I will always love you. How deep is your love? I know something about love. Love, love me, do. Love train. Love Boat, Love Child, Muskrat love. Endless love. Crazy in love. How many love songs do you think have been written in our lifetime? 100? 1000? 10000? Paul McCartney even sang “You think I would have had enough of silly love songs.” However many there are, I would suppose that there are an equal number of songs about heartbreak, loss, loneliness. What that says to me is that popular culture really does not understand love, at least the way St. Paul talks about it in the epistle to the Corinthians. Love is more than a feeling and is, in fact, act of will that makes demands on us. “Love is all you need,” goes another song and that is correct as far as it goes – but not easy to attain. The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky, poured cold water on any hearts and flowers understanding of love when he wrote. “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.” Any dream-like understanding of love comes crashing to earth in the real world. Any parent who has disciplined a child, any spouse who has worked mightily to make their marriage work, anyone who has grieved because they have lost someone dear to them, any friend who has experienced the sting of betrayal knows how harsh and dreadful love can be.
The dilemma we live with: love is the greatest thing in the world, according to St. Paul, the thing we are made for, the thing which we all desire, the thing that reflects the very nature of God since God is love. But the problem is that this crazy little thing called love is hard. Why did St. Paul put this thirteenth chapter in the letter to the Corinthians? Because they weren’t living out the command at the heart of Christian faith: loving God and loving their neighbor. The Apostle creates a check list so the Corinthians, and we, can assess how we’re doing in the work of love. He lists eight things you’re supposed to do when you love and eight things you are not supposed to do. How do our lives reflect Paul’s vision of love? What we’re supposed to do: love is patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. What we’re not supposed to do as loving people: love is not jealous, not pompous, not inflated, not rude, does not seek its own interest, is not quick-tempered, does not brood over injuries, does not rejoice in wrongdoing. When you look at those lists of dos and don’ts it seems obvious that love, the way the Bible thinks about it, does not have much to do with feelings at all. According to St. Paul love has much more to do with treating other people with dignity and respect. You don’t need to feel all warm and fuzzy to be patient and kind. You don’t need to want to spend time with someone to avoid being jealous or rude or quick-tempered. That tells us that we become loving people not because of some attractive quality about the person in front of us but due to our recognition of the infinite value that the other person has, made in God’s image and likeness, precious in God’s sight.
Any parent can tell you that there is one aspect of love that the songs don’t mention. When you love someone you act in ways that assist them to be who God made them to be. Parents make sure their children eat the right things, do their school work instead of playing, make them keep curfew so they will not get into (too much) trouble. Even when the children resist parents insist on the values and practices that will help their child live up to their God-given potential because that is the loving thing to do. But a funny thing happens at a certain point. The love parents have for their children changes from one of authority – Why do I have to do it? Because I’m your mother and I say so – to one of wisdom. That reminds me of the old story of a mother banging on her son’s room one morning. “Johnny, Johnny, time to get up, time to go to school. But I don’t want to go to school, the kids all hate me. Give me three good reasons why I have to go to school. One, because you’re supposed to go to school. Two, because I’m your mother and I say so. Three, because you’re the principal and you’ve got to unlock the doors.” But I digress. As children grow the love of parents changes from telling their child what to do to helping them to understand themselves and to relate to others. The call to love is the same – to help the individual become the person God made them to be — but how to do that changed as the circumstances changed.
All of which raised a question in my own mind – what is the loving thing to do in the time of covid? Everyone has heard what we must do in order to mitigate the effects of the virus – wear masks, keep social distancing, get vaccinated, quarantine when you are exposed. When people don’t follow those guidelines it can be infuriating. But since we are called to love our neighbor it probably will not be effective to wag the bony finger of blame. Government trying to coerce compliance through authority has produced negative reactions. The loving thing is not to write off those who ignore the protocols but to gently, oh so gently, point out that the experts have told us how to care for ourselves and our neighbors in the midst of a pandemic. We do so out of love, even for the one resisting the mitigation efforts. Oh, and as Jesus found out in Nazareth, don’t expect your loving concern to be well receive but do it anyway. Love. It’s what we do.
