WHEN LOVE GUSHES
A meditation by the Rev. Dr. James G. Kirk
Harundale Presbyterian Church
Text: “Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:8)
First
Second
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Emil Brunner in his wonderful little book Faith Hope Love writes how faith has to do with the past, hope has to do with the future and love has to do with the present. What better way to start the New Year than to take a look at the present and see how we’re doing according to Paul’s teaching about love.
The best way to do that is to break Paul’s three paragraphs on love in this thirteenth chapter into the three understandings of love we find in the New Testament. There’s philia or brotherly love, eros or erotic love and agape or Godly love. Or, you could say that philia is love alongside of, eros is love because of and agape is love in spite of.
Paul describes this love alongside of or philia or brotherly love in his first paragraph. Notice how all of his illustrations can be measured alongside of someone else. He writes about speaking in the tongues of mortals and of angels. Obviously someone else doesn’t have that ability. He mentions having prophetic powers, understanding mysteries and knowledge. Obviously those abilities would give him bragging rights alongside of someone who couldn’t do those things. He writes about having faith so as to remove mountains. Or giving away all of his possessions so that he can boast about it. The problem with this love that is alongside of or philia or brotherly love is just that. There’s always going to be the temptation to boast, the temptation to compare what you can or cannot do with someone else who can.
That’s why earlier in the twelfth chapter Paul describes the church as a body of Christ with varieties of gifts. Each one of you brings a special gift to this congregation. Individually you can’t do what needs to be done, but collectively we can all strive for the common good. The philia or brotherly love or love alongside of will recognize the worth of each individual’s gifts and use them for the common good rather than boasting about them as a measure of someone’s worth.
The second kind of love is eros or erotic love or love because of. We feel erotic because of someone’s beauty or because of someone being desirable or because someone has something that we want. Again, we get a taste of eroticism in Paul’s second paragraph. He writes that love is not envious, arrogant or rude. Erotic love does have a tendency to become envious if it doesn’t get what it wants. When it does there can be a certain amount of arrogance that goes with it. Sometimes erotic love can be somewhat rude, particularly when it doesn’t take into consideration someone else’s feelings or needs or desires.
There have been occasions when erotic love insists on its own way. Everybody loves Raymond is a classic sit-com about Raymond insisting that Deborah make love to him in the way that he wants to make love. As the show progresses you can almost predict what Raymond wants and know that he isn’t going to get it. Then, just as Paul goes on to describe in the second paragraph or our scripture, Raymond gets irritable and resentful. The point of the matter is that Deborah usually gives in for some reason just because of his irritable and resentful behavior, leaving the viewer wondering why she for once couldn’t stand up to him.
Emil Brunner writes, “We love by eros that which is lacking in ourselves. You might call this a process of completion, the filling of a vacuum in the soul. But the most important thing is this, that eros is always determined by the quality of the beloved. We love, by eros, because the object of our love has as certain character—attractive, beautiful, or lovable…we love because of.” (Ibid. Page 63)
The third kind of love is agape, Godly love or love in spite of. Martin Luther has called this love quellende Liebe, literally a love that gushes forth. This love has no sense of getting, but only of giving. This is the love that Jesus used in his teaching to love our enemies. If we love someone because of their lovable ness Jesus would not consider that to be agape. But if we were to love someone we would normally want to hate, then that would be a love in spite of and closer to what he would consider agape.
This love, of course, has its origins in God. God surely doesn’t love us because of our loveable ness. Nor does God need to love us in order to satisfy something in God’s nature. God doesn’t stand to gain anything out of God’s love for us, except perhaps disappointment when we don’t return that love without some kinds of strings attached. No, God loves us in spite of ourselves, in spite of everything in us that make us not very lovable at all. God loves us for the sheer delight God takes in all that God’s created and, more than that, God even sends us the Christ as a gift of God’s love.
This is what Paul considers to be the love that never ends. This is mature love; the love he says brings an end to childish ways. This is complete love that will bring all that is partial to an end. This is not love alongside of, or love because of. It is love in spite of and because its origins are in God, “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”
So, as we enter this New Year, let’s remember that while we love alongside our brothers and sisters, and love because of the loveliness of those we yearn for, let us also seek to love as God loves, that love in spite of that just sort of gushes out. Thanks be to God. Amen