Love Matters
“What’s love got to do with it?”
Okay, that’s definitely not an Advent/Christmas song. ☺️As I reflect on the theme of love on this last Sunday in Advent, though, it is a really good question. When we find ourselves doing battle (yet again!) against the manifestation of evil in high and low places, inundated with voices championing—and legislating—division, derision, and discrimination, what’s love got to do with that? When it seems that all of our energy is needed to stand up to tyranny, fight injustice, and simply survive—where is there time or space to love?
The answer to those questions is here and now. In the midst of all that is swirling around us, love must be what grounds us and filters our focus for the work entrusted to us. Love helps us to have hard conversations with soft hearts, seeking to understand as well as be understood. Love strengthens us to stand courageously to fight against evil without becoming what we have beheld. Love teaches us to live from a default stance of mercy and grace for others. We give and forgive because God, whose very nature is love, has given to and forgiven us. I believe that Paul’s words in the familiar passage from I Corinthians 13:1-7 help us here:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love matters. However determined we are to stand against the present evil that assails us, that determination must find its source and strength in love—love of God, love of each other, and love of ourselves. It is tempting to simply fight fire with fire, but history has taught us, I think, that the most likely outcome of that tactic is that everything (and everyone) is burned to the ground. The harder strategy is to begin by asking, “What does love require here?” We may take some of the same actions, but we will go about them in a different way, with a different frame of mind, and a different set of expectations. What we do will be driven less by ego, zeal, and fear, and more by discerning God’s will in the situation—and our part in it. This kind of love eschews sentimentality and performative virtue-signaling for something deeper, more valuable, and ultimately transformative. Perhaps this is why Paul says that love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Because for us to truly live into (and out of) our Imago Dei, and be God’s people in the world, love must undergird and inform all that we do. So, what’s love got to do with it? Everything. Because love matters.