Bible Reading: John 13:31-35
Dear Friends
Love. We talk a lot about it, sing about it, construct entertainments from comedy skits to grand Shakespearean theatre about love, or what we think of as love. In these reflections, I often discuss the inadequacy of the word in English to convey what love means in the sense of salvation and hope, but that sometimes doesn’t cover the breadth of the concept either. Can any of us grasp the true nature of love, as Christ meant, and as the Lord proposes over the course of salvation history?
Love in the scriptural sense, caritas or agape, refers to a self-sacrificial love for others that lift them up without regard to our own status. Too often our sense of love falls short even when we think we’ve gotten in right. Parents have track records of trying to pigeonhole their children into their own frame of mind, assuming that they will be miniature versions of themselves rather than recognizing that their value comes from their own uniqueness, even if that uniqueness might not feel like a blessing. Other parents no doubt have similar experiences, but it takes a long time to discover that you didn’t really know what love is and still may not. That doesn’t mean parents didn’t love their children, of course, but it just means they didn’t understand it well enough to fully embrace its joys. Consider the story of creation and salvation that the Bible illustrates. God created human beings in His own image, that of beings with free will and creative power, who could freely choose whether to live within His love or to reject Him. The Old Testament Book Song of Songs is in a literal sense a love song about marital bliss, but symbolically and allegorically also expresses the desire of the Lord to have His people join with Him in a covenant relationship. However, it’s possible to see the entire arc of Scripture as a love song between God and humanity, calling us to return to His embrace of our own free will, from Genesis to Revelation.
In fact, in Revelation 21, John writes of exactly that outcome that people will return to the Lord and will dwell in the eternal happiness of true caritas. “He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God,” John is told. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away.” God the father has not forced His love on us, nor refused it either out of disappointment. He has created each of us with our own uniqueness, our own sets of idiosyncrasies, gifts, and talents, and wants us to use these to come closer to Him and each other. He awaits us as the father awaited the prodigal son, emptying Himself and the grace of the Trinitarian life out for us, especially in Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate. That is true love, the kind to which Christ calls us, and the challenge in which we so often fall short even with those we love the most. Perhaps as we grow wiser, we see that more clearly, and the pain which we feel sharpens our ability to offer that kind of love more fully and responsibly. That’s one prayer in which I take hope, even as I look forward to the time when tears and mourning over sins and shortcomings will have passed away forever in the love of Christ.
Solomzi