Church Notes with Father Richard Lamey
At the heart of the Christian faith is a fundamental and essential belief that God is love.
Christians are people who know that they are loved by God and required to share that love with others, to live lives which are reflections of the love God has for the world.
The reflection is partial, inadequate, incomplete but the love that Christians are called to show for the community and the world is not a choice, an add-on, an optional extension.
It is at the heart of what it is to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus.
Love is made visible in two main places this week. One is in the events of this Holy Week.
This week is the most precious and important in the whole year of the Church. This is the week when Christians all over the world remember (on Thursday) the way in which Jesus called his disciples together and instructed them to love others in the way that he loves them. And if they wanted to know how he loved them then the answer came the next day, in his death on the cross, and then on the Sunday, in the triumph of hope over fear and life over death and light over the darkness.
And the second is all around us, in what I have seen described as the most remarkable act of global solidarity and selflessness we have ever seen.
It’s love all around us, made visible in every note pushed through a door and every phone call made and every neighbour chatting across the road and every volunteering hour and every decision to stay at home and every round of applause for those who are showing such everyday courage by going to work in the NHS or a school or a shop or for the council.
It’s love, it’s selflessness, it’s humanity at its very best.
Happy Easter. Love wins.
Father Richard Lamey is rector of St Paul’s Church, Wokingham, writing on behalf of Churches Together in Wokingham
