We have looked at truth as pointing the way to good; we have looked at good as being truth expressed from the heart; our subject today is love. Love is the object of religion. Teaching the ways of love is what all Christianity is about. God is love itself. And religion is about a person’s relationship with God. When we let God into our hearts, we are letting love into our hearts. We only love truly when God is in us.
Love that motivates us to do anything. And when we are involved with what we love, we are in delight, enjoyment, and blessedness. So when we speak of love, we are also speaking of what gives us our delights and enjoyments. Take away our delights, and we will not want to do anything. Since love is what gives us our sense of delight, everything we enjoy is a reflection of love. So loving is doing and it is also giving and receiving love in an interpersonal way. So we are not abusing the word when we say that we love working on cars, or playing the piano, or preparing balance sheets for businesses. And we all recognize that when we are showing care and compassion for others in an interpersonal way we are also loving.
Consider the story in Luke 7:1-15. In it a so-called sinful woman shows her love for Jesus by washing Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with perfume. The Pharisee in this story is concerned with ritual purity, and would have refused the woman’s expressions of love. He thinks to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39). But what kind of woman is she? She is a woman brimming over with love. And it is this love that makes her other failings of no account. Sin is whatever blocks love, and this woman is filled with love for Jesus. Therefore Jesus can say, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much” (
I would ask you to take this story to heart. It seems to me to capture the nature of religious life. We have two people involved in a loving relationship. We have the woman showing love and we have Jesus accepting love. So we are called to give love and to become vulnerable enough to receive love from others. So in this Gospel story we have love in both its dynamics—giving and receiving. And we are taught to both give and receive. So may it be said of us, as Jesus says to the woman, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much.”
No comments:
Post a Comment