In Fiddler on the Roof,
Tevye tells his wife Golde that he has just consented to the engagement of their
second daughter Hodel to Perchik, a young penniless teacher they don’t approve
of. Golde erupts. She is pounding a great lump of bread dough,
and you know it is generally prudent to stay clear. I was
not consulted, she says. But they love each other, says Tevye. Golde snorts… But Tevye asks, timidly, Do you love me…? He asks it over and over, it becomes a
song. Finally the bread gets a rest: For 25
years I’ve mended your socks, washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned
your house, milked your cow, had your children…
But do you love me, he asks. Yes, says Golde…
When this group recessed for Christmas and New Year, I found
myself looking ahead in the lectionary for when we would resume in
February. The Epistle, I found, would be
St Paul’s great hymn to love in I Corinthians 13. So I started to look at this afresh, after most
of a lifetime of assuming I know what it means.
I read it in Paul’s Greek, and in English, and in Luther’s German… and I
am afraid you will get the humble fruits of this in the weeks ahead.
In the Greek of the Christian Bible, love is agapē (ἀγαπη). There are other words for love. Philia
(φιλια) denotes the brotherly, sisterly, loyal allegiance/love of the tribe, or
the social class or the football club… mateship, in Kiwi terms… a strong and
satisfying bond, so long as you remain loyal – so philia is not unconditional.
Erōs (ἐρως) is what love is
almost universally assumed to be – a matter of hormones, feelings and ego... changeable,
very conditional. Agapē expresses something else.
In St John’s words, God is agapē. Indeed, says John, if we don’t know agapē/love, we don’t know God[1].
We may think we do. We may be most deeply offended to hear
otherwise. But the point, says John, is
to abide in love… and we will think
more about all that in coming weeks.
Now, my hope overall is to centre on Paul’s teaching in I
Corinthians 13, and see what emerges for us in 2019 terms. I do not want to get into definitions of love
or even to approach that kind of precision.
Like the prayer of silence which we practise, love, and any of the
cornerstones of faith and life, are things we learn by doing them, by choosing
them, rather than by studying or examining them first. The distinctive mark of agapē/love, we might say at this point, is the diminishing of the
ego. I can set self aside. We do not practise love from the safety of
our comfort zones. Agapē/love is not about me or what I want or how I feel or what my
dreams are… Love is a robust, even
reckless choice, of bringing the other within my defences. It is what our prayer is all about. We bring God within our defences. It is what God does with us and all God’s
creation.
Love is
from God, writes John. It is a
gift. It is not exclusively Christian –
love may be manifest in atheists and agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems –
but John makes it clear, to be a loveless Christian is a contradiction, an
oxymoron. For a follower of Jesus, agapē/love is where the pathway leads. We can obliterate love, deface it or distort
it, deny it… but discipleship -- contemplative life and prayer -- is very much
a clearing of the decks for agapē/love.
Thermogaphy
ReplyDeleteBio Resonance
holistic health