Summer of love part 1

Holy Trinity Church Huddersfield, Sunday 14th July 2019

What does love look like?

That was the question at the beginning of the sermon at the second service here at Holy Trinity.

After a week off from playing percussion during the service because of the joint service in the park, I was back playing in the worship band. For some reason my stage monitor was not working, we found out after the service tat the power lead was loose, so I hope it was not too much of a divergence to worship to see me ducking my head below the cymbal line to hear the sound coming from the guitarist’s monitor.

Following a consultation back in September last year looking at the needs of the people in the parish, we have a team of four looking at this, Babs, the person heading this team, said a few words about what led her into doing this.

It was also announced that we are having a church weekend in May next year. Time to start saving.

The sermon itself was the first in a series on 1 Corinthians 13 we are having over the summer we are calling The summer of Love, for a large part it was in story form, so difficult for taking notes, especially the more theatrical parts. This was a sermon to be seen as well as heard. The story about a man living on an island who paid well over the odds as a bride price to his future father-in-law. The result on his wife is that knowing how much she had cost was transformed and walked with head held high. Buying a wife in a British context was, however, not commended.

We have been bought at a very high price by Jesus. A love that has no holds barred transforms us to be the best we can possibly be.  Sexual love, passionate love, brotherly love are nothing compared to this greater love of God, greater than all these combined.  The first command we have is love. We have to love God with everything we have and alongside this, we must love our neighbours in the same way that we love ourselves.

We love because God first loved us.  All Christian service is pointless without love.