The Christian faith is all about relationships. When we talk about special relationships, we usually think of love, love between two people, and love within a family or between friends. This love is precious to us. Especially when two people find each other in love, we celebrate this with a huge feast, a wedding.

As a pastor and marriage officer I frequently have the honour to be part of such celebrations, whether in a church, a park, on a beach or on a ship. The ceremony, the reception and party, everything is planned weeks or even months ahead. We invite those who we feel close to and who are important to us, whether it is just the two families or dozens and hundreds of friends and relatives.

Weddings are important events, as two families come together, two circles of friends become one bigger circle, and new relationships happen. Those celebrations are joyful and sometimes even sumptuous.

Even after 39 years I still remember our wedding. Besides our parents, my grandmothers were there, our siblings, cousins, class mates, friends and many more.

How would you feel if all the guests were sending regrets? You prepared — and paid for — a huge banquet, the caterers are there, the music is there, the groom and bride are ready, but there are no guests.

Jesus told a parable about a king’s wedding where that happened. He compared the Kingdom of Heaven with a wedding feast a king planned for his son. He told this parable because the people who were invited, the ones closest to God’s heart, thought they had more important things to do.

The religious elite of Israel, the high priests, Pharisees and scribes were not celebrating the new relationship God wanted to offer in Jesus, the Messiah.

The evangelist John starts his Gospel with the rejection of the One who came in the Name of the Lord. In John 1:10-11 (NIV) we read: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

Matthew (22:1-14) and Luke (14:15-24) tell this rejection in form of the parable. However, the important part is that the parable does not end with the absent guests, with rejection, but now the king opens his palace to others, who before might have been considered not worthy. He invited those on the way side (Luke) and not only good people, but good and bad (Matthew), righteous and sinners.

This is interpreted as the extension of God’s invitation even to those who did not belong to His people, the gentiles, sinners, and those who did not even know about him. Whoever wants to be part of the new relationship, can come. There is no prerequisite. As long as you come to celebrate the new relationship, you are invited.

That is Good News. That is reason to celebrate. God wants all of us, no matter where we come from, to find new meaning in his Kingdom. What we did before does not matter any more.

The Heavenly Kingdom is like an ongoing celebration of the new relationship God offers us in Jesus Christ. It is symbolic for Christ and His Church, which is called his bride. It is all about love.

Yes, you are loved. You are important to God. You are not alone. Our earthly relationships may still be imperfect and have faults in many ways. We may fall out of love over petty things. Even though we may spend months of planning for the one special day, the wedding, and spend more money than is reasonable on a wedding, but easily forget to plan for the years that come afterwards, and that it takes more than a feeling, it takes our will.

A lavish wedding might leave the young people with debts instead of a solid financial foundation, which then can lead to frictions and stress. Unfortunately, I have had to observe that as well as a pastor. That is why I actually plan on offering some seminars for couples this winter before thy tie the knot.

A true relationship is not just feelings and emotions, but requires planing, decision and volition. Emotions are in motion, as the word implies already, and thus cannot withstand the storms of life.

We need to make up our mind to be able to stick together for better or for worse. We need to talk and negotiate how we imagine the future with each other, what our dreams are, not only together, but as individuals as well, how we imagine to manage our money, where to live, and how our relations to others will look like.

We can learn from God and His Word what it means to love, just as Christ loved us, even to death on the Cross. The Apostle Paul writes in his famous High Song of Love in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (verses 4-8a, NIV)

While this text is often chosen for weddings, we cannot contemplate it enough. Sometimes it takes patience, if the other one is not there yet. It takes kindness to overcome harsh realities.

When it comes to love, it is not about who is better. Marriage counselling specialists John and Julie Gottman say, criticism, defensiveness, and contempt are three of the four “apocalyptic horsemen of marriage” (the fourth one is “stonewalling”). We have to learn to deal with disappointments and look at ourselves in the relationship with honesty.

If we want our relationships with each other last and persevere, we have to deal with our own anger instead of trying to remember every little thing the other one did wrong over the years. Thus we have to learn to forgive as we are forgiven and trust (faith) this promise as we hope for the future.

In verse 13 Paul concludes: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Yes, we can learn from God’s love how to love each other, how to celebrate more often this love, even years after the wedding took place. Love is God’s plan for us to experience His Kingdom already, as it is right in front of us.

That is why Christ said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, mind and soul, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. When we learn to love that way, nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus.

• Karsten Decker is an ordained Lutheran pastor and novelist from Germany who has lived and worked in Bermuda since 2001. At the moment he helps the Centenary Methodist Church at Collectors Hill as pulpit supply.