Love

Romans 12:9–21

I wonder what comes into your mind when you hear the word love. For some people, it is flowers, chocolates and romantic music. For others, it is a cup of tea appearing at exactly the right moment without anybody having to ask, and then, of course, there is family love. Family love is a wonderful thing. It is also the reason why some people can say, “I love you very much, but if you put the milk back in the fridge empty one more time, I cannot be held responsible for my actions.”

And church is rather like that too. We sometimes talk about church as being one big happy family, which is lovely until we remember what families are actually like. We have different personalities, different opinions and different ways of doing things.

For good reason, I suspect, Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, says, “Let love be genuine.”

Paul does not say, “Have warm feelings towards everyone.” He does not say, “Try to be vaguely pleasant if you can manage it.” Instead, he gives us a picture of love with its sleeves rolled up. Love that honours one another, serves, perseveres when life is difficult, gives generously, welcomes strangers, rejoices with those who rejoice and weeps with those who weep. And then, just when we think Paul has asked quite enough of us, he says: “Bless those who persecute you… Do not repay anyone evil for evil… If your enemies are hungry, feed them… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Romans 12 begins, “In view of God’s mercy…” Paul is not saying, “Do all these things and perhaps God will love you.” He is saying, because God has loved you, this is what love can begin to look like in your life.

So this morning I want us to think about three things: loving one another genuinely, loving people when life gets difficult, and loving even when it is not returned.

First, Paul calls us to love one another genuinely. Genuine love is not pretending that everything is wonderful when it isn’t. It is not smiling sweetly at somebody during the Peace and then criticising them before you have reached the church door. Genuine love means wanting the good of another person. It means noticing them, taking an interest in them and being willing to give something of ourselves for them.

The spiritual writer Thomas Merton said, “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves.” That is harder than it sounds, because sometimes we would quite like the people we love to be themselves, but perhaps a slightly improved version of themselves. But genuine love begins with recognising that another person is not here to become our project. They are a child of God. And that applies in our families and it applies in the church.

Paul says, “Outdo one another in showing honour.” Now, as you know, I like a competition! Imagine this. Not, “Who has the best ideas?” or “Who has been here the longest?” or “Who has done the most?” But who can be the first to encourage somebody else, notice the person sitting on their own, give somebody else the credit, or simply say, “Thank you. That was wonderful”? This is genuine love. It is love which recognises that we belong to one another and that other people’s flourishing does not diminish our own.

Perhaps that is one reason why the death of Dolly Parton this week has caused such widespread sadness. Of course, she was a hugely successful singer and songwriter. She was funny, talented and had a larger-than-life personality. But people did not only admire Dolly; they felt affection for her. She seemed to have the rare ability to cross all kinds of boundaries and still leave people feeling that she was on their side. Her friend and colleague Jenifer Lewis called her “a general in the army of LOVE”, and I think that says something about why people felt her loss so deeply.

She had a memorable way of talking about love. One of her best-known songs, I Will Always Love You, was itself a song of parting without bitterness, written when she left a difficult professional relationship. Its great line, “I wish you joy and happiness, but above all this, I wish you love,” perhaps says something about why people felt they knew her. She had a way of speaking about love as something bigger than possession or agreement: a willingness to wish the other person well.

That leads to Paul’s second point: love people when life gets difficult. He says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” In other words, be present to one another’s lives. Sometimes love means celebrating with somebody, but sometimes it means sitting in the difficult place with them. And both can be surprisingly hard. When somebody else’s life seems to be going wonderfully while ours is difficult, can we genuinely be pleased for them? And when somebody is grieving, suffering or facing something we cannot fix, can we resist the temptation to rush in with an answer?

Sometimes the most loving thing we can say is simply, “I’m here.” That sounds simple, but it is not always easy.

And we must also love when others don’t love us. It may be the brother or sister we have not spoken to for years. It may be the adult child who has hurt us, or the parent whose words still echo in our minds. It may be a difficult neighbour. It may be somebody in the church family who seems to have a particular gift for irritating us. In those relationships, Paul asks us a difficult question: what would love look like here?

Sometimes it will look like reconciliation. Sometimes it will mean saying sorry. Sometimes it will mean accepting an apology. Sometimes it may mean taking a first small step rather than waiting for the other person to take one. But sometimes love will also mean setting a boundary. Christian love does not mean pretending that abuse is acceptable or putting ourselves back into danger. Paul himself says, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” That is a wonderfully realistic sentence. If it is possible. We cannot control another person’s response. We cannot force somebody to apologise. We cannot make somebody want reconciliation. But we can ask: what depends on me? Can I stop feeding the resentment? Can I refuse to pass bitterness down to the next generation? Can I pray for the person I find difficult, even if the first prayer is simply, “Lord, you know I don’t really want to pray for them, but here we are”?

That brings us to the final and hardest part of Paul’s teaching: love even when it is not returned. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil… If your enemies are hungry, feed them… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Paul is not asking us to be doormats. He is not telling victims to remain in dangerous situations. He is not saying evil should not be named or that justice does not matter. He is saying something different: do not let somebody else’s behaviour determine who you become.

That is the danger, isn’t it? Somebody hurts us and we hurt them back. Somebody shouts and we shout louder. Somebody is unkind and so we become unkind. Somebody spreads gossip and, before long, we are contributing another little piece of information which, of course, we only mention so that people can pray. And before we know it, evil has reproduced itself. Paul says: stop the cycle here. Do not allow evil to create more evil through you. Do not let the wrongdoing of another person steal your own capacity to love.

There is a wonderful biblical picture of this in Joseph. His brothers betray him, sell him into slavery and spend years living with the consequences of what they have done. Eventually Joseph is in a position of enormous power over them. If anyone had an opportunity for revenge, Joseph did. Instead, when his brothers come to him hungry, Joseph feeds them. That is not weakness. It is extraordinary strength. Joseph refuses to allow the evil done to him to become the thing that defines him.

We do not have to become great saints of forgiveness overnight. We simply have to ask what Paul asks us to ask: where is there an opportunity, in my ordinary life, for good to be stronger than the evil or hurt I have received?

First, love genuinely. Look for practical ways to honour, encourage and care for the people God has put in your life, especially in your family and in the family of the church. Second, love when life is difficult. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Do not imagine that love always has an answer; sometimes love simply stays. And third, love even when it is not returned. Refuse to let the wrong that another person has done determine the kind of person you become. Seek peace where you can, forgive where you can, protect yourself where you need to, and refuse to allow evil to have the final word.

Because the great truth beneath all these instructions is this: we love because God first loved us.

And so, by the grace of God and in the strength of Christ, let us not be overcome by evil, but let us overcome evil with good.

Amen.