The Love That We Call God
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
January 28, 2024
Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. This morning the scripture I have chosen is from 1 John 4:7-8 from the New Revised Standard Version.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Probably, over 75 percent of the weddings I have officiated in my 28 years of professional ministry have found the couple choosing 1 Corinthians 13 the famous love chapter for their ceremony. It is beautiful and almost poetic, and at a basic level is clearly about love between people, but I sense the Apostle Paul when he wrote it was not thinking about giving the message at a couple’s wedding.
Rather, Paul is writing to a community in Corinth that has been engaged in, and even worse, locked in conflict over a whole slew of issues. They were extremely polarized on many of these issues and disagreed on just about everything. In many ways you could say they were not too different than the condition of America, currently.
The last thing that would help the people of Corinth would be a love poem that could be used in their wedding or in an intimate moment between lovers.
In reality, what the Apostle Paul gave them was a piece of Ancient Jewish wisdom mixed with a dash of Ancient Greek wisdom about what, in Greek, is labeled, “agape.”
We are quick to translate the word “agape” simply as love. But the word love in English is insufficient in and of itself to carry the full meaning of “agape”.
In Greek, the English word love can be translated in multiple ways:
· Eros (or intimate love) which has to do with the romance and passion between lovers.
· Phila (or deep friendship) which refers to the affection between friends, or the ethics that foster harmony between people. Phila is considered necessary to foster peace among people. Thus, Quaker William Penn named his city Phila-delphia (the city of brotherly love).
· Storge (or parental love) which refers to the affection of parents and children, or empathy of the strong for the weak, or the healthy for the sick, or even the love of an enemy, it is an affection or kindness based on the other’s need.
· Ludus (or playful love) describes the situation of having a crush and acting on it, or the affection between young lovers.
· Pragma (or enduring love) is a love that has aged, matured and is about making compromises to help the relationship work overtime, also showing patience and tolerance.
· Philautia (or love of self) is the idea that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of “self-compassion”).
So, there you have it, there are multiple different kinds of love before you even get to the kind of love that the Apostle Paul is talking about.
Agape, the type of love most spoken about in the Bible is a kind of unconditional love; the kind of love that is not concerned with the lover’s needs, or wants, or status, but only concerned with the needs of the other.
One definition says that agape is a kind of love that seeks the best for the other without regard to one’s own standing in the relationship. In other words, agape is a love that expects nothing in return. Agape is a love that is beyond emotion.
Agape is beyond emotion because it has become compassion, or empathy. Agape is the kind of love that we only catch glimmers of in this life. Agape must be embodied in order to be.
Agape is embodied compassion, embodied empathy, embodied love.
Agape is beyond description, impossible to fully define and yet we would all recognize agape when we experience it. Agape is a dream; a dream embodied and enacted.
And this brings us back to waiting worship the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, Wolff shared a quote by Bishop Michael Curry (if you remember Bishop Curry officiated the Royal Wedding of Megan Markle and Prince Harry and actually talked about this love in his message – and oh the irony of that, in how I started this message).
Then last week in waiting worship, Megan Alderman was moved to repeat this same quote. And here is that quote:
“If it's not about love, it's not about God.”
And that is exactly what I believe the Apostle Paul was trying to get at by focusing on Agape Love.
Folks, Agape is the LOVE that we call God.
Let that sink in for a moment.
· It’s beyond emotion.
· It must be embodied compassion, embodied empathy, embodied love.
· It’s beyond description and must be experienced.
· It is a dream (this is why I believe Dr. King’s Dream endures because he was not just talking about the love between people, but his dream was about Agape love. He was actually talking about God!
And that is because, Agape is the LOVE that we call God embodied and enacted in the world.
Folks, Agape is the LOVE that we, Quakers, see when we recognize that of God in our neighbor.
Agape encompasses eros, philia, storge, ludas, pragma, philautia and all the emotions that go along with these loves and is more than the sum of these parts.
Agape is Beyond the Beyond, for Agape is God.
God is LOVE.
