What is this thing called wuv?

Homily preached at Eltham College on Wednesday 10th October 2007.

Pass the sick-bag!

That’s the reaction of boys aged between 10 and 13 to the sight of the modern-day Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Anthony and Cleopatra, or Katie Price and Peter Andre engaging in the contest of “who can reach the other’s uvula first.”

Of course a courting couple, to use your grandmother’s phrase, would call this activity kissing and that their reason for exchanging several pints of saliva is that they are in “in love.”

What does “love” mean for you?

Does it make your stomach turn?

Do you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed?

[PAUSE]

All too often our view of love is obscured by clichés and commercialisation.

St Valentine’s Day usually sees the lovesick swain spending thousands of pounds on objects coloured pink to persuade the object of his desire to engage in a mutual massage of molars.

Shops are filled with balloons and flowers and chocolates and teddy-bears wearing T-shirts which say that most tiresome, vapid and odious of phrases “I wuv you.”

It is sickening, but why?

[PAUSE]
Think about it!

It is common practice among many animals for the male of the species to find some trinket, a shiny stone, a collection of the right sort of twigs, or a mouthful of dead caterpillars.

In the eyes of the female, the male who can provide the best material for bringing up a family is going to be the better father.

So, human males are merely following their biological instincts in buying hideously expensive and ludicrously useless trinkets for the women.

Likewise it is the same biological instincts which are responsible for the plumage parade of the peacock and scrapping of tom cats in the alley at night that are also responsible for the lad wearing his hair long and dying a strip of it green and using up half of the British supply of Davidoff all for a night out with a buxom blonde from Bromley.

But is it love?

[PAUSE]

Animals do not have a concept of love.

They thrive merely on biological instinct.

They pair up in order to produce babies, who grow up in order to pair up and produce babies who grow up in order to pair up and produce babies et c.

That is all.

Human beings wonder what all this is for.

What is the point of having children if they are just going to have children who are just going to have children and so on?

To what end?

Human beings see very clearly the concept of love as separating us from basic biological machines.

But why is it that we feel revolted by outward expressions of love?

Many of us who see the stock on sale around Valentine’s Day feel a sense of loathing because all these items are so superficial – they don’t really mean what they are saying.

The “I wuv you” teddy bear makes us uncomfortable because it conveys a message about something which love isn’t.

Indeed, it isn’t talking about love at all, but this tedious and meaningless quantity called “wuv”.

What is this thing called “wuv”?

[PAUSE]

For many of us, the idea of love makes us feel uncomfortable because it seems to involve a loss of reason, or control.

The rather soppy notion of love in our Jeremy Kyle culture forgets the mathematician Pascal's famous saying, "The heart has reasons of which reason knows nothing."

Love is something that is intensely personal, that invades our innermost beings – our thoughts, feelings, opinions and experiences.

It is dealing with this invasion of our inner selves that takes effort.

We become embarrassed through sheer fear that we are going to forget ourselves and make a fool of ourselves in front of our mates.

But where would we be without love?

[PAUSE]

Look at your life and imagine.

What if when you go home tonight and find that there is no love in your family?

No warmth towards you, no kind words of greeting, just coldness, indifference, uncaring - there are folk who do come home to this.

That raises a different kind of discomfort – a bleakness and a fear.

No matter how embarrassed we are at the idea of love, we realise that nonetheless we need it.

St Paul tells us the attributes of proper love:

Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited, it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offence or store up grievances.

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth.

It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes.

Love never comes to an end.

[PAUSE]

So if ever you are patient with a friend, or make allowances for someone, then you are showing love.

That pain you get when you miss someone who has moved away or died is love.

That need to help someone out just because they are in difficulty is love, whether you recognise it or not.

This might not be something you’d like to think of.

You’d still feel mighty awkward if your friend sat next to you suddenly turned to you and said “I love you.”

Most of us would run a mile, or at very least start edging away very slowly.

But what we should be edging away from is this idea of love as being a slushy, sentimental, vacuous, vomit-inducing and at times downright rude emotion.

Instead we should see love in the life of Mother Theresa of Calcutta who devoted her life to the poor of India.

We should see love in the lives of Edith Cavell and Raoul Wollenberg who sought to save lives rather than sit back and just let them be destroyed and so paid with it with their own lives.

And indeed for those of us who are Christians, we cannot fail to see anything but true love in the self-sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross.

There is nothing vacuous or artificial about the love that resides in these folk.

Whom do you really love?

Can you honestly describe that love as artificial?