"True Love"

Sermon: The Marriage of Willaim Lane and Camille Sterling

The Rev. Matt Kennedy

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Bill and Camille picked out the bible passages we read today themselves and I can tell that they did so carefully. I want to call attention this morning to something that the last two readings, the passage from 1st John and the passage from the Gospel of John, have in common. When read side by side, you'll notice that one word is used over and over again. Does anyone know the word I'm talking about? Right, love.

Now, when we as Americans use the word love, especially in the context of a marriage, we're usually referring to the feeling of being in love. To be in love is to feel overwhelmed by desire for another person. That's why we associate it with the word fall. You fall in love with someone. You lose some control of your heart and you're carried away with an almost unstoppable need to be with them. You want to be with them all the time and when you are not with them, you want to be on the phone with them and when you're not on the phone with them you're thinking about them. Is anyone here, besides Camille and Bill in love?

Husbands you better raise your hands.

Now, this being or falling in love is a good thing. It is a beautiful emotion that God has given us. It makes proud people vulnerable. It makes shy people bold. It makes hardened and selfish people open their hearts and care for someone else besides themselves. And it is especially beautiful when you see it in two people who are going to be married like Bill and Camille. It draws them together as one.

But while being in love is wonderful and I hope everyone here has the opportunity to feel it, I have to say that it makes a pretty poor foundation for a marriage. When we say we are in love we are describing a feeling. A deep feeling to be sure, but a feeling nonetheless. Being in love is primarily an emotion.

What's wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing! If you've been in love you know just how wonderful it is and if you haven't I hope that you do one day.

But because being in love is primarily a feeling, an emotion, it will behave like any other emotion. And if you know anything at all about emotions, you know that they come and they go. They are not constant or eternal. You can be burning up with anger at someone one day and the next be the best of friends. Or vice versa you can be completely happy with a friend at one moment and the next moment, something will happen that will make you burn with anger.

Even if no event happens to make you feel one way or another even the most exhilarating emotions eventually die down. You get a promotion at work or earn good grades in school, or graduate from high school or college, and you feel happy. You may feel happy for a few months, but then over time, that feeling begins to fade. That's not a bad thing, it's totally natural in fact, but it does happen. And, the truth is, the same thing eventually happens with the feeling of being in love.

The passion, no matter how strong it is will, one day, begin to fade.

And yet, in a few moments, Camille and Bill will promise before the altar of God that they will love one another until death do they part.

Now, knowing that this being in love is a feeling that comes and goes, how on earth can they make such a promise?

Well, If that promise meant that would always feel love for one another until death, they couldn't make it. It would be impossible. And marriages that are based solely and completely on the feeling of being in love, well, they will not last. If that's all that a couple has, if that feeling of being in love is the only reason they got married in the first place, then after about 5 years, when the feeling is nearly gone, and the bills are high and the kids are screaming, the marriage likely will be over.

Marriage needs a firmer foundation.

Countless marriages and countless lives have been shattered because they were based on that fleeting feeling of being in love alone.

That's why I was so overjoyed when Bill and Camille picked these readings, because it tells me that they want establish their marriage on firmer ground, deeper ground, unshakeable ground in fact.

Because the kind of love God reveals in these readings is not based on a fleeting emotion but on something eternal and it is characterized not by feeling but by action. Let me read the first part of the reading from 1 st John, "Dear friends let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, because God is love."

The love in this passage is not grounded in human emotions is it? No, it's grounded in God.

The love that John writes about is a love that comes from God.

And God is eternal.

That means those who love one another with the love that comes from God will possess and share a love that does not end; that does not ebb and flow, that does not die. They will have a love that lasts longer than the sea and the heavens and all that is in them, as long as God himself.

Be careful! It does not say that those who love one another with this divine love are to always feel love for one another. What it says is: love one another with the love that comes from God.

Love here is not a feeling, but an action. That is why John follows with these words, "This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

God's divine love is something that he himself revealed in action, namely through dying, giving himself on the cross to take away the sins of the world. It is an utterly self-less, sacrificial love. God the Son did not become human to live as one of us so that we could fulfill him as a person or make him feel good about himself or compliment him or give him anything at all.

It had nothing to do with God having his needs met. It had everything with God loving the world so much that he was willing to give his only begotten son up to death so that whoever trusts in him can have eternal life.

This sacrificial, active, love is the secret to a good marriage.

It is the only way that a marriage can survive the ups and downs, the crises and challenges of life. If both spouses have it, they will have a solid foundation and when the passion begins to fade their love will remain and one day, because they have this foundation of divine love, the passion will return. That's the secret to a solid marriage. In fact this love is the secret to life.

But there is a catch.

A catch Camille and Bill both know about.

There is only one way human beings like you and me can have a love like the kind John describes. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't come by that kind of love naturally.

I wasn't born with it. I'm actually pretty selfish. I don't want to be sacrificial most of the time. I don't want to do the dishes or clean the house or help with dinner or mow the lawn. I would much rather sit down and play video games or read a book or watch TV while my wife did all these things for me.

There is no way I can or Bill can or Camille or anyone else here can ever act with the sort of sacrificial love described in 1st John unless the One who made the greatest sacrifice and who gives definition to the very name of love, Jesus Christ, is alive in us.

If something is missing in your marriage or your life and you know that things just aren't right. If you want to have a solid foundation for your relationships and for your life and are sick of your life being ruled by your emotions and feelings, by a hunger and a thirst for true love that never seems to be satisfied, let me suggest that it is not something you are looking for, but someone. Jesus Christ. Jesus is the source of all life and all love.

If you ask him, he will come into your heart and begin to live his life through you. And you'll find that your heart, whether cold or empty or hungry or hurting, will begin to overflow with a love you never knew existed, a love that will make all things new.

Bill and Camille have this great love in them. You can see it in their eyes. You can hear it in their words.

Jesus Christ lives in the both of them and for that reason when they exchange their vows and promise to love one another until death, you can be sure that so long as they remain in His love, their promise is on sure ground and that their love and their marriage, founded on the rock of Christ, will never end.

Amen