“ Oh God take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire. “ 
Jesus said many memorable things, but none perhaps more relevant than the words of the Gospel appointed to-day from St. John, Chapter 13   “ A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another;  as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” 
The word  “ love “ occupies fifteen columns in my edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, more than any other word.   “Hate” on the other hand rates merely half a column. Whether that reflects the true balance of those words in quotable literature or merely the desire of the compliers to be on the side of righteousness is uncertain.
But it is certainly true that love, as all those columns of quotations attest, has attracted  many attempts at definition.  The Elizabethans were much into it in poetry of course:
“ Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”  
Sonnet 29
Haply I think on thee
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
Or more prosaically as befits more modern times: 
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I’m picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
Tell me the truth----
What is truth?  said jesting Pilate to Jesus and did not wait for an answer.  
It means different things to different people, of course.  Pravda, the newspaper of the Communist Party propaganda sheet meant truth. 
So does Love mean different things to different people 
We need, then, to try to be clear about definitions, and distinguish between tow Greek words that embrace our one English one:  eros, physical love, and agape love of a more spiritual, altruistic,  kind .  
Pope Benedict did that a year ago in his fist, beautifully written  encyclical entitled  “Deus Caritas Est”   “God is Love”  
Eros, from which we of course derive “erotic” is,  if I remember my O Level Greek, more correctly  to be pronounced erows.  As the Pope pointed out, it does not appear in the New Testament and just twice in a Greek translation of the Old Testament,  
There is not time this evening to discuss that definition of love, except  to leave with you a quotation from that Encyclical   
“ To-day, the term “love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words….Amid this multiplicity of meanings, however, one in particularl stands out: love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness”.   Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive.  Eros reduced to pure sex has become a commodity, a mere thing to be bought and sold, or rather man himself becomes a commodity” 
In the Gospel reading for to-day Our Lord was is talking of “Agape”  His commandment that we love one another even as he loved us, is at the very centre of Christian teaching.  Well, anyway, it rolls off the tongue easy enough:  but it’s very tough commandment to obey.  For what he means is love for everyone, of course: not just our wives and families, or some selected group of friends.  
And in Britain,  where what goes on in our chests is too often suppressed by the weight of the old school tie, as the song has, it’s not easy to go around saying I love you to people outside a family circle.  
Yet there is a tremendous need for it.
We know that thousands of young people in this country, rootless and without purpose in their lives, lack what I would call love, that is firm, but benevolent, parental guidance and regard for their welfare based on Christian principles or, if not Christian, at least some moral principles   
The prisons are full of people who have never had love in their lives in that sense. And more of them are heading there, it seems, with every passing week.  Yet when David Cameron proposes that we should hug a hoodie a howl of derision goes up from the media. 
We have, of course, that  perfectly good, and beautifully expressed, definition of AGAPE in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13., especially verses 4 & 5: defining it as patient and kind, not jealous or boastful.  It does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful. ..beareth all things, believeth all things   You know the rest. 
Pope Benedict sums up agape in the Christian life this way   
“ Love for widows and orphans, prisoners and the sick and needy, is as essential to the Church as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel.  For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity…..but part of her nature an expression of her very being. “ .
We are selective in our application of AGAPE.  That’s our imperfect nature.  I think we just have to accept that we can’t “do love” as Jesus commanded, we can only keep trying each in our own way.  I hope that does not seem a counsel of despair.  After all, Jesus himself recognised that his disciples were frail human beings, with prejudices and faint hearts.  We can hope that rather like participating in the Olympic Games, it’s not necessarily winning that matters so much as taking part in life’s race using love as our guiding principle. 
That means in our daily lives going that extra mile in relationships, having our radar,  on scanning for situations where we can quietly intervene to good effect.  It might mean knocking on someone’s door to pass the time of day; or consoling or congratulating with a note.  The essence of love for one another , in that Gospel passage,  it seems to me is to think, of others, which does not mean giving them necessarily what they want, or spending money, but letting them know and feel that you are thinking of them and that you are someone to whom they can talk and, in to-day’s jargon, “ relate”. 
Love in that sense it seems to me has been a great,  formative,  theme in our history, something that we can be justly proud of, epitomised in institutions that Britain has given to the world   In March we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade.  The Anti-Slavery Society that campaigned for 20 years for that Acto of Parliament,  founded by Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson in 1787, was the world’s first society for the promotion of human rights.  Other international organisations followed in it’s wake from this country : the Salvation army, the YMCA, the Boy Scout movement 100 years old this year, Amnesty International, OXFAM, Christian Aid etc.   
These organisations, still active, dispense “AGAPE in practical ways at what we might call the macro level ,  but nurtured by the financial support of millions at the micro level, expressing their own love for their fellow men and women in that support  These now worldwide institutions could not exist without that support.
I can’t help but think, however, that Jesus had something more than gift envelopes in mind when he spoke of love for each other, as he had loved us.  I interpret the Gsopel to refer to the individual looking out for the interests and needs of those around him.  0  In that individual sense,  love really can make the world go round. 
 especially in the “me Society” of to-day  
We have had manifestations of the tangible power of love in this church and this village in recent months when we have remembered here young lives cut short  It’s the memory of that love which remains as solace to the pain of grief.    It’s something that we can work for, sustain and hand on to the next generation by our example
Have I managed to explain  at least  bit of the truth about love ?  I’m not sure. 
But I believe, as Wilder wrote:   “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love – the only survival, the only meaning.”  
That quotation would make a quite good epitaph for any Christian don’t you think?
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