Advent Love

Dec 16

I cannot imagine anyone who has been to a few weddings unfamiliar with Paul’s I Corinthians C13 exposé on love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated...” The most selected reading for a wedding makes clear that you can give up or away everything you possess, but if you have not love, it is all useless. The primacy of love. The reading ends listing the three remaining virtues faith, hope, and love, stating the the greatest of these is love. In eternity, the full consummation of love, there is no need for faith and hope, we have been graciously welcomed. We behold the light of God’s face; it is love. The eternal banquet is one great love fest.

In response to a scholar trying to trip up Jesus by asking him which is the greatest commandment, Jesus responds that “you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” It was the expected answer for every Jew recited the Shema several times in a day. But nothing is simple and clean cut with Jesus, so he states that “this is the first and greatest commandment.”(adding) “The second is like it: you change. We begin to understand that God principally adores us and is content with doing so, above our adoring God. It’s not about us, rather God doing, loving, sharing, inhabiting. You start to become selective with scripture: God is slow to anger is replaced with God is “no” to anger. As Greg Boyle, SJ repeats ad infinitum, God does not see sin, just son or daughter. God does not indict, just invites, into relationship, into a circle of kinship such that it will be recognized by God as there is no one standing outside. God is love makes sense when we let go of the descriptors (bad, evil, racist, homophobe, misogynist, antisemitic) and seek the identifiers (people who are unhealthy, not well, not loving, or whole) Understanding them and working to deal with them, all are lovable with no exceptions.

I fondly recall a Marinist brother telling me he skips all scripture that is violent, where God smites 1000s, in favor of the loving God. None of this is a license for doing evil or omitting responsibility. Rather, letting God love us as infinitely as God does, make them all impossible. God’s theology is love and when we practice it we are disciples. As Boyle notes, the only word God knows is love. When we know the God of love, we fire all the other gods, the god who judges, critiques, points fingers, separates, and shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This was not expected and Jesus says they are the summation of the law and the prophets. He makes it clear that if we want to assess how we are doing with the first (loving the God we cannot see), we can get a picture by how we are loving the God we can see, the imago dei, one another, all others. Didn’t see that coming, did you scribes and Pharisees!?

How daunting to love everyone including ourselves! For years, I took relief in the classic definition of love being “willing the good of the other as other.” Not loving another for what I may gain out of this. Wishing well, the good, for another. This allowed me to be content with not liking some individuals, as long as I love them. Conscience assuaged. Not so fast.

There is no concise, clear, definitive, all-encompassing definition of love as this. God is love. So, we graft ourselves, lean in like barnacles, and remain with God and God in us, especially on the core of our being our soul. God is love. We are the imago dei; thus, we are love.

Approached from the position of how can we do this, we can try our best but be frustrated quickly. Allow God to love us first, whole and entire, then our positioning changes. Falling deeper and deeper in love, perspectives divides, the god who loves some better than others. Fire them all! God is love. Cherished belonging!