Let’s talk about love.
Like the Hebrew language, the English language has one paltry word to describe what we are here today to celebrate. The Hebrew word for love is “ahab.” The English word is “love.” Because we only have one word, we use it to describe everything from our favorite shirt to the cars we drive to the deepest and most profound connection human beings can have.
Just thinking back over the popular lyrics of my youth in the last half of the 20th century, I bet you can remember hearing that love is all you need (the Beatles), that we need a whole lotta love (Led Zeppelin), that love is tender (thank you, Elvis). We sang along to John Denver that that it fills up our senses like a night in the forest, and that love sings in our hearts like a wren in a willow-wood, thanks to Kenny Loggins and Anne Murray. Joni Mitchell understood that she really didn’t know love at all when she described it as moons and Junes and Ferris wheels. Nat King Cole spelled out love in his honeyed voice. I also learned tragically in my childhood that muskrats have something to teach us about love, for which I still blame the Captain and Tennille. Wow.
Now the ancient Greeks had 7 words to describe the range and depth and height of love.
The first (and often last) type of love we encounter in our lives is Storge, or familial love-- the love between a parent and child, or between children and their parents. It can—and does-- exist even when there is no biological connection. There is an element of choice one can exercise in all loves, and storge is no exception. For those whose biological families do not provide this, one can form “family of the heart,” and one can extend oneself as a parental or mentoring figure to others. Storge carries with it obligations and responsibility that rest more heavily on one side at the beginning of a life, and on the other at the end of another’s life. St. Paul uses storge, combined with philia, in Romans 12 when he commands his listeners to “love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”
Storge is a bond that makes duty a joy and the humblest, even most repugnant tasks, such as changing a diaper, bearable. It is a love grounded in care-giving and caretaking. Note those words and adjust them slightly in your heads, because in this love we both humbly offer care and we humbly and gratefully accept care as part of demonstrating this kind of love. We don’t shy away when one is in need, and we don’t push others away when we need help. Give and Take, Lead and Learn, in an unending spiral throughout the entire sweep of existence. It is love as Care.
Encountering love as familial love and welcoming it into your life then sets the stage for the next kind of love, once that is required in order to be able to bear love for others. This kind of love the Greeks called Philautia, or self-love. This love is not selfishness. Instead this love is the ground of all other loves that one can feel toward others. This is the second kind of love we usually encounter in our stages in life, and often one of the hardest to maintain in a culture that constantly tears others down. It can be difficult because it requires one to practice a degree of self acceptance grounded in self honesty without devolving into self absorption. This kind of love makes all the other loves possible, because if you can't care for and love yourself you can't care for and love other people. It’s a type of love that involves the letting go of hurts that may have been planted in us in childhood, and instead granting ourselves the grace and opportunity to recognize where we ourselves have the possibility of changing and being better through our own power and agency, with God’s help. This love is self-compassion, and it is vital to be an equal partner with your beloved.
The third concept and state of love we encounter in our lifetimes is named in Greek as Philia, or friendship. This is an affectionate love in which friends are recognized as equals, as teammates, as family by choice rather than by birth. This kind of love blaze is to life when two souls recognize each other and connect. Philia is notable for its tenderness and affection. like Agape, this is a love that is a matter of action and will more than the chances and changes of the human heart. It is a love characterized by constancy, acceptance, and celebration. It is a love always willing to help the other and support the other. This is love as loyalty.
The next love we usually encounter in life is Eros, or erotic love. Eros is the passionate love that is both the most powerful and the most fragile of all kinds of love, because of its tendency to burn out too quickly if not carefully wedded to other kinds of love. The beauty and depth of this kind of love must always be grounded in respect and care for the other, lest it become transactional. But it is a sacred and holy love -- one that we heard beautifully described and celebrated in our reading from the Song of Solomon. It is a love that is a gift of mutuality and joy and reverence and indescribable beauty. Yet at its best this kind of love of attraction is what holds the universe together as stars and galaxies pull and play off one another through the forces of gravity and magnetism. This is love as attraction and desire that doesn’t possess but seeks to create delight..
Right alongside Eros, there is Ludus, or playful love. This joy in discovering the other often accompanies Eros, if Eros is to last, and helps keep sexual love grounded in mutuality and delight. Ludus, like Eros, often appears especially strong at the beginning of a relationship when two people are discovering each other and taking joy and delight in each other in the first bloom of a relationship. This love is filled with laughter, even glee, and silliness and wonder. It is wide-eyed and filled with exultation.
The sixth type of love is Pragma, or love that has endured-- what I once heard referred to in a couple of beautiful songs somewhat inelegantly as “old love.” It is love that has endured in part because, unlike the other ones we've just mentioned, this love can only exist as the result a partnership and effort on both sides in equal measure. Now when I say equal measure that doesn't mean that the equal effort will occur always at the same time. No -- with pragma, there will be times that one person pulls and the other person rests and then those sides exchange throughout the long course of a committed relationship. Pragma is love that has refined an aged and mellowed and deepened over time. It is no accident that the word pragmatic comes from this kind of love. it is a love that in the end does not keep score, but does try to keep balance. This is love as commitment.
