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SUVS and a lifetime of love

                  Love, Marriage, and SUVS

My nephew Derek got married this weekend.  I know because I performed the ceremony.  He married a beautiful young lady by the name of Alexandra.  I actually didn’t perform the whole ceremony.  Alexandra’s family wanted their minister to tag-team with me, so I was assigned the tasks of making introductory comments and then giving what is technically called “the charge” to the couple.  This is the mini-message that is part of most wedding ceremonies and needs to be quick and to the point.  You might think of it as trying to tell the couple how to stay in love forever - and have a great marriage - all in seven minutes.

 

I wanted to say something fresh and memorable that would actually be helpful to Derek and Alexandra as they launched out on the matrimonial trail. I also wanted to tie the talk into the reading Derek and Alexandra had chosen from I Corinthians 13.  This is a chapter of the Bible that is often called “the love chapter.”  It begins with the poetic phrase, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love...”.  Since I know that about 85% of what we hear in a message is forgotten within 48 hours, I decided to try to add some visual gimmicks to the homily.  That is when I came up with the idea of a triangle, a circle, and SUVS.  Here is how it works:

 

In your imagination, picture a triangle.  Do you see it?  Each side of the triangle symbolizes one of the major components of married love.  Imagine that the word “sex” is written on one side of the triangle.  Sex in marriage is a great thing that God created not only for the reproduction of the species, but also for the happiness and enjoyment of husbands and wives.  On the second side of the triangle, visualize the word “feelings.”  The feeling of being in love is another great thing.  I’m glad God created us with the capacity for experiencing all the crazy emotions of life.  If you put sexual attraction together with intense feelings for another person, you “fall in love.”  But if you read the “love chapter” carefully, you will discover that it says absolutely nothing about either sex or feelings.  The love chapter is all about the third side of the triangle.  On this third side, write the letters “SUVS”.  These four letters each represent one dimension of the special kind of love of which I Corinthians 13 speaks.  It goes like this: 

 

S – The first S stands for “self-sacrificial”.  Agape (the Greek word translated “love” in the passage) is focused on meeting the needs of the person we love.  I recently was reminded that love begins when the needs of another person become as important as our own needs.  Love gives of itself.

 

U – The U stands for “unconditional”.  Sex is conditional.  It wants passion to be fulfilled.  Feelings are conditional.  We feel loving because something about the other person makes us feel good.  But agape love is unconditional.  It loves even when the other person is not very lovely. 

 

V – The V stands for “volitional”.  This kind of love is a decision we make to treat the other person in a certain way, regardless of how we are feeling.  When I’m loving with agape, I can choose to be patient even when I am feeling impatient.  I can choose to be kind, even if I’m not feeling that way.  We can’t control whether we feel loving, or even passionate, but we can control how we choose to respond without being dominated by feelings.

 

S – The second S is the real key to being able to love in this way.  It stands for “supernatural”.  If you think of sex as the physical dimension of love, and feelings as the emotional dimension, then agape is the spiritual dimension.  I am convinced that we do not have the ability to exercise this kind of love unless God enables us to.  I actually think that the only way this kind of love ever gets expressed is when we become a channel or vehicle through which God loves the other person.  As Mother Theresa used to say, we become a “pencil in the hand of God.”  Or as St. Francis used to pray, “Make me an instrument of…”  In this case, that which we pray to be an instrument of is God’s love.

 

So we have a triangle and SUVS.  The circle ties into the triangle.  In your imagination, now picture a circle.  Do you see it?  Good.  This circle represents a place that exists at the center of your being.  In the center of the circle you should picture a small throne, like a king occupies as he rules over his kingdom.  This is the throne of your personal “kingdom” that we call our lives.  Someone always occupies this throne.  I want you to consider that at any given moment, either you occupy that throne, or you have allowed someone else to occupy it.  A Christian is someone who has willingly removed ego from the throne and asked Jesus Christ to rule and reign over their life.  The Bible calls this metanoia.  The word is usually translated “repentance”, but it actually means “to change one’s mind.”  Since God never makes us robots by removing our free will, we can also chose to change our mind back – a kind of reverse repentance – and remove Jesus from the throne and chose to let ego take control again.  Ego has all the opposite characteristics of agape.  It is self-centered instead of self-sacrificial.  It is conditional in its giving instead of unconditional.  It tends to be dominated by feelings instead of controlled by the will, and it is totally natural rather than supernatural.  You cannot practice agape when ego sits enthroned at the core of your being.  Therefore, to have a great marriage, you have to keep Christ enthroned.  This requires a certain level of spiritual discipline and gets easier with spiritual maturity.

 

So how can you keep married love alive forever and have a great marriage?  You just need to remember, and put into practice, the lessons of the triangle, the circle, and SUVS.  That’s all it takes, and it only took you seven minutes to learn it!  But it takes a life-time of practice to get it right!!!