Christ and the Gospel: The reality of a love that means everything
Thought for the week, by Rev Jim Rea (Methodist)
Growing up, my summer passion was playing cricket with local lads at a nearby field in north Belfast.
Many people I meet consider this game too difficult to understand. But we were experts on LBW, run-out and all the finer points.
However we had our own rules. With no pads, we played on a bumpy wicket with a proper ball. If you hit it into the nearby pub’s car park, it was a six, but more than once the barman shook his fist at us, and we scattered.
A four was if it went out of sight – but you were out if you lost the ball.
However cricket isn’t my wife Carol’s favourite game. For her tennis, especially Wimbledon, takes precedence over every thing else. As I struggle to follow it and usually end up in my study reading a book, Carol becomes engrossed and weighs up whether an outsider is about to bring down Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Williams, Halep, or some other great player.
When I ask her who’s winning, her reply is generally complicated. She tells me who is well ahead, but then suggests that it is still in the balance. I shake my head in confusion. What for me is intriguing about tennis is that the word ‘love’ means ‘nothing’. How it came about, I believe, is debatable, but two theories are common.
The first is that the word ‘love’ compares to the French word ‘l’oeuf’ – an egg. This is because the oval shape is somewhat comparable to the number zero. Another possibility is that it has been adapted from the phrase “to play without pay for the love of the game”.
I often use this tennis analogy at a funeral service when I try to comfort people who are deeply distressed. I remind them that, on this occasion, unlike love in tennis, the word now means everything.
Grief is truly the price we pay for love. When Jesus died between two criminals on a cross, for the one who scoffed it meant nothing. But for the one who said “Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom” it would ultimately mean everything. It remains an eternal truth.
The well-known words of Jesus often appear on war graves when He urged His disciples to love each other even to death: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Yet God Himself goes far beyond this; St Paul writes to the Romans: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”
When we discover the meaning of Christ’s death for us on cross it will be life changing. The reality of a love that meant everything.
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