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I Reading:
1 Sam 26:2, 7-9; 12-13, 22-23
II Reading: 1 Cor.: 15:45-49
Gospel: Lk. 6:27-38
1. Today’s Gospel is a continuation of last
Sundays Gospel which was the beginning of a long talk
which Jesus gave to his disciples in the early days of
his public ministry. That talk is usually called ‘The
Sermon on the Mount’ or ‘The Great Sermon’. It is a talk
in which Jesus spelt out in some detail what he meant by
the ‘kingdom of God’, and what were the characteristics
of those who belong to that kingdom. You could say that
it is a kind of manifesto in which Jesus explains to his
disciples how he understands his life’s mission. It is
sometimes referred to as a “a kind of an early Christian
Catechism”.
You remember how, in last Sunday’s Gospel,
Jesus told his disciples that they were ‘blessed’ and
that the kingdom of God was theirs if they were poor,
hungry, sad, hated, persecuted despised and cast out,
all characteristics which made us stop and think if only
because they are certainly not the things you would put
on a character reference if you wanted to recommend
someone for an important job.
With today’s Gospel we seem to be on more
certain and solid ground when Jesus tells his disciples
that they must love. This is the new law, the one that
is essential for the building up of “the kingdom of
God”. Here we are more sure of ourselves that we were
with the list of beatitudes in last Sunday’s Gospel. We
all want to love and be loved. We even have a special
day, Valentine’s Day, when we celebrate love as
something wonderful, desirable and accessible to all,
rich and poor alike. So, we can whole-heartedly say
‘yes’ when Jesus proclaims that love is the cornerstone,
the foundation, on which the “kingdom of God is built.
2. There is, of course, a problem with love. On
the one hand it seems to promise us everything,
happiness, pleasure, a sense of security and well-being
which nothing else on earth can provide; on the other
hand it can let us down so easily and to such an extent
that life becomes miserable and hardly worth living.
Love can promise the world, but it can also be the cause
of great unhappiness if its expectations are not met.
Creina Alcock expresses well how she felt betrayed by
her expectations of love, or rather by what she had been
led to expect of love. “I felt utterly betrayed by
loving. All the things I had ever been told about love
just weren’t true. It was full of false promises. I
understood that love was a safety and a protection, and
that if you loved you would be rewarded by someone
loving you back, or at least not wanting to damage you.
But it wasn’t true, any of it. I knew that if I stayed,
this was how it was going to be: It would never get any
better; it would stay the same or get worse. I thought
if you’re really going to live in Africa, you have to be
able to look at it and say, This is the way of love,
down this road: Look at it hard. This is where it is
going to lead you” (Quoted in Rian Malan’s My
Traitor’s Heart, Vintage International, 1991, p 409)
You could say that is precisely what Jesus
did with his disciples when he told them that they must
love. He made them take a good hard look at what it
really means to love. In no uncertain terms he spells
out for them what true love is all about. “I say to you
that hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse
youu, …” There is certainly nothing soft or sentimental
about that; they must love in the same way as God loves,
who “is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish”. This is
not a self-seeking love, nor a love which promises
comfort. Creina Alckk discovered that the hard way –
“The path of love is not a path of comfort. It means
going forward into the unknown with no guarantee of
safety, even though you’re afraid. Trusting is
dangerous, but without trust there is no hope for love,
and lovis all we ever have to hold against the dark.”
(ibid p 423)
3. How different that is to the attitude towards
love which Laurie Less believes has dominated our world
for some time and which he believes to be one of the
great fissures, fault lines, of the modern world. – “Of
all the pressures that threaten the wholeness of modern
man, the fissures in love are the most foreboding. There
is not less of love but less continuity in it, shallower
grounds for its survival.” The reason he gives for that
is that we consider love to be good and desirable “only
so long as it pleases, and that as soon as it drops one
degree below the level of self-satisfaction it is
somehow improper to attempt to preserve it.” And he goes
on – “This is but a natural expression of the more
contemporaneous fallacy – the divine right to personal
happiness, the rule of self-love, to be enjoyed without
effort, at no matter what cost to others. Whoever gave
us this right to be merely happy and what makes us thing
it such an enlightened idea? In claiming to sanction to
withdraw from any relationship the moment our happiness
appears less that perfect, we are acting out a delusion
which results in the denial of everything but the most
trivial kind of love” (Laurie Lee, I Can’t Stay Long,
Penguin, pp 61/62)
Jesus felt it was necessary to spell out
clearly for his disciples the implications of loving,
that it was anything but self-centred. – “If you love
those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even
sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to
those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?
For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those
from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to
you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much
again. But love your enemies, and do good to those who
hate you, and lend expecting nothing in return; and your
reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most
High: …”
4.
To reduce love to self-interest, self-seeking, is
to present it, Laurie Lee would say, as “the most
trivial kind of love,…. a paper house …., flimsily built
for instant collapse.”
There is
nothing flippant or flimsy about the love on which Jesus
proposes that the kingdom of God is to be built. The
love he requires of his disciples it to be solid and
substantial, able to withstand all that the world might
do to belittle or even destroy it. Again we might listen
to Laurie Lee’s comment about the kind of love we need
if we are not all to become castaways in a loveless and
arid world. “Love must be deeper to adapt to the
shifting sands of the world; able to withstand
disaffection and occasional betrayals; be sufficiently
constant, in the centre of orgy and bedlam, to create
its own area of sacred quiet; and also be strong enough
to take marriage, its toughest test, and to sink the
best of its virtues in it, so that its children may be
heirs to its proper kingdom rather that the frail
castaways of its self-absorption.”
That is,
more or less, another way of saying what Jesus said to
his disciples when he told them – “I say to you that
hear, love your enemies, do good to those that hate you,
bless those that curse you, pray for those who abuse
you.” And what a different world it would be be if we
did precisely that.
QUOTATIONS
1. "We are all the victims of this: but perhaps
the main cause of failure still lies in our attitude to
love itself -- that it is good only so long as it
pleases, and that as soon as it drops one degree below
the level of self-satisfaction it is somehow improper to
attempt to preserve it.
This is
but a natural expression of that more contemporaneous
fallacy - the divine right to personal happiness, the
rule of self-love, to be enjoyed without effort, at no
matter what cost to others. Whoever gave us this right
to be merely happy and what makes us think it such an
enlightened idea? In claiming the sanction to withdraw
from any relationship the moment our happiness appears
less that perfect, we are acting out a delusion which
results in the denial of everything but the most trivial
kind of love. Worse still, it makes a paper house of
marriage, flimsily built for instant collapse, haunted
by rootless children whose sense of incipient desertion
already dooms then to an emotional wasteland. Indeed,
the interpretation of rights that allows the jettisoning
of children in furtherance of their parents' right to
happiness, not only cancels that happiness but makes it
more than reasonably certain that the next generation
shall be denied it too.
Of all
the pressures that threaten the wholeness of modern man,
the fissures in love are the most foreboding. There is
not less of love but less continuity in it, shallower
grounds for its survival. Love must be deeper to adapt
to the shifting sands of the world; able to withstand
disaffection and occasional betrayals; be sufficiently
constant, in the centre of orgy and bedlam, to create
its own area of sacred quiet; and also be strong enough
to take marriage, its toughest test, and to sink the
best of its virtues in it, so that its children may be
heirs of its proper kingdom rather than the frail
castaways of its self-absorption."
(Laurie
Lee, I Can't Stay Long, Penguin, pp 61/62) |