When I am working out at the gym during the week, I often listen to audio books and I enjoy biographies of interesting people. The last couple weeks I have been reading the biography titled, “Karma” by the 80’s pop icon, Boy George. About half way through his biography, Boy George briefly pauses and says this,
“Jesus loves you, loves me, loves us all.
God is only love and love is God explained.”
I paused my workout for a moment to rewind and listen to that again. This is a person who was ridiculed, abused, and rejected publicly by his own church. But after 60 years of searching comes to the realization that “God is only love and love is God explained.”
This is almost exactly what the Apostle John comes to understand in our text for today.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
I had a professor who taught us that instead of replacing the word “love” in 1 Corinthians 13, with marriage, my wife or husband, etc. It should be replaced with the word God.
God is patient
God is kind
God is not jealous
God does not brag
God is not arrogant
God does not take into account a wrong suffered
God does not rejoice in unrighteousness
God rejoices with the truth
God bears all things
God hopes all things
God endures all things
God never fails!
And here is the kicker folks, when we, Quakers, say that we see that of God in our neighbor, it should be because we see these attributes embodied in their lives.
That of God in my neighbor is patient
That of God in my neighbor is kind
That of God in my neighbor is not jealous
That of God in my neighbor does not brag
That of God in my neighbor is not arrogant
That of God in my neighbor does not take into account a wrong suffered
That of God in my neighbor does not rejoice in unrighteousness
That of God in my neighbor rejoices with the truth
That of God in my neighbor bears all things
That of God in my neighbor hopes all things
That of God in my neighbor endures all things
That of God in my neighbor never fails!
When I was working on my Master’s Degree at Wheaton College, I was asked to be a presenter at the Christian Higher Education Conference in Chicago. For the first time I would not only be speaking among my peers, in attendance would actually be some of my own professors from my undergrad and graduate programs. I opened up my session, by talking about the work of
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He wrote that,
“Love is the very physical structure of the universe.”
Teilhard believed that at the very heart, at the core of all reality was God who is Love, the source of all that is, the core of everything is LOVE.
Last week in Seeking Friends we talked about the importance of continuing to evolve in our theology, our understanding of our world, how we need to progress and move away from the structures that hinder us as a people, finally moving us to embrace who we are becoming.
Progressive Christian Theologian and author, Michael Morwood said that, “after 13.8 billion years of evolution, the divine is at work in the universe, coming into expression in us.”
Just maybe us Quakers were on the cutting edge and before our time in thinking that there was that of God in every person.
If we are created in the image of God and there is that of God within us, then Love is what we were made for because love is who we are.
Is it any wonder then that love becomes known when we see ourselves in our neighbor?
The embodiment of LOVE is achieved when, we who are made of LOVE, recognize ourselves in our neighbor, because LOVE is not something that we do, LOVE is who we are.
And as it states in Paul’s love chapter…
LOVE bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, LOVE never ends. Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.
When we recognize ourselves in our neighbors, we are the embodiment of love. Now we know only in part, then we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. When we recognize ourselves in the other, faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is LOVE.
I want to close by taking us back to Bishop Michael Curry’s Royal Wedding message, where he challenged the millions watching that day to imagine a world where Love is the way. He said,
Imagine our homes and families where love is the way. Imagine neighborhoods and communities where love is the way.
Imagine governments and nations where love is the way. Imagine business and commerce where this love is the way.
Imagine this tired old world where love is the way. When love is the way - unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive.
When love is the way, then no child will go to bed hungry in this world ever again.
When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook.
When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary.
When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside, to study war no more.
When love is the way, there's plenty good room - plenty good room - for all of God's children.
Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well... like we are actually family.
When love is the way, we know that God is the source of us all, and we are brothers and sisters, children of God.
My brothers and sisters, that's a new heaven, a new earth, a new world, a new human family.
Now, as we enter a time of waiting worship, I ask you to ponder the following queries:
1. How might I embody compassion, empathy, and love more in my life?
2. Do we see ourselves in our neighbor? Do we see God?
3. Where do I see love being the way in our world, today?