What am I to say about love? Culturally we seem to be confused about just what love is. The Beatles suggest that you can’t buy it and it’s the only thing you need. The band, “Nazareth” suggests that love hurts. The Righteous Brothers tell us that we can lose that loving feeling, but according to Nazareth, that’s a good thing. The Doors seem to fall in love quickly—“Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name,” but it also seems to last a long time because both Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston say that “I will always love you.” Paul Simon disagrees because he claims there are at least “50 ways to leave your lover.” Now, Meatloaf will do anything for love, well, except that one thing. So what are we to make of love?
Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church seems to be having a difficult time nailed down exactly what love is. It’s almost like you’re hearing Paul being interviewed and the reporter has just asked Paul, “What is love.” He says, “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love, well, it never ends. When you chew on it for a moment, love sounds a lot like God.
I think Soren Kierkegaard gets close to what love is when he said, “Passion enflames and worldly sagacity cools, but neither this heat nor this cold, nor the combination of this heat and this cold is the pure air of the eternal [love of God].” Passion enflames, meaning that love is an energy and a driving force. It fills us with excitement and joy. Worldly sagacity cools means that love offers wisdom and patience and peace. Is this beginning to sound a bit familiar? He goes on to say that neither passion nor wisdom, nor having both passion and wisdom compares to the kind of eternal love that God offers.
Paul and Kierkegaard both say that love never ends. It is the one thing we can experience that defines time or circumstance. Love is the beginning and the ending of our story with God—Genesis 1 to Revelation 21. Too often Christians like to start the story with Genesis three (God’s punishment for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) and end it with Revelation 20 (death and judgment), but if you extend the story on either side you will see that our story is fundamentally one of love.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth because the love within the Trinity was too great for God to keep hidden within the divine heart. God’s love poured forth and created life. I like to refer to Creation as, “Love in search of a word.” God creates through word—Let there be. Creation almost seems like God is searching for just the right word to express the Love within the divine heart. God says, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God continues and says, “Let the waters separate. Let there be dry land. Let there be life.” God is searching for just the right word that says, “love.” Interestingly, do you know on what day life was created? On the third day. Just sayin’. Through word, God creates all of these things and on the seventh day, God rested. I imagine God taking a deep breath on that seventh day and finally saying, “Ah, there it is.” Love has found a relative completeness when God and all of life rest within each other. I’ve heard it said that the most loving thing you can do with someone is waste time—being with someone when there is no schedule or agenda. The other is the reason you are there. It’s what God did on the seventh day, and in it there is wisdom.
Our story begins with love and ends with love. Revelation 21 says, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them (or he will simply be with them as he was on the seventh day). They will be his peoples and God himself with be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And God said, “See, I am making all things new.” Sounds like love, doesn’t it.
Faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love. Faith is trusting that God will do what God promised to do, and we just read that God promises to be with us. Faith is trusting that God is here. Hope is trusting in things not yet seen. Hope is living as if the sun will rise tomorrow. Hope is living according to the work of the Holy Spirit. Love is certainly the greatest of these because it is the glue that holds faith and hope together. It is the gift of God, which allows us to trust God and do what God is calling us to do.