(Lenten
series 2, Friday 11 March 2022)
What we call the First Letter of John, near the end of the Christian scriptures, is part of the last writings to make it into our Bible. Here, then, we have teaching and wisdom from part of the early Christian community, perhaps the second generation of them… a community under recurrent persecution and constant crisis… and in this extraordinary letter we have the benefit of their mature experience. The writer insists repeatedly they are a community of love. That is the central issue – the loving quality of their community is their authenticity as Jesus’s people. But in our day love is a desperately damaged and exploited word. This writer says, God is love. Love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; whoever does not love does not know God… God is love. Those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Then he says: There is no fear in love… perfect love casts out fear… Those who say, “I love God”, and hate their brothers and sisters, says this writer, are liars…[1] He doesn’t mince words. Love then, however shaky or inconsistent… some would say, airy-fairy and unrealistic … is the defining characteristic of God’s people, the followers of Jesus. Love is the sine qua non.
St Paul takes up that point in the lyrical chapter 13 of I
Corinthians: I may speak in the
tongues of mortals and of angels, but if I do not have love, I am a noisy gong
or a clanging cymbal. I may have
prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge… I may have
all faith so as to remove mountains, I may give away all I possess, but if I
don’t have love, I am nothing.[2] Well, it is interesting to note there what
Paul thought actually isn’t love… what people and churches may default to,
perhaps unwittingly, instead of love… and what he lists is… words… knowledge…
demonstrations of faith… all perennial temptations for the church… powerful
words, great sermons, knowing everything, fundamentalist certainty and
dogmatism, strident moralism… but without love, says Paul, what we have is clanging
cymbals. Tertullian, a Church Father
from the early 3rd century, had a pagan friend who commented in
amazement about the Christians, Look how they love each other!
But
much that masquerades as love is nothing of the kind. God is love. All love, says John, is from God. We don’t generate love – we receive love from
God, and each other, it may be. Love is
the first of the fruits of the Spirit, writes Paul.[3] It is in love that we learn to do what God
requires – to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly.[4] Love is the product of a changed and
submissive heart in which ego is ceding its place to God. Love flows in us, not from the hormones, but
from the heart and the will in which, as Paul puts it, God’s love has been
poured into our hearts.[5]
And
love identifies the church. That may somewhat
reduce the dimensions of the church, you might think in life’s more judgemental
moments. If love is not the wellspring,
then what we have, however admirable, is not denoting the company of Jesus… it
is something else... and yes, I do not need to be reminded that the church even
in its decrepitude still includes some good people, and they mean well… I am
reminded of the old Latin hymn, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where there is love, there is God. The secular culture will always be able and
ready to detect what are seen as hypocrisies.
But we are at our best, as Jesus’s disciples when, in prayer and
contemplation, we are seeing the ego relegated to where it belongs, which is
not in control… we are free within ourselves to attend to truth, to reality, to
the present moment, to what needs to happen.
I think however Paul’s finest account of a Christian community ruled by
love is in his Letter to the Colossians... again perhaps one of the later
writings. Every detail here would be the
product of contemplative life and prayer.
Paul writes: As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe
yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a
complaint against another, forgive each other…
Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together
in perfect harmony. And let the peace of
Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one
body. And be thankful.[6]
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