Malachi 3:1-4, Philippians 1:1-11 

Some of you, many perhaps, will have come across The Message. It’s a translation of the bible that uses colloquial language to bring the text alive and to make it engaging for readers today.

Much of it is beautiful, powerful and illuminating. This, for instance, is how we normally read Romans 12, verse 1 – Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.

Here’s The Message version – So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering

And this is from The Message’s opening of John’s gospel – the bit that we hear at Christmas.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind-glory; like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

Well I want to read you the Message version of the last verses of the reading we’ve just heard, which I love. In your orders of service, from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and I’m going to read the words from ‘And this is my prayer….’

The Message version goes like this

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but love well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

And today, as we celebrate the service and generosity of our wonderful St Piran’s award nominees, that is also my prayer – that we, the church in Cornwall, might love much and love well.

And the fact that we are here today, doing what we’re doing, is clear evidence that we do love much and love well, because each of our nominees is a living example of what it is to love much and love well. 

But ‘love’ is a tricky word. It’s value has been lost in a thousand emojis and Facebook posts and a million red hearts and soppy poems. It’s a word that we chuck around carelessly, like cheap confetti and which has been devalued by overuse.

But love is to be treasured and honoured. Love is a holy word, that should be cherished and used with care. Because love is the word that the bible uses to describe God. ‘God is love’ says John’s gospel.

And so when Paul, in our reading today, prays so fervently for the church in Philippi that their ‘love will flourish’, he is praying that they will become more like God; more holy, more godly, more like the love that made the Universe, and which walks alongside everyone of us, every step of the way; the love which shapes our lives and the love in which we are all destined to rest one day. This love isn’t a warm fuzzy feeling, or a ‘thumbs up’ expression of positive wellbeing – this love is who God is. And Paul wants it to flourish in us.

And this love isn’t a feeling that God has about us. It’s who God is, and it’s who Jesus is too. That’s the astonishing truth of the gospel; that Jesus Christ, who walked and breathed like you and me, is the same Love (capital ‘L’) that brought the universe into being. That what makes Jesus who he is, is the constant and complete mutual love that he shares with his Father.

It’s hard to put words on what this love is – it’s hard to describe what God’s constant shared heartbeat of love is like. The closest I can get is when I see a small baby with its mother. The baby’s whole being is concentrated in the gaze it has on its mothers face. You’ve probably seen it – the way that the baby’s eyes are hungry for Mum, and the way that the Mother returns that gaze of love, and the child knows itself to be safe, secure and loved, and the Mum feels herself to be somehow fulfilled. The child is at home in its mothers love. In fact the baby’s very existence is possible because Mum is looking at it. And Mum in turns knows that some part of her is alive for this – something in her is made whole in this child that she cradles in her arms.

And the astonishing, mind-bending, heart-shaking truth of Christianity, is that we are invited to share in that relationship of never-ending and overflowing love too; that we are most who we are called to be, when we know that there is a place in the heart of the Father and the Son for us as well. And that place is called love. 

And so, with Paul, I pray that our love will flourish and that we will love much, and love well. And that we will learn to love appropriately, using our heads and testing our feelings, so that our love can be sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.

And I pray, also with Paul, that we will each live lives that Jesus will be proud of – lives that look a little bit like the love that he and his Father share. Because the invitation given to us to be part of the divine love isn’t just something that’s nice for us; something that makes us feel good – it’s a love we live, out in the world, in our everyday lives. Love that’s kept hidden inside, isn’t a holy or godly love, it’s a selfish love – and so it’s not love at all. Our call, knowing that we are loved, is to share the love with others, and to do so in ways that Jesus would be proud of.

My Dad is a really great Dad – I am blessed to have had such a good Dad. But when I was younger I worried that I wasn’t quite good enough for him; he worked really hard, he made amazing things happen, he knew loads of stuff. And I wasn’t sure that I could live up to his standards.

For my 25th birthday we had a family meal. And at a certain point Dad stood up and clinked his glass and said he wanted to say a few words. He had never done that before at a birthday party, so this was intriguing. And he said that he was proud of me. That he was proud of what I was doing and of who I was.

You can probably imagine how I felt. Maybe you’ve had that experience yourself. Maybe you haven’t, and you long for your Mum or Dad to say they are proud of you. Because we want the people that we love most to be proud of us.

And Paul prays that we would live lives that Jesus can be proud of. And he wouldn’t pray that if it wasn’t possible; if Jesus wasn’t just waiting to be proud of us; if those words ‘I’m proud of you’ weren’t on the tip of Jesus’ tongue.

I am proud of you all; faithful people of God. I am proud of the way you keep on praying and serving and loving; the way that you give of yourselves – your time, your gifts and your money, because you have discovered something of God’s love for you, and you know you need to share it with others.

I am proud of you, and I am sure that Jesus is too.

And Paul finishes his prayer by closing the circle, with a reminder why we do this; a reminder why we love much and love well.

We are loved, and so we love others, and in doing so, says Paul, ‘we make Jesus attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God’. God is love; God loves you; So go and love much and love well – and as you do, point to God, speak of Jesus, invite others to know his love too.

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but love well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

Amen

 You can read about some of our recipients and view the pictures here.