I wonder if you have seen the film `My Fair Lady`: the story of Eliza Doolittle, a flower seller on the streets of London in Victorian times. She is turned into a so-called society lady by Professor Higgins and she is first courted by a young man called Freddie. He vows his love for her in the words of a song which begins `I have often walked down this street before but the pavement always stayed before my feet before. All at once am I several stories high, knowing I`m on the street where you live.`

His love ends in the song. It never progresses. So Eliza sings the song which echoes her frustration at the way he has tried to express his love for her: `Don`t talk of love: show me`. Sadly he never does, and the story ends with her marrying Professor Higgins . . as indeed we might have foreseen.

`Don`t talk of love: show me.` Words which Jesus says to us in our Gospel reading, put in slightly different words: `If you love me, you will obey what I command.` `Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.`

Love is costly. It is about putting other people first. It is about putting God first. It is about persevering and not giving up.

Listen to the description of God`s love in 1 Corinthians 13, in a paraphrase from JB Phillips and think about how our lives measure up:

`This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience – it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it shares the joy of those who live by the truth. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love never fails.`

`Love never fails.` There are many things in our world which change. But there is one unchanging force: the force of love. The love which is God`s very being: `God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.`

When you and I begin to understand God`s love, he begins in us a work which continues for the rest of our lives, a work which is about being remade in the image of his dear Son. For that he needs our `yes`, just as the angel needed the `yes` from Mary.

`If you love me you will obey what I command.` `Don`t talk of love: show me.`

We are at an important time in the church`s calendar. We have spent these days of Easter celebrating that Jesus is alive.

We shall come soon to Ascension Day when we remember the moment Jesus went up into heaven to be at his Father`s right hand once more until he comes again to judge the world.

In our Gospel reading for Ascension Day, in all his last directions to his apostles, Jesus hands on his ministry to them and to us. The Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, will come in power, to enable us to be truly what we are meant to be. `All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.`

`Teaching them to obey`. Once again that word `yes` is sought. And as this `yes` is given, in love, so we are enabled to love the people God gives us to minister to, to love in his name.

When Jesus spoke to Peter after the Resurrection, he asked one question, the question he asks of each of us each day. The question is `Do you love me?` As Peter answers that question three times: `you know that I love you`, Jesus gives him a job to do: `feed my lambs; take care of my sheep; feed my sheep.` He entrusts the same task to us.

As we come to the Lord`s table this morning, receiving the tokens of his love, the bread and the wine, we say in our hearts `you know that I love you.` So God sends us out to be his followers, his ambassadors, his people, that we may go from here in peace to love and serve the risen Lord in the way we show in our lives who we belong to, who is the pivot of our being. In the way we show in costly love that we want to put him and his teaching first. We shall fall, and fail, just as Peter did. But Jesus calls us to himself once more, to receive his love and to keep on keeping on in the power of the Spirit. Amen.

The Revd Pat Hopkins