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Love. Perhaps no other English word is so inadequate, for we use it to express multiple important realities.
Because the New Testament is written in Greek, many Christians have heard sermons about how the Greek language uses separate words to express romantic love, familial love, and the love between friends, as well as a higher form of love, agape, which might be translated as “altruism” or doing good for others with no expectation of anything in return. For early Christians, agape meant even more. It was the best approximation of a word from the Hebrew Scriptures – hesed – which is the love of God, by which creation, including our own existence, came into being.
Jesus commanded his disciples to exercise this divine love. How is that possible? Only by receiving it and allowing God to love through us. When we choose to receive God’s love, we begin to see the world as God sees it. We are awakened to the reality that all life issues from the same creative love. This awareness causes us to grieve all divisions, whether based on race, class, ethnicity or ideology, knowing that they result from artificial human constructs that tear apart the fabric of creation. They are, in fact, the antithesis of love.
These constructs, held in place by legal and often violent means, have been deeply embedded over many centuries, tempting us to despair that no matter how often people are inspired to combat systemic injustice and embrace beloved community, we are bound to fall back into the rut of unconsciously learned behaviors. Yet, scripture promises that God’s love makes us new, literally replacing that learned human will with God’s will.
That is to say, divine love melts away those fictive constructs so that we become authentically ourselves, made to love one another.
Mark Lawson is pastor of the United Church of Christ in Bayberry and an adjunct professor of religious studies at Le Moyne College.
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September 20, 2020 at 05:41PM
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CNY Inspirations: The highest form of love - syracuse.com
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