Jesus at 2am

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

– Matt. 5:43f (NRSV)

…and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

– Matt. 22:35-40  (NRSV)

To embrace the idea that love stands at the center of the Christian life is to dive headfirst into paradox.  For love – of God, self, neighbor and enemy – is commanded as the principle duty of a disciple.  And yet if love is as we have described it – not merely a moral choice (to act “as if” we loved, regardless of our feelings), but a condition of the heart (agape in all its complexity, complete with affection, passion, devotion…) – then it transcends the powers of human volition.  We cannot, by willful effort, no matter how sincere or devout, force ourselves to love what we do not.

How many of us have tried – with the best of intent – to love things like vegetables or exercise or Grey’s Anatomy (long story…), only to find that our efforts amount to naught?  Try as we might, it turns out that our affections are simply beyond our control.  And resolutions to “do better next time” serve only to demoralize us, as our attempts prove continually vain.

If our willpower is so frail as to render us unable to love even these simple displeasures, how much more helpless are we to fulfill the commandment to love the God whom we have not seen or the enemy we have seen all too well? (Thus we can understand the impulse to define “Christian love” as something less than it is – to turn agape into mere behavior not internal disposition.  At least behavior is something we imagine we can control.)

But what is truly required is not a renewed commitment to “try harder,” but a deep surrender to the truth that we must be transformed.  We must be made new, cast in a different mold.  The heart inclined to idolatry, arrogance, self-preservation and revenge must be reshaped, day by day, into the likeness of the heart of Christ.

This is work that only God can do.  And our great comfort is that it is a work promised to us in scripture as an aspect of the Messianic age:  ”…I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:25f, NRSV).

The wonder of Christian grace is that the very love to which we are commanded is itself a gift!  What God demands, God himself will provide.  And we become the beneficiaries on every front.  We have been set free from a life of endless striving for make a small change here or there, and blessed with the Spirit who will re-create us from the inside out.

This is not to say that willful effort in the process of spiritual growth is not required.  But once we understand how it is that growth occurs, we will find ourselves far more able to apply our efforts properly and with far more fruit for our labor (love, joy peace, patience, kindness…).

It is to the topic of “spiritual discipline” (our contribution to our growth) that we will turn next time…

It occurs to me that, having placed love at the center of the Christian life, I owe you some sense of how I define the term.  A technical discussion, yes.  But one I hope will be helpful.  (If you are truly allergic to technical discussions, feel free to skip to the last paragraph.)

In seeking to understand the biblical vision of love, we are both aided and hindered by the fact that the Bible is not written in English.  It is always difficult to conceptualize ideas conveyed in another language, and thus there is always a sense that whatever we are thinking when we say “love” in English, we are not quite grasping what the original writers were thinking when they penned their words in Hebrew and Greek (and a little bit of Aramaic).  Yet, the mere fact that the scriptures were authored in three languages (and translated back and forth between them) allows us to have several glances at in idea that – in any language – is beyond complete articulation.

As you may know, there are four words in ancient Greek that we properly translate into English as “love” – eros, philia, storge, and agape – and much ink has been spilled in recent decades trying to nail down the distinctions.  The general trend, which I think has proven unhelpful, has been to define each of these terms in contrast to the others, placing each one into a distinct sphere of meaning.

To get a sense of how many discussions go, imagine a blackboard on which we write “eros”  and draw a tidy circle around it.  We then say that eros means  “romantic love” or “erotic love” – love as chemical attraction, passion, desire…  Next to it, we draw another circle, and place within it “philia” and define it as the love of deep friendship, abiding devotion…  Likewise with storge – typically understood as love in the sense that we might “love” a good movie or a Diet Mountain Dew (just sayin’…).  And, of course, these definitions and distinctions are necessary to understanding nuance. But this manner of parsing out meaning can give the impression that the circles don’t overlap, that the language in which the New Testament was written had clear and distinct categories of love.  And therefore, that the NT writers used none of these words, but rather an obscure noun – agape – suggests that “biblical love” is yet another, distinct species of love. Agape, it is often argued, can only be understood as a love that is expressly not eros, philia, or storge.

All this, in turn, has led to what I consider a great over-spiritualizing of “biblical love.”  The love of God, we have been told, is not base like eros – passionate and possessive, seeking pleasure and fulfillment.  It is not rooted in mutual benefit like philia – a bond based on common purpose or temperament or family connection.  No, God is above all such entanglements and complications and self-interest.  God’s love is dispassionate, rooted in willful choice, an act of reason and character, not desire.  God’s love is not contaminated by these more primal aspects of human life.  And we are to seek to love in this same, rarified manner.

The trouble, of course, is that love without passion, desire and the like is not love!  It is uncontaminated, perhaps.  It is not messy.  But it is also useless and impossible.  And, it happens to fly in the face of the biblical story!  Who can read of the pleading of God, the jealousy of God, the anger of God, the tenderness of God…and see God as dispassionate?!?  Who can look at the cross and see only rational devotion to a cause or contract?  If scripture reveals anything, it is that God is very much messy.  God is in the thick of things.  God hurts, God longs, God desires, God has tremendous self-interest (and appeals to ours!).  When God loves, God is all in.

