If love was easy

by Tom Wilson.

If love was easy, would it be so much fun?
I think we were born to try.
It’s the scary and the hard things that are worth fighting for
I think we were born to try.

I quoted these lyrics, from the song “The course of True Love” by the band The Gentlemen at a Peace Conference, organised by Leicester’s Ahmadiyya community, whose motto is “love for all, hatred for none.”

The theme of the conference was “Love Thy Neighbour.” I was reflecting on how it is easy to love the neighbour who is easy to get on with. The one who takes in a parcel for you, lends you their hedge trimmer and so on. But what about the neighbour who is hard to love? The one whose dog keeps you awake to 3am? The person at work who is always gossiping about you behind your back?

It is easy to love the lovable, but what about the irritating, the annoying, the downright rude?

If love was easy, would it be so much fun?
I think we were born to try.
It’s the scary and the hard things that are worth fighting for
I think we were born to try.

Jesus told a story about neighbours. When I worked in Liverpool, I retold it in a primary school:

“One day, a Liverpool supporter was beaten up and mugged. He was left lying in the gutter while the thieves ran off with his phone. As he lay there hoping someone would come and help him, the Liverpool manager walked past. But he had an important press conference to get to, so he just kept going. Not so long after that one of the players walked past. He had a physio appointment he couldn’t miss, so he also kept going. Then an Everton supporter saw him and stopped. He made sure the man was alright.”

At this point the kids in the school were all clear – that would never happen. In their worldview, football rivalry was tribal, identity defining, or as one Liverpool manager out it, “They say football is a matter of life and death. Actually, its more important than that.”

This story I told in primary school is, of course, a light-hearted way of making a point that Jesus makes quite forcefully. He tells Christians to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. Then he tells a story, which explains what he means. The story of the man who was mugged, found in Luke 15, is a profound and provocative meditation on boundaries, inclusion and costly self-sacrifice.

Jesus lives out these values. As a Christian I believe not only that his death deals with the mess of my life, but much more than that, Jesus died for me when I was estranged, in rebellion against, far from God. When I was God’s enemy he chose to reach out and offer me friendship.

Maybe you’re fortunate enough to not have any enemies, just to have people you find irritating. But Jesus wants you to pray for and care for them as well. In the Bible there’s an encouragement to not just love with words but with actions and in truth. Love is a choice, and it grows as we do it – the more love we show to others, the more we can learn to live well together.

In wedding sermons, I often suggest that love is more of a plant than a cake. A cake is finite – if I get more, you get less. There’s only so much to go around. Once its cut and eaten, it is gone. But plants keep on growing. With the right conditions, suitable nurture and so on, plants keep growing and keep giving fruit, blessing others.

If love was easy, would it be so much fun?
I think we were born to try.
It’s the scary and the hard things that are worth fighting for
I think we were born to try.