Ordinary Love

"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails." — -1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a

January and February are months where we do a lot of “business” in the Church. We invite new folks to serve in leadership positions - on vestry, at the diocesan convention, as a trustee of the Baehr Fund.  At our parish annual meeting we elect those leaders and review the budget and discuss the state of the church. As we enter the new year, we tally up last year’s pledges and attendance and report to the wider Church on how things are going here.  And we return to the regular, ordinary business of just being a parish and living as a community after the busyness and celebration of the holidays.  

This liturgical season here at the start of the new year is sometimes known as Ordinary Time (along with Summertime it is one of the two “green” seasons of the year) and so it is an “ordinary” time - sandwiched between the heightened seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter.   Liturgical scholar Leonel Mitchell says that Ordinary Time celebrates “the time in which we actually live.”   And so it is for most of us, I’d wager, that the large part of our days are fairly ordinary, full of chores and tasks, ups and downs, aches and pains, small joys and familiar rhythms. Nothing grand. Nothing earth-shattering, most of the time.

St. Paul’s words above are a good guide for all times - ordinary or otherwise.   As the apostle argues, love is the final measure of everything we do as followers of Jesus - love of God and love of neighbor. If we don’t have love, we don’t have anything. We might be incredibly gifted or wealthy or powerful or even think we’re happy or righteous.  But without love, we’ve missed the mark.  Because God is love.

Maybe you’ve resolved some things in this new year - more exercise, less junk food, better spending habits, putting down the smart phone. I commend to you also one other resolution: to be more loving.   To love God.  To love your neighbor.  In all you say and do and are.  What might that look like in practical terms in your life, I wonder?  In how you relate to others?  In how you order your days?

We are about the work of the Church in Ordinary Time once again: worshipping, singing, giving of ourselves, serving those in need, learning together, eating together, caring for our buildings and grounds.   But none of it means anything without the cornerstone of it all: which is love of God and love of neighbor.   Lots might happen to us and to our church and to our world this year - happy and not so happy, successful and not so successful, good and not so good.

But love never fails.

Faithfully, The Rev. Adam Spencer, Rector