Growing up

"Living in community with people who are different to us, however we define or experience our own normality, takes effort and commitment. And Paul’s “poetic ode to love” was not written to celebrate the unifying love already accomplished in the community. It was a call to action. A call to love despite difference.  A call to resist division and create something new. A call to grow up and start behaving like adults rather than children, discovering that difference need not divide, and that fear need not dictate behaviour.

"Paul offers this poem to love to shape their behaviour, to help them grow up, and to grow into Christ. They need to put childish, argumentative, destructive ways behind them, and start behaving like mature adults. Which isn’t always easy, as any of us who have done any psychotherapy will know: there is a little hurt and damaged child in each of us, crying out and demanding attention, as neglected children often do. But if we allow the child within to determine our behaviour, or, at the other extreme, if we continue to neglect it, we will never fully grow into the integrated adults, that Christ is calling us to be."

Listen to the sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/growing-up