And we should note that agape did not occur to the NT authors out of nowhere.  It existed in classical Greek as a somewhat generic term for love, not separate from the other categories,but overlapping them all in one way or another (in particular, agape had the connotation of preference – to love one thing with special devotion or favor).  But even more important to a NT understanding of love is the realization that agape is the word most frequently used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, and the version that would have been known best to the NT authors) to translate the Hebrew word for love (ahav) – which we have already seen is anything but distant and clinical.  (A simple, but powerful, example is the translation of Gen. 22:2.  When the translators of the OT have to describe the love of Abraham for Isaac, the word they use is agape…)

All this is simply to say that when I say that love is the name of the game, I mean love.  Love in all its passion and complication; love with emotion and longing and suffering and rapture…  The love of God is a love of deep affection, of raw connection and enduring attachment.  The love of God is the real deal.  And I think we must grasp this in order to know how completely we have been embraced.  And also to know the depth of the work to which we are called.  For if we are called to love our enemies – not merely do not-hate them, to make moral choices where they are concerned, to act with regard.., but truly to love as God has loved us – then we can do with nothing less than our own transformation of heart.   And suddenly we see with new clarity the work of spiritual maturity that lies before us.

They say every entrepreneur should have an “elevator pitch” – a cogent distillation of all the research and planning that has gone into the new business that can be given in less time than an elevator ride.  And I fear that if someone were to ask me, during daylight hours, for a similar distillation of Christianity, I would fail miserably.  I’m terrible at short answers, and it’s likely that – without realizing it – I’d be reviewing the history of the Ancient Near East, paraphrasing Plato, quoting Augustine, and suggesting books by N.T. Wright (I would, of course, stop the elevator so I had time to explain the nuances!).

But, as I am writing this at 1:12 AM, I can answer in a word:  love.  For, when all is said and done, I have found no other explanation for the world as I know it – in all its beauty, complexity, pain, and hope – than the vision of love that I believe stands at the center of the biblical story.

And I realize, even as I write this, that it sounds tremendously naïve.  Read just the table of contents of any history textbook, and there appears evidence galore that love is hardly the name of the game.  And this is true even if it is a book on religious history…

Humans are capable of doing extraordinary harm to each other and to the world.  And on plenty of occasions, the perpetrators have claimed to act in the name of love and on behalf of God.

And even when there is no one to blame – when the floods rise, or the crops fail, or the diagnosis is given – it strikes us a convincing testimony that whatever is driving the course of history, it is certainly not love.

I further know, all too well, that there are many within the community of the church who would not agree that love is the center of the biblical story.  In my own, Calvinist tradition, the “glory” of God is often regarded as the driving force behind divine action and human responsibility (though love does, fortunately, get a pretty good mention).

Others see God as primarily concerned with sin and righteousness, goodness and badness.  The Bible is a legal work and a morality tale:  “Here is the law and the story of what happens to those who keep it and those who don’t…”

Some see the gospel in pietistic terms – a guide to prayer and religious observance that evokes divine favor.  Pray well enough or study long enough or discipline strictly enough and perhaps one can escape the bonds of the flesh and live the life of pure spirit…

Quite popular today is Bible-as-Guide-to-Easier-Living.  God is thought to have written the definitive guide to losing weight, getting a promotion, retiring early and raising Ivy-League-bound children.  The list goes on…

And I think that, at one time or another, I have dabbled in most of these options.  But I have come to the personal conviction – which has held steady for a good many years – that the Bible is actually a love story – that the God it reveals and the world it regards as his, has love at the center.  Indeed my recovering-engineer-self can find no other way the math works.

It seems to me that the Bible tells the story of a loving God who created the world and all that is in it because that is the nature of genuine love – it is generative. Wherever love is found in abundance, it will give forth life.  Love is not content with its present boundaries, but seeks to give itself away. And so, once upon a time, the sovereign God said, “Let there be…, and there was…and behold it was very good.”

And what love seeks is…love.  And therefore, creation must be free.  For love is not love if it is compelled or coerced.  Therefore, the generative God, in love, gave creation – and humanity as its pinnacle – the dignity of self-determination.  We can love – God and other.  Or we can not.  And when the answer is “not,” what we call it is “evil.”  And thus all the world can be understood as the tension between love and its absence.

And from creation, the story goes on –  a loving God, confronted with the object of his love which has gone terribly awry.  And what the story tells is the work of a  God who does not reject a world that is pulling on the very threads out of which it was woven, but rather takes it upon himself to sew creation back together.  And thus, there are indeed floods and famines and war and pain…; but love is still at work, mending, weaving, knitting…  I go so far as to believe that Easter was, in fact, the definitive stitch.  On that day, the outcome was determined once for all – the cloth will one day be made entirely whole again.

All this is the only way I can explain the world as I know it.  I see the paintings of a Van Gogh, the statues of Michelangelo, hear the symphonies of Beethoven, read the poems of Langston Hughes, walk the beaches of the Caribbean, see my friends at the café, watch Michael Jordan play basketball…and what I think to myself is:  “Behold, it is very good…”

I have also been chaplain to the oncology service at Children’s Hospital, built houses for the poor in Guatemala, lived with destitute families in the inner city, played games with orphans in Africa… And I have had my bouts with despair at it all, I assure you.  But in every case, what I have seen is that love has been far from absent.  The bad, in my experience, is never as bad as the circumstances say it should be.  And hope is far closer than I can explain.  And, after all these years and all these experiences, the only answer that I’ve got is that someone has their thumb on the scale.  Someone is tipping things to the good.  Love is casting stitches…

I can, of course, prove none of this.  It is but one man’s opinion…  But it is a conviction firmly held. And it will drive everything I write from here on.

All the discussions of biblical study, all the reflections on theology, all the contemplation of ethics, all the suggestions at spiritual discipline derive from this one belief – that love is the name of the game….