2 May –  Kate Napier, St Peter’s Church

For love

What would you do for love? One of those big questions that come up on panel shows from time to time, like ‘if you could do one thing that would change the world …’ Or maybe it took you to 2Pac’s lyric about a complicated relationship, or Emili Sandé’s song, or the novel by Susan Elizabeth Philips, or that song from Chorus Line.

It is a big question. For Christians, maybe the biggest, because ‘God so loved the world’ that the sacrifice of God’s son was not too great a thing to be done; torture and death was not too much to be faced.

For most of us, though, most of the time, that kind of immensity is not asked of us. Nor is it asked that we change the world. But love asks things of us, all the time. The day-to-day of exchange with those around us, of giving – whether that’s time, or care-taking or gifting, whether it’s fetching and carrying, or listening or holding, celebrating or grieving. There is a lot that most of us do, simply, for love. And often it gives back – the gratitude, the hug, the small warm hand reaching into ours, the smile. And sometimes the give back is simply in the knowing that the thing given has been received.

Sometimes the What we do for love, or what we would do, or want to do, is bigger, more existential. 2Pac says ‘I wanna take your misery, replace it with happiness’, but he knows it takes two to make such a big exchange: ‘But I need your faith in me’. Love waits to be received, acknowledged. God’s love waits only for faith, only for our receiving it, in trust, and for our sharing it. In sharing it, one act at a time, we spread it. In spreading it, one act at a time, we change the world.