It seems that amongst my little team in the office, I’m the only one who still gets proper post, though some of it at this time of year is promotional stuff that is a throw back to the days when I was a finance officer for my division.  So returning to my office last week after a few days off it was no surprise to me that the in tray had plenty in it, with my name on it.  As ever there were the promotional bits and pieces – and I don’t know why they keep sending me them, I didn’t spend taxpayer’s money on them when I had control of the finances, so I’m not going to do so now.  Just before I passed the useful bits on to a friend of mine to put in to a raffle of the Civil Service Benevolent Fund, I came across a diary.  So I stopped and had a quick flick through it to see whether it had any useful information in it.  And what I did notice was that at the beginning of each week it had an inspirational quotation from someone famous or not so famous, some of whom I’d had never heard of. However, one in particular caught my eye. It was one short sentence from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelly, which read “All love is sweet, given or returned”.  All love is sweet, given or returned, I liked that and began to wonder that given that all we do should be grounded in love, what it means for us.

Now I or anyone who has had any sort of sound theological training will tell you that the English word “love” is bland and very often conveys very little of the situation to which it is applied.  And that to understand love, or the word love properly you need to refer to the Greek language to gain some idea of what you are talking about.  To begin with, in Greek there is that kind of love called Störgë, that is the love that is the love of a parent for a child and a child for a parent.  This is the love of family affection.  The there is Eros, the love of a man for a women, the use of this term always contains passion and there is always sexual love.  Sophocles, a famous and long dead Greek philosopher called Eros, the terrible longing.  In these words there is nothing essentially bad as the word simply describes the passion of human love.  The third word in Greek to describe love is Philia.  Philial love describes real love, real affection.  It is the love that exists between closest, nearest and dearest friends and those close to our hearts.  It’s a love of warm tender affection.  The last word for love is Agape. This is the love of another person for their own sake regardless of what we may think of them  or what they may do in return for the love shown to them.

Now, that little dissertation into the Greek is all very nice but where does it leave us with Shelley’s words?  Shelley in that short sentence, "All love is sweet, given or returned", directs us to look for the love between two persons.  It suggests, as does dialogue, a two way traffic, giving and receiving at both ends.

In pure religious terms, this two way traffic can be seen in the relationship between God and us.  God shows us his love for us in having made us and provided us with a world to live in and the means for our survival.  God’s love for us meant coming down to earth, living like us, feeling the things we feel – the joys, the worries, the grief and so on and dying a most horrific death by crucifixion for our sins and in doing so, saving us.  We, in turn, show our love for God in the only ways we can, in worship, in witness and in our service.  It is humbling to remember that although our return of love is very meagre compared with that what God gives to us, God still accepts it and values it.

I remember once, when I was in Malta that one evening after dinner I was walking along the Sliema waterfront when I came across an evangelism group who were performing on a large recessed area of the pavement.  Street evangelism when it is done properly is good and should be encouraged, though I did wonder at its appropriateness in Malta, which is a genuinely Christian country where the people are committed Christians.  Perhaps it was aimed at the tourists?

However, the music was good and so I stopped and listened and promptly got worried when one of the group got hold of the microphone and gave a little address, which in the main was ok.  But what spoilt everything was a half finished statement at the end.  The speaker said that “Jesus never lets you down”, that part is true enough and that “he will give you whatever you want”, and that, frankly is not true.  Not true in the slightest.  As we know, God in his love for us, gives us, like any parent gives to a child, one of three answers – Yes, No and Maybe.  At no stage does God give us everything we want.  That would take the sweetness out of the love, both the giving and the receiving.

We all know that when we’ve prayed to God about something, we have not always got what we wanted.  But how sweet is our thankfulness to God for the things that he has given us in his love.  I know that some of the things that I am worried about at the moment and that I have prayed to God about will fit in with his plan for me and some things won’t and I will give thanks for what I receive.  I won’t be holding a grudge against God if things don’t go my way.  That would take all the sweetness out of the love.

The dialogue of love, the giving and receiving can also be found in the love between two people.  I’m not thinking in this instance of the lovey-dovey, heart thumping love but of that type of love that I spoke of earlier.  That love which is called agape.  The love which exudes a concern for the well being of other people and drives us to service, to help our neighbours.  This love does not allow us to be patronising in our help, if it did it would be wrong and turn the love sour.  It is a love that shows genuine concern for our fellow men and women and a desire to help them wherever we can.

Often, this agape love does not receive the kind of reception we might expect and we often feel that it has been abused … But that is one of the things with agape love, it is the love for another human being regardless of what they may do with that love or us.  It is the love for another for their own good.  It is the love which enables us to fulfil that difficult task of loving our enemies.  It is the love, for instance, that would allow me to say that on one hand the churchwardens get on my nerves but regardless of that I still love them.  I must add that they don’t really get on my nerves, but I still love them just the same.

This love can be seen in action when we do something for someone else; whether it be community service, sponsoring children, giving aid to help our neighbours around the world develop their societies and in what others do for our benefit.  This is the love that is typified in the story of The Good Samaritan.

Possibly the most obvious way we see Shelley’s words in action, is between couples. Here the giving and returning of love is most visible, as in love they share in the joys and pains of life and support each other.  For this love to be truly sweet both in the giving and the return, there must be a mixture of the love of family affection, the love of the passion of the heart, the love of the warm tender affection and the love of the partner for their own good. It is the mixture that makes the love so vital and alive.

St Paul said to the church at Ephesus that everything we do must be grounded in love and for that to happen, and the dialogue of love to be a sweet as Shelley says it is, we have to be open enough to give and receive it.  To remain closed to it would be to miss the enabling power of that love.