I presided
at a wedding yesterday. I like to do
weddings. It’s wonderful to see two
people committing themselves to stay together forever, for better or worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until they are parted by death.
We all know, though, that there are
a lot of times when it does not work out that way. I don’t need to stand up here and tell you the statistics on
divorce. You all know them. For most of us, it’s not just a statistic
anyway. I’d bet that every person here
knows someone who’s been through a divorce.
Some of you have been through them yourselves.
If you have, please understand that
I do not intend anything I say today to be a criticism of you. There are divorces in my family, too. Divorce happens for a lot of reasons. It’s not my place to judge you, and I don’t
intend to. If I say anything that comes
out like I am, please come and talk to me about it, because that’s not what I
mean to do.
Because the rate of divorce is so
high, and because it has been high for quite a while now, the way our society
looks at love and marriage has changed.
As we continue our sermon series “This is Country Music”, I think our
song today illustrates that. As we’ve said
before, songs become popular because they have something to say that makes
sense to people. The song for today is
called “Love Done Gone” by Billy Currington.
It’s a really catchy tune, and I like the melody and the instrumentation
and stuff, but think about what this song says about love. As we’ve been doing, we’ll listen to the
song, and then we’ll talk about it. The
words are below:
Don't worry, baby,
sometimes things change
Nothin' we can do about it
now, no way
This doesn't come easy, but
that's just life
We can't keep pretendin'
everything's alright
We told each other it was
love before
The simple truth is it just
ain't no more
The bells stop ringin', the
music won't play
The crazy little feelin'
that's faded away
Like snowflakes when the weather
warms up
Like leaves on the trees
when the autumn comes
Like the dogwood blossoms
in a late spring rain
All the disappearin'
bubbles in a glass of champagne
Like a red kite lost in a
blue sky wind
I don't know where the good
times went
It ain't nothin' we ever
said or ever did wrong
It's just love done gone
I don't regret a single
thing that we did
Any time together we ever
spent
I wouldn't change a thing,
baby, you know
Sometimes we gotta just go
with the flow
Like snowflakes when the
weather warms up
Like leaves on the trees
when the autumn comes
Like the dogwood blossoms
in a late spring rain
All the disappearin'
bubbles in a glass of champagne
Like money in a slot
machine
Don’t know what happened to
you and me
It ain’t nothin’ we ever
said or ever did wrong
It’s just love done gone
It's just love done gone
It's just love done gone
There’s nothing in that song about
love lasting forever. There’s nothing
there about staying with each other for better or for worse, for richer or for
poorer, until we’re parted by death.
This song does not define love that way at all.
This song defines love as something
that, by its very nature, is here for a little while, and then it’s gone. Think about what love is compared to in this
song. Snowflakes when it gets
warm. Leaves in the fall. Bubbles in champagne. Money lost in a slot machine.
That strikes me as really sad. This song seems to have given up on the
whole idea that love can last forever.
It’s like that’s not even a possibility. The singer really does not seem particularly sad about the fact
that love has disappeared. The song
takes the attitude that love ending is inevitable. There are no regrets, it’s no one’s fault and there’s nothing
anyone can do about it. Love just goes
away. That’s just the way it is.
I think that attitude is really
prevalent in society today, especially among younger people. They see marriages that have lasted fifty or
sixty years or more, and they think that’s really neat and all, but they don’t
see it as a possibility for them. It’s
not that they would not like to have a marriage like that, they just don’t see
it as one of their options. That kind
of marriage is a leftover from an era that’s gone, like rotary dial telephones
and 45 rpm records. It may have had its
place once, but it’s just not the way the world is any more.
I think one of the reasons we’ve
come to look at love that way is that we’ve come to look at love as an
emotion. Look at what the song defines
as the ways to tell love has gone: The bells stop ringing.
The music won't play. The crazy
little feeling has faded away.
That’s not what love is.
It’s part of love, of course.
Love cannot be completely unemotional, and I’m not saying it can. But think about our reading from First
Corinthians. That’s one of the most
famous passages in the Bible. In fact,
it’s called the Love Chapter. It’s the
Apostle Paul giving us a definition of love.
What’s interesting about that definition is that nowhere in
it does Paul talk about emotions.
Nowhere in it does Paul talk about feelings. For Paul, and for us as Christians, love is not about stuff that
selfishly makes us feel good for a little while. Love is not about temporary feelings and emotions. Love is about actions and commitments.
The first two
things Paul says we need to do when we love someone is to treat them with
patience and kindness. Patience and
kindness are the exact opposition of selfish feelings and emotions. Most of us are not instinctively patient and
kind. Those are things that involve our
heads as much if not more than our hearts.
We can only treat someone with patience and kindness if we’ve made a
commitment to that person and have decided that we are going to act in a way
that shows that commitment.
The next three things Paul says about love is that it does
not envy, it does not boast, and it is not proud. Again, these are things that are the exact opposite of selfish
feelings and emotions. When we think
someone else has a better deal than we have, it’s hard not to envy them. When feel like we’ve done something pretty
good, it’s hard for us not to brag about it.
It’s hard for us not to be full of ourselves when we think we’ve
accomplished something. We can only get
rid of our envious, boastful, prideful feelings and emotions when we’ve made a
commitment to put someone else ahead of ourselves and have decided that we are
going to act in a way that shows that commitment.
Paul goes on. Love
is not self-seeking and it is not easily angered. Again, the opposite of selfish feelings and emotions. Most of the time, when we get angry, it’s
because we’ve put ourselves ahead of someone else. Not all the time, but an awful lot of the time. We want things to go our way. We may have the best of intentions in
wanting things to go our way, we may truly believe that everything would work
out better if we got our way, but we’re still putting getting our way ahead of
loving someone else. Again, we can only
get past that when we’ve made a commitment to put someone else ahead of ourselves
and have decided that we are going to act in a way that shows that commitment.
Now, we need to point out that this commitment needs to run
both ways. If one person is committed
and the other is not, that’s not going to work. At the same time, we cannot always be testing someone else to see
if their commitment is as strong as ours.
That’s what Paul means when he says love keeps no record of wrongs. We cannot use what we see as someone else’s
lack of commitment as an excuse to not act in love.
I could go on with the other things Paul talks about, but
you get the point. Here are the most
important things Paul says about love, though.
Love always perseveres, and love never fails.
In other
words, Paul says love is the exact opposite of what our song says it is. Love is not something that is here today and
gone tomorrow. Love is something that
is permanent. Love never ends. If it
ends, it was never really love in the first place. That’s true even if the relationship comes to an end. If you truly love someone, there’s a part of
you that always loves them. You may not
want them back, you may decide you’re better off without them, you may have
found someone or something else better, but still, if it was really love,
there’s a part of you that loves them, because real love never completely goes
away.
Our love for
each other is supposed to be like God’s love for us. God’s love for us is not like snowflakes in the sun or bubbles in
champagne. God’s love for us lasts
forever. Our love for each other is
supposed to be forever, too.
It can be, if
we make the commitment to make it that way.
If we are committed to putting someone else ahead of ourselves, and if
we act in a way that shows that commitment, love will never be done gone. Love will persevere, and love will never
fail.
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