love

by Rev. Mark J.T. Caggiano, January 31, 2010

1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

Over the course of my sermon series on virtue, I have come to understand that a few of you were trying to anticipate what I might be talking about on a particular Sunday. I can understand the desire to divine the depths of this minor mystery and realize that some weekend mysteries were deeper than others. A few sermons have been a bit oblique in tying the scripture to the virtue du jour. This Sunday, I surmise the handicapping was a little less fraught, if you had taken even a careless glance over the readings set out in the bulletin. This Sunday included 1 Corinthians 13. So, not surprisingly, we will be discussing love.

We heard one of the most well known and appropriately well loved passages in the New Testament. This beautiful language of Paul was built upon the earlier words of Jesus, who declared, “ Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love is the bedrock upon which Christianity was built, more so than the other six virtues, more so than any other portion of scripture. While the transcendent symbol of Christianity is the sacrifice upon the cross, the transcendent message of Jesus was to love one another. All teachings must begin and end there.

With Jesus and Paul and all of the early Christians so oriented on this idea of love, we should strive to understand its deeper meaning. Love of course may be defined in many ways. It is strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. It may be attraction based on desire, such as the affection and tenderness felt by lovers. It may be based on admiration, benevolence, or common interests. It can be warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion.

The modern English word “love” may have derived from the Latin root libere, meaning to please. Of course, it is easy to love that which we like. We know that Jesus was reaching beyond such selective love, Jesus who called upon us to l ove our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. In this grander and nobler sense of the word, love is unselfish and benevolent concern for the good of another, such as the concern of God for humankind.

This word “love” is clearly significant in Christianity. We know this because of the new commandments of Jesus. We are reminded of it in the words of Paul. Love is even the basis of our understanding of God, for it is written in the First Letter of John that, “ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

God is love.

This is again beautiful language, the kind we often hear repeated in sermons and at weddings and for other important events in the life of the church. Yet, when this language becomes so commonplace, so ubiquitous in our lives and lexicons, can it retain the strength of meaning intended so long ago? How can we understand what is meant by love in the Bible when the word is so heavily whitewashed by the media and other sources of modern misdirection?

Two Sundays from now, some of you may choose to celebrate a certain secular holiday, February 14, Valentine’s Day. You may ask why I did not save this particular topic until that Sunday. There would be something cutely sentimental about discussing love on a day of hearts and flowers. And this is exactly why it would be a poor choice. The feast day of Saint Valentine was the slender reed upon which this love drenched celebration was balanced. It is an occasion to buy things, an excuse to surrender ourselves to the grand forces of American consumerism. I certainly agree that the people we love deserve special acknowledgement, and I do not begrudge anyone a night on the town. Any reminders of an obligation to express our love, even seasonally, are most welcome.

My concern is that this stunted idea of love obscures the larger expectation of love we hear in the Bible. Modern American love comes shrink-wrapped and is mostly sappy and sentimental. It can be overwrought, overdone and certainly oversexed. It is strange that a culture so adept with communication can be so inept about interpersonal matters. We loudly share so much information, yet stand quietly in the dark when it comes to love. As we place our trust in television experts and other dubious sources of enlightenment, we get further and further away from the words of Jesus, the poetry of Paul. We stand removed from the idea that God is love.

Paul understood the problem. He realized that the Christian community in Corinth was being led astray. They were beguiled by Greek philosophy. They were focusing on revealed wisdom, like from the Oracles of Delphic fame and the Gnostic Christians of the early church. Even uniquely Christian experiences, such as speaking in tongues or extreme acts of charity, were problematic for Paul. He wrote, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

So that I may boast : these words are the root of the problem. Motivations matter when you base your philosophy upon love. Why are we giving, why are we speaking? Is it out of pride when it should be out of love?

People can become distracted easily and religious people are no less susceptible. We at times organize our world and our faith into rigid little compartments: right and wrong, darkness and light, friend and enemy. Jesus was trying to pull us away from such severe thinking, such ruthless dichotomies. Love blurs the lines that keep us apart.

But how can we ignore such distinctions? How do we love when so much of the world is unlovable? No one said it would be easy. Recall the words of Paul on this subject:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love is not all hearts and flowers. Christian love is radical in scope and content. Love everyone regardless of our petty social distinctions, regardless of past hurts and disputes. When we are irritable or resentful, we do not love. When we rejoice in wrongdoing, or in the misfortune of others, we do not love. Love bears the weight of this wide acceptance. Love hopes for the unexpected even when previously disappointed. Love endures the slings and arrows of ingratitude in pursuit of unending compassion.

