On your Side (Epiphany 4C)

 

On Your Side
Homily delivered for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
27 January 2013

9:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist (before annual Parish Meeting)
Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

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

My parents met in second grade, were best friends, and fell in love as soon as they were in high school.  Lonnie and Grace secretly married when they were seventeen years old, much to the chagrin of their parents. But they remained faithful and true to each other for sixty-some years, until they died.

I never saw them argue, though I often saw them work out differences between themselves.  I once asked my father how it was that he and my mom were able to have such a long lasting, happy marriage.  He answered quickly.  “One of the saddest things you will see in your life, something that is all too common, is when a person treats the one he or she loves with less respect and kindness than that they do with strangers.  Gracie and I learned early on to treat each other, and the people we love, better, not worse, than other people.  It goes a long way in keeping life in order and balance.  And it helps keeps the joy you have in your love relationships.”

I was a little shocked at the idea—how could it be that people treat loved ones harsher than strangers?  But I came to learn all too soon that this was the norm, rather than the love I had seen modeled in my parents’ home.  People often treat their loved ones with less politeness, less dignity, and more abruptness than strangers.   

I am not sure why this is so.  Perhaps it is just the fact that love and intimacy lets us feel comfortable with one another, let down our guards, and open ourselves up to what we think as more “honesty” in our dealings with each other.  We come to expect to be loved and forgiven, and so are willing to do more that might need to be forgiven.  We see ourselves as less likely to give petty offense—we are with the beloved, after all, or with kin, or with friends—and thus believe we don’t have to put on airs, keep up a show, and observe the rules of politeness and kindness that serve as ways of limiting damage to relations with strangers and losing influence over people whose help or good will we may need.   

One of Aesop’s fables describes the problem.  The fox, when first meeting the Lion, is terrified, and is attentive to all politeness and courtesies and polite insincerities.  The next time they meet, the greeting is polite, but less ceremonial.  As they greet each other on successive days, the meeting becomes shorter and more abrupt.  Finally, even the politeness is gone and the Fox does not even worry about greeting the King of Beasts.  The moral is, you will remember, familiarity breeds contempt. 

Some of you may remember Erich Segal’s 1970 novel, Love Story, whose theme line was “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”    My father hated that phrase. He believed that love means saying you’re sorry each and every time you are in the wrong and have slighted or hurt the beloved. 

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 think they know him only all too well, and the fact that Jesus calls them on this—complete with proverbs on familiarity breeding contempt and scriptures where God worked with strangers and not locals—enrages them. 

The fact is, familiarity and intimacy should breed sympathy not contempt, affection not judgment.  The fact that this is not usually the case 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 of personifying an abstract concept, in this case, “Love,” in order to give a graphic sense of what that concept entails.  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 literary devices 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). 

Paul knows that love is risk, that love is costly.  It involves constraints, though these are not reducible to mere rules.  It is the opposite of letting yourself go because of familiarity, of thinking we owe less attentiveness and care because we feel safe in being rude to intimates. 

Love is always a risk, no matter what kind of love you are talking about.  Relationships, whether romantic, friendships, or community life like the Church, demand attention and sacrifice.  We often are afraid of trusting our fragile hearts to someone else, especially if our heart has been bruised or broken.  But love is a gift from God, and refusing love, not loving, is an option that we take only at the peril of our souls.

C. S. Lewis writes:  “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”

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:  he was able to heal a few.   These few gave him the benefit of the doubt, and rather than letting their familiarity breed contempt, they cultivated it and let it blossom into a deeper and deeper relationship. 

In the animated movie Toy Story, there is a song that talks about friendship, one type of love, and it expresses why contempt and hurt need not be the end of affection or intimacy.   It’s sticking together, putting up with each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt. 

You've got a friend in me.
You've got a friend in me.
When the road looks rough ahead
And you're miles and miles
From your nice warm bed,
Just remember what your old pal said
Boy, you've got a friend in me. 

You've got a friend in me.
You've got troubles, well I've got 'em too.
But there’s nothing I wouldn't do for you.
We stick together and we see it through.
You've got a friend in me.

Some other folks might be
A little bit smarter than I am
Bigger and stronger too maybe,
But none of them will ever love you the way I do.
It's me and you
And as the years go by
Boys, our friendship will never die.
You're gonna see
It's our destiny.
You've got a friend in me.

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.  For love so lived never ends, and is the most important of all the gifts of God.    

In the name of God, Amen.