Sunday, January 31, 2016

When You Love Someone (Epiphany 4C)

 
When You Love Someone
Homily delivered for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
31 January 2016
8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

After I had been here about 2 years, Father Jim Boston in Grants Pass gave me this summary of local cultural dynamics:  The people in Ashland like to look down their noses on the people in Medford.  The people in Medford look down on the people in Grants Pass.  The people in Grants Pass look down on the people in Williams and like rural communities in the Illinois and Applegate valleys.  The people in Williams look down on all the people in Ashland, Medford, and Grants Pass.

Boundaries are necessary to keep things in our life manageable and sustainable.  In the words of the mean neighbor in Frost’s poem, “Good fences make good neighbors.”   Without a clear sense of boundaries, things can quickly get out of control and go strange.  Boundaries help us identify who is with us and who is against us; they help us distinguish between friend and foe.  Because of this, local loyalty and pride seem to stem unavoidably from maintenance of good fences.  But so also, a contempt for the familiar unfortunately seems to be part of the deal. 

Today’s Gospel reading describes a scene where the people of Jesus’s hometown, initially pleased and pleasantly surprised at the well phrased preaching of this local boy who has made good, turn against him.   They are surprised because they think they know this Jesus—one of Joseph the builder’s sons.  Jesus calls them on this:  a prophet is honored everywhere but his hometown, and here you are wanting me to work the signs of power here that you have heard I have done up the road a bit in Capernaum!  He then cites scriptures where God worked wonders with strangers and foreigners, not locals and good Jews.  He is saying “I am here to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.  That means tearing down fences.”   This enrages them.   

The contempt bred of familiarity blinds us, as it blinded the people of Nazareth, to the presence of prophets in our midst. The fact is, familiarity and intimacy should engender sympathy, not contempt, affection, not judgment.  But our need for fences tends to trump all this, this is pretty good evidence to me of our brokenness, an indication that our loves—whether social affection, friendship, romantic desire, familial or community attachment—are limited and broken.

The reading from Corinthians that we just heard is often misunderstood. Because it is regularly read at weddings, people think that Paul is talking about romantic love only.  But Paul is talking about love itself of any kind.  He says that love is not just an emotion that is felt and experienced, but a condition of the will.  He knows that love as emotion, like any passion, can be fleeting or unpredictable.   The love he describes is what love should be, not how it often is played out in our brokenness.

He uses a classical literary device to discuss love.  He personifies an abstract concept, in this case, “Love,” in order to show graphically what that concept entails: “Love is longsuffering, doesn’t ask questions, is not rude,” etc.  Unfortunately, personification is a literary trope not commonly used in our age, and we often miss Paul’s meaning, which is about this very issue—what it is to love, and why familiarity cannot be allowed to breed contempt.   

In order to make what Paul is saying clearer, I have done my own translation of the passage, using a literary device more familiar to us moderns.  Rather than using personification, for instance, I give concrete examples and cases.  Here is what I believe Paul is saying:  

“Imagine that I can speak in many human and angelic languages, but that I am a person who does not love anyone.  What I am I then?  Simply a noisy and annoying gong or cymbal, nothing more.  And what if I were a prophet who knew every bit of God’s plan, and every item of knowledge there was to know, and even had such complete faith that I could move mountains at will.  If I weren’t a loving person—what would I be?  Nothing, that’s what.  If I gave away everything I own—and if I gave over even my body—a praiseworthy thing, to be sure—and yet if I did not have love, it wouldn’t do me any good.    What is love?  When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person.  You are not jealous of those you love, and you don’t try to show them up.  You don’t talk down to them, or act rudely toward them.  You don’t try to have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them.  You don’t get pleasure at any injustice done to them or by them, but rather you rejoice when truth prevails for them.  When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them.  When you love, you never stop loving.  Not so with prophecies, languages, or knowledge—these will all cease one day.  For our knowledge and our prophecy are partial only.  And when wholeness arrives, partial things will come to an end.  When I was a child, I used to talk, think, and reason as a child does.  When I became an adult, I put aside a child’s way of doing things.  At present, we see things indistinctly, as if through a clouded mirror.  But then it will be face to face.  At present, I know things only in part, but then, I shall have a knowledge of others just as I also am fully known.   But as matters stand now, only these three things really last—faith, hope, and love.  And of these, the greatest is love. (1 Cor 13:1-13)

Love here is not just a feeling we experience or suffer.  It is an active way we behave, the way we treat the beloved.  Love in this sense is a type of sacrifice, a limitation on our freedom and our will.    At the heart of love is giving the beloved the benefit of the doubt, withholding judgment, and sharing hope.   It is saying “I’m on your side.” 

For Paul, love by definition places constraints on our freedom.  That’s why he says at one point, “In love, be like slaves to one another”(Gal. 5:13). 

Not all the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus.  Most did, but this story as told in Mark 6 suggests that at least some accepted him:  there he is able to heal a few.   These few give him the benefit of the doubt, and rather than letting their familiarity breed contempt, they cultivate it and let it blossom into a deeper relationship.  And they see the signs of power of the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. 

May we treat our loved ones, may we treat each other, more kindly, not less kindly, than strangers.  May we learn the joy of sacrificial love, of giving each other the benefit of the doubt, and of working out our differences in love and respect, with no imputed bad motives.  May we see and hear the prophets who walk among us.  May our love overcome our desire for fences.  For love so lived never ends, and is the most important of all the gifts of God.   

In the name of God, Amen. 

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