To the Greeks, and in the early Church, the greatest and highest form of love from a standpoint of faith is Agape, or selfless love, the most radical type of love. Agape is the kind of love that our Buddhist kindred describe as “universal loving kindness,” or metta. It is the kind of love described by Saint Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians as the love that “believes all things, hopes all things endures all things.” It is a kind of love that binds communities, especially communities of faith, together despite all differences of the individual members. Agape recognizes something precious and divine in those toward whom it is directed. It is used to describe the relationship between the Holy Trinity and toward creation and humankind. It is used to describe the force of God’s will for us to flourish and grow. This love is the essence of God's very being.
Four of these words appear in scripture: Agape, Eros, Philia, and Storge, with Agape being elevated as the highest form of love in communities of faith.
It is Agape --or a form of it-- that shows up four times in our first sentence in the reading we heard today from John’s first letter: “Beloved” is “AgapEtoi;” “let us love” is “agapOmen;” and the love that comes out of God and is of God is “Agape” itself, and the love of everyone is expressed as “AgapOn,” or “loving.” Altogether, Agape appears in these few short verses we heard 15 times. It also appears four times in our three-verse long gospel reading.
Agape is love in action. In your marriage, Agape is the glue that will hold all things together, and a reminder to you that your love for each other is sacred and pure, grounded in God’s love for you and all of us. But it is all these loves that we have already seen in your commitment to each other until now and that we commit to supporting you as your relationship grows and deepens. I hope you always remember that being both hearers and doers are equally important in successful marriages, as we seek to honor and cherish our partners throughout the years that lie ahead of you. As you commit to each other and your new family that you are forming in this commitment today, make sure you always walk gently with each other, with kindness, tenderness, and attentiveness in the hours, days, weeks, and years ahead of you.
We may lack seven different words for love. But we do have at least seven words that operate in our partnerships that we can name, that we heard as we discussed those seven terms, love as:
Care.
Self-Compassion.
Loyalty.
Desire.
Joy.
Commitment.
Action.
I want to suggest there is another English word that we need to bring alongside their love, and that word is grace.
Agape is love in action. In your marriage, Agape is the glue that will hold all things together, and a reminder to you that your love for each other is sacred and pure, grounded in God’s love for you and all of us. But it is all these loves that we have already seen in your commitment to each other until now and that we commit to supporting you as your relationship grows and deepens. I hope you always remember that being both hearers and doers are equally important in successful marriages, as we seek to honor and cherish our partners throughout the years that lie ahead of you. As you commit to each other and your new family that you are forming in this commitment today, make sure you always walk gently with each other, with kindness, tenderness, and attentiveness in the hours, days, weeks, and years ahead of you.
We may lack seven different words for love. But we do have at least seven words that operate in our partnerships that we can name, that we heard as we discussed those seven terms, love as:
Care.
Self-Compassion.
Loyalty.
Desire.
Joy.
Commitment.
Action.
I want to suggest there is another English word that we need to bring alongside their love, and that word is grace.
Believe it or not, there may come a time when a quirk one of you has that the other considers charming now may eventually seem to be maddening. That is normal. So now I want to suggest to you a third way to open up our discussion on love. I want to talk to you about the quality of grace. Those of us in the theology business understand grace as God’s free gift to us of salvation. But to put that in starker terms when it comes to relationships, grace is goodwill and breathing space granted to our loved ones, our neighbors, our friends. Yet grace is also a rare, but desperately needed gift in our relationships and indeed in our entire society today.
Remind yourselves to be both hearers and doers in seeking the benefit of each other as beloveds. Remember that really hearing each other goes beyond the physical sense to attentiveness to the different ways in which your beloved speaks. Remember that a slumped shoulder at the end of a long day can call out just as eloquently for support as an open request for assistance. And once you hear that need in your beloved’s posture, be a doer: a bringer of a cold beer, a drawer of a warm bath, a folder of piled laundry, a champion against all that seeks anything but the best for each other. That is love in action.
One thing is certain: love in all its many forms is holy. Love in all its forms is necessary. And love in all its forms is ultimately from God, who is the source and the fountain of love.
Love is everything. And may God continue to grace Chelsea and Becky in their marriage together with an abundance of love in all its forms.
Amen.
Remind yourselves to be both hearers and doers in seeking the benefit of each other as beloveds. Remember that really hearing each other goes beyond the physical sense to attentiveness to the different ways in which your beloved speaks. Remember that a slumped shoulder at the end of a long day can call out just as eloquently for support as an open request for assistance. And once you hear that need in your beloved’s posture, be a doer: a bringer of a cold beer, a drawer of a warm bath, a folder of piled laundry, a champion against all that seeks anything but the best for each other. That is love in action.
One thing is certain: love in all its many forms is holy. Love in all its forms is necessary. And love in all its forms is ultimately from God, who is the source and the fountain of love.
Love is everything. And may God continue to grace Chelsea and Becky in their marriage together with an abundance of love in all its forms.
Amen.
Readings:
No comments:
Post a Comment