My friends, we have come to the end of our summer series – the dénouement, if you will, of this trilogy of sermons on the theological virtues. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. Three weeks ago, we said something about the Christian faith, and this past week, something about the Christian hope: today, we come to the greatest of these, which is charity.
I have received some flak from knowing and attentive parishioners over my choice of the traditional language for St Paul’s theological triad, for the use of the word “charity,” as the King James Version saith. In more contemporary translations, the word is given as “love.” There is a certain method to the madness. I said last week that hope is a slippery word, cheapened by easy use. How much more cheapened, how much more slippery, is the word love?
When Paul names “charity,” or “love,” as the greatest of the virtues, he is not talking about the same love that, say, we might hear about on the Hallmark channel. Neither is he talking about the same thing that the Beatles sing about when they posit, “All you need is love.” Why is that? Because Christian love, or charity, is properly speaking, not a human emotion. It is not something that is within human capacity to effect or execute. Christian love is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not about human religious striving.
In Paul’s list – faith, hope, love – the word Paul uses for “love” is the Greek, agape (ἀγάπη). Like many other languages, Greek has a greater vocabulary for the range of emotional and philosophical possibilities which English, God love it, lumps under the single word, “love.” Agape is not philia, or brotherly love. Agape is not eros, or romantic love. Agape is not the word used when you say how much you love broccoli, or green beans. Here’s the most famous use of the word agape, which will go some way to demonstrating its meaning:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[1]
Agape is the self-giving love of God, which is made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified, died, and risen from the dead. Agape is not generic: it is specific. Agape is the love of God for the world, in which Christians rejoice and which they refract back to a world groaning for its need of precisely that love.
The New York Times ran a column yesterday under Timothy Egan’s by-line, entitled: “Why People Hate Religion.”[2] It may not surprise you to learn that it was sent to me by everyone I know. You won’t have any trouble guessing the reasons given, because they are nothing shocking, and certainly nothing new: Egan lists selective moral policing, posturing, self-aggrandizement, and the rankest sort of hypocrisy. It is tempting to accuse Mr Egan of making a straw-man argument, holding up the worst hypocrites as representative of the whole, but one suspects that these most extreme cases are different in scale but not necessarily in type. What Christian community has not known its share of petty hypocrisies?
In this morning’s first lesson, from the letter to the Hebrews, the writer gives both encouragement and caution: “Let mutual love continue.”[3] He goes on to describe what that looks like: Hospitality to strangers; remembering the Christian saints in prison; honoring the bonds of marriage; resisting avarice, and being content with what you have. For most people of goodwill, these are no brainers, an obvious recipe for harmony in almost any type of human community. And yet… how many communities have we all been a part of – neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, clubs, churches – where none of the foregoing list is observed, despite wide agreement in principle. It is not incidental that this lesson from Hebrews is paired with this morning’s Gospel text, in which Our Lord obliquely chastises the social climbing and posturing among the leading cohort of his time and place. “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”[4] People exalting themselves is the story of human history, which is the graveyard not only of empires, but also of utopias of every kind, especially “religious” ones.
The tonic for all of this mess in human society is the church’s embodiment of the love of God – of agape – in the world, with God’s help, of course, and this is what we have been discussing in one way or another over the course of this set of sermons.
So, for a quick review:
Christian faith, as discussed, is trust that God is as good as his promises, as good as his Word, both that of the Scriptures and more particularly the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ.
Christian hope, is the freedom, the renewed life, that come from placing our trust in the good promises of God.
Christian love, then, is the selfless love that Christians have for one another and the world, given to us by the Holy Spirit. It is the opposite of conceit, the opposite of hypocrisy, the opposite of pride.
If I’m being honest, I will admit that of the triad of faith, hope, and love, I have always struggled the most with Christian love. Why? Because of the cruel truth that not everyone I meet seems equally loveable. Some people one likes instantly and easily; for others, well, we might say that the path toward love is less obvious. As a teenager this made me worried about my place in the whole Christian project. Have you ever felt this way?
Imagine my relief, then, when I came upon the following passage from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He writes,
I pointed out in the chapter on Forgiveness that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same way Christian Love (or Charity) for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection. We 'like' or are 'fond of' some people, and not of others. It is important to understand that this natural 'liking' is neither a sin nor a virtue, any more than your likes and dislikes in food are a sin or a virtue. It is just a fact. But, of course, what we do about it is either sinful or virtuous.[5]
Christian love is not about natural affinity for our neighbors. If is not even primarily about us and our abilities. What a relief that is! Whether we have natural affinity for another person or group of people is just a fact of life. But what we do about that fact, of course, matters a great deal indeed.
All of which brings us back to this morning’s readings, to the letter to the Hebrews and St Luke’s gospel.
If Christian love is not an emotion, not something that depends on the fickleness of our moods and feelings, then where does that leave us? I mentioned last week that all of Christian teaching, all of Christian practice, is a school of character. Lives of Christian character are characterized not by decision making under conditions of scarcity but by generosity, by mutual regard, by remembering the least among us and around us, by honoring the vows of marriage, and by denying greed. Christians of character do not exalt themselves at the expense of their neighbors and rivals. Christian character is about inculcating those habits of mind and of life that are both the expression hope and the fertile ground in which the Holy Spirit can water the mustard seed of our faith.
Christian love is not a feeling. Christian love is a discipline. Agape is natural for God, but for us, it takes cultivation for it to become a habit of heart and mind and life, nurtured by the Holy Spirit. But it is not a drag. Paul also describes the fruits of living with unselfish regard for those around us and our world, wishing for our neighbors’ good: those fruits are “joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”[6] Those are the gifts of God for those who undertake the discipline of love. But we do not go it alone.
The love of God and the truth of the Christian gospel are not the work of human religious striving, of “religion” as described by Timothy Egan. In the person of Jesus, God has done the work, God has chosen to make his dwelling place with humanity, and in the final analysis the only love that matters is the love of God – agape – in which we are made partakers through faith in Jesus Christ. By this faith, we are freed to live with hope, allowing the Holy Spirit to carry the love of God not only into the world, but into our hearts, right here and right now.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
AMEN.