For God is love. As our love endures, so too does God’s love for us endure. As we hope against hope, so too does God hope for our transcendence of human weaknesses. As we endure the trials and tribulations of this life, so too does God stand with us through it all as the wellspring of all love. God exists in these moments of love, these efforts to overcome our human condition so that we may be representatives of the divine on this Earth. And as God’s strength is boundless, so too must our endurance be boundless for truly love never ends.

Love is the most simple formulation of Christian morality. Love God, love thy neighbor. Love even your enemies. For faith, hope, and love abide and the greatest of these is love. And love is truly the greatest virtue of all for God is love.

This is often a hard message to understand and one many do not wish to hear. One frequently voiced frustration with organized religion is that it seems to rest upon such grand statements and lovely sentiments that rarely intersect with the real world. Think about the world around us; it does not appear to be filled with love. We see war and violence, devastation and poverty. Where is the love? And, if God is love, where is God?

And what of our gospel reading this morning? Jesus said, “But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” This language is rather cryptic but causes the crowd to erupt in rage. Why? Because Jesus was suggesting that God was not there for everyone. Again, this is something very hard to hear.

I strongly debated whether to use this reading this morning. This message has never sat well with me. The idea that God’s love is closed off to some, or many, is a terrible thought. Many Christians believe that God will only save some of us, only those who were baptized in the right way and only those who accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior in one right and certain fashion. The Old Testament is filled with these examples. Noah and his family were saved, while others drowned in the flood. Lot and his daughters escaped Sodom and Gomorrah, but no others. If we extend this theme of the selective and limited scope of God’s love, it seems to confound the suggestion that there is an all-loving and merciful creator who cares for his children. This would be troubling, most troubling.

If we rely upon the concept of God as the sole source of love in the world, the unfairness and cruelties around us seem inexcusable. There can be no excuse for violence, no acceptable reason for suffering. How can there be a good God if such evil exists? How can there even be a God?

The difficulty with this manner of thinking is that it ascribes the evils of the world to God. Some rely upon God as the ready made excuse for everything bad that happens. We exist in a natural world, one that we have sought to control and tame, but which often overwhelms our efforts. The earthquake in Haiti is the most recent example, but hurricanes, tornadoes and tidal waves are unfortunately all too common. Our world is a harsh place at times, but it is not malicious.

Some religious leaders suggest that earthquakes and hurricanes are examples of God’s displeasure. Some may recall that when New Orleans was flooded, some pulpits blazed with accusations of the sinful nature of the city. These same leaders said little or nothing about the devastations in next door and seemingly pious Mississippi or a few years later in the very evangelical Galveston, Texas. We all exist at the whim of nature at times, but that has been the case since the very beginning. And that is one of the reasons we banded together into societies. We organize ourselves to provide a covert from the storm, and shadow from the heat of life.

This is not some Sunday morning abstraction. This is how we find God in this world. For as Jesus said, that which you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me. When we clothe and feed those in need, we come closer to God. When we house the homeless and comfort the sick, we come closer to God. For God is love.

When we pray for those in need, listen to your own hearts and see how you might help those in need. We should not expect only God miraculously to transform our world, for it is our miraculous purpose in this world to be the loving hands of God. We should not expect only God to soothe our grief or to celebrate our triumphs, for ours is the voice of God in this world.

Jesus calls upon us to love our neighbors, to love our enemies and to love our God. Love is the presence of God in our lives and on this Earth. God so loved us that he gave Jesus to us. And Jesus taught that love is the essence of our purpose in the world. When we get caught up in the details of life, we must remember to love. When we see those in need, we must remember to love. And when the end comes for each and every one of us, we must remember to love.

God is not being selective with his love. We are being selective with ours. There is suffering in this world because of its nature, yes, but also because we allow it. God will guide us and strengthen us. God will give us the wisdom to grasp our situation and the resolve to endure it. But we must be there for each other. We must be the loving presence that helps and heals, that celebrates and mourns. We are not alone on this planet, but when we withhold our love, we might as well be alone. When two or three are gathered our prayers will be answer because within a community of loving people, miraculous things can surely happen.

Love is not reserved for Valentine’s Day, it is a life. And it is hard to love sometimes. It is hard to get up and be compassionate and understanding and accepting when those around us are cruel and bitter and unfair. But no one ever said that love was entirely fair, just that it is the most important virtue of them all. For love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

But our sermon does.