So now we come to the second component of the Kingdom
Agape…
AKA as love
Love is a feeling you feel when you feel like you’re going
to get a feeling you never felt before.
(that’s not love, its hormones).
Love is a perpetual state of anesthesia (no way, if anything
love makes us super sensitive)
Love is never having to say you’re sorry (that’s just
stupidity, for “I’m sorry” are two of the most powerful words for keeping love
alive).
What is love, really?
The ancient Greeks, who were not fools, felt they could not define love
with just one word. They had a
number. I’d like to look at three.
One word is EROS This
word stands for the romantic aspect of love.
This is the surge of emotion, the feeling you feel….” Eros is important, and its great. What fun would a marriage be without a little
eros? But there is a problem with
eros. It comes and goes. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s
not!
A second word is PHILEO.
This might best be translated friendship. It comes when people have common goals,
dreams, interests and beliefs. This too
is important. .
Finally there is what is called AGAPE. This is a unique word that is used, in the
Christian Bible, to talk about God’s love.
It is love, which as it is illustrated, with unearned. It is love simply given, as a gift. With agape love one is not loved because one
is beautiful, wise, rich, or powerful.
One is just loved. It is not
based on earthly value, it creates value.
We see the nature of this love in Jesus who constantly,
consistently, places high value on people who are normally rejected. Tax Collector, Prostitute, Thief, lowest of
the low…. Jesus, with the eyes of agape love, sees through surface
problems of illness, weakness and failure to the jewel at the core of the
person. He sees the person God created
that person to be…
In short, with agape love,
instead of looking at the world through the lenses of hatred, suspicion,
judgment and fear, we face the world with an open heart. And you respond to the world accordingly
Think about that passage from Corinthians we heard
earlier…. Those words aren’t about how
one feels, they are about how one sees, and about how one treats, others.
The great parable of agape love is the story of the prodigal
son….Luke 15:1-32
Here, the prodigal,
is someone who has failed miserably, even morally.
This is the mother who is on drugs
The man who has stolen from his employer
This is the person who has made a mess out of life and is
jobless and homeless
This is the person on the street.
In the story the parent… God…. Receives and accepts this
person…
And in the context of this reception… and remember it is not
a blind reception.
The parent knows
exactly what this child is like…
The parent knows every sordid detail… parents usually do you
know. I like how Richard Rohr puts it…
"The gaze of God receives us exactly as we are, without
judgment or distortion, subtraction or addition. Such perfect receiving is what transforms
us. Being totally received as we truly
are is what we wait and long for all our lives.
All we can do is receive and return the loving gaze of God every day,
and afterwards we will be internally free and deeply happy at the same time."
And there we have the point.
Agape love, being seen and received, as we truly are, is transforming..
The son in the story goes from being a homeless reject to
being a beloved son… and I would like to think, lives out his “sonship” from
that point on…
In other words… agape love helps create… metanoia, or transformation.
It is my hope that having made mistakes, having been broken,
that having been there, in the pit, the darkness, and redeemed, the prodigal would be
able to have empathy, forgive, love with agape love. I have no illusions that the son never made another
mistake. The shadow of failure, the
shadow of a wasted life doesn’t disappear after metanoia…
Thomas Merton writes, in his autobiography, The Seven Story
Mountain.. “There was this shadow, this
double, who had followed me in the cloister (this is after he became a monk)…
he is still on my track. He rides my
shoulders, sometimes, like the old man of the sea… I cannot lose him…. He is
supposed to be dead.”
The shadow doesn’t disappear. But we don’t need to be defeated by
this. This shadow keeps us honest, and
keeps us coming back to the one, God, who loves us with agape love. This shadow teaches us to love the source of
life… and prompts us to love our neighbor.
So agape love is something we receive
It is something which transforms us
And it is something we are called to give
What is it that you see in yourself that you don’t like?
What is that you see, when you look at yourself, that makes
you believe, that if people knew that about you, they would not receive you,
accept you?
Then think about the idea that God sees you. Sees all of you
For exactly who you are
But loves you anyway…loves you with a love that sees the
created to be you
With a love that creates value in you
A love that makes you a beloved child
A son or daughter of the King
A prince or a princess…
A treasure
Know that God loves you that way
Image what that can mean, for how you love others
In loving that way… you bring the kingdom into this time,
and this place.
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