Rural Regional Worship

This Sunday, being the 5th Sunday of the month, is a shared worship service of the Southwest Middlesex area United Churches. As such, worship at Appin and Trinity United will occur at Bethesda United in Kerwood at 11 a.m. with lunch to follow.

Perhaps it's fitting that we meet together to celebrate Pentecost?

sermon excerpts: "All You Need Is Love" (John 15: 9-17)

This is what the Harlequin webpage tells its prospective writers (click here). It’s pretty straightforward and self-explanatory - after all, love is a universal story, isn’t it? But we know that real life is complicated and resists cookie-cutter attempts to simplify our humanity into mass-marketed paperback narratives.

Even still, we try to distill truths into one memorable message, one witty mantra, into a cogent life mission statement. Jesus, facing his death and crucifixion, is trying to summarize his ministry for his followers. This is the practical application of the gospel: “Love one a
nother, as much as I have loved you.”

Easy as that. All you need is love. Love is all you need. But we’re not talking about a Harlequin love, a breathy, steamy, consuming obsession that addles the mind and distracts us. What Jesus speaks of is the gritty love for any and all other people, to accept them as they are and to give of ourselves for their well-being, going so far as to give up our own life for another person.

Can we love like that? Our own prejudices, loyalties and priorities will always cloud the issue. We, as finite beings with limited time and energy, are not able to love infinitely and unconditionally, not the way that Christ loves us. He must have known this, but still he commands us to do this. But is it really love if it has to be commanded?

Must we be coerced into faithful and peace-seeking relationships with one another? Is that being true to ourselves? At the Faith Fair on Wednesday, the Muslim presenter explained one of the misconceptions about Islam is that their deep respect for other people’s beliefs. They don’t go around trying to convert people, he said that when you expect to change others, you only frustrate yourself.

Jesus goes as far as to say that we are his friends if we do what he commands. That doesn’t sound quite right, of course he’ll be our friend if we do what he wants us to! What about unconditional love and respect and acceptance? What about friends are friends forever?

Although this notion of friendship is something new. Jesus describes the progression of their relationship from master and servant to being friends. Jesus states the new status of who they are: “no longer do I call you servants, but friends.”

A servant blindly follows directions, not knowing the how or why of the instructions. Jesus has taken great pains to clarify and explain his parables, his philosophy, the scriptural connections to his life so that his friends would know the fullness of who he was, of his truth and his being.

In spite of all that the group of friends would go through, jealousy, infighting, betrayal, persecution, it was their love for the Saviour and for one another that saw them through the rest of their years. They did not have comfortable lives, they did not have a public place to gather for worship, there was no organ, or baptismal font, or stained glass windows.

All they had was one another. And despite the tension and rivalry between John, Paul, George and Ringo, The Beatles were able work together and creatively because of a love and respect they had for each other’s gifts. All you need is love, love is all you need. That is the circular logic of our faith, but it is inescapable truth of Jesus’ teaching. We love in an imperfect place, as ordinary people seeking holiness in our days. May this truth be more real than a paperback romance, commanded by Christ, revealed in scripture and grown within our very selves.