’s no one like me. God loves me with a special love unique to me.
The other truth the Christian religion shows us is that, special as we are, we‘re all asses. I’m an ass and you’re all asses – since, to quote scripture, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We start every service by owning up to this in public.
We’re all precious to God but we’re all asses – this priest especially. To hold on to both truths seems to me to be the receipe for a healthy, humorous, cohesive and outward looking church.
This week has shown us our MPs are a load of asses. I don’t want to play down the disappointment we all feel over the expenses saga – it needs sorting - but we aren’t helped by the self righteousness of the media. Let’s admit it, we all have the self interest to make fools of ourselves and to do wrong when it comes to form filling!
Our Lord wants you to know two things – you’re an ass - but he really loves you. Pause.
Our spire invites people to gaze upwards to God because God gazes upon us, sees all and loves all.
How do you see the Lord’s gaze upon you this morning? So much of our imaging of God comes through our faltering images of authority figures, notably our parents. These images need purifying by a seeking of what God says of himself in scripture and of what God reveals of himself in the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends as Jesus did
How do you see yourself this morning? As better than an MP? Beware!
The Lord bless you, help you with your ‘Lulus’ and grant you a deeper sense of his love through this Eucharist.
Then we shall better love one another as the body of Christ in Horsted Keynes.
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