What the world needs now, is love, sweet love, that's the only thing that there's just too little of.
I remember singing this song as a young man and believing it with all my heart. Little did I know that the desire to be loved and loving, the need to bring more love to the world, would become my life. Nor did I really understand what the word "love" meant.
What is this "love" that the world has just too little of?
In the movie "Oh God!" there is a preacher who almost gets it right. He preaches that God is love and that God loves us. He preaches this message of love with passion and conviction. He goes on to say that since God is love, we ought also to love God. And so far, I am fully with him. Then he takes a leap I cannot follow and says that since he is God's pastor, God's voice, and that his work is God's work, we ought to support him with a sizable contribution. And what is God's loving work in him? It is his prestige gained by his TV and radio ministry, his expensive clothes, his big house and fancy car.
He is almost right. At least he knows that God is love. But his understanding of love is all about himself. He is the disciples before the crucifixion and resurrection arguing over who is greatest and who will get to sit at the right hand of power.
In Jesus's teaching and today's lesson from John's letter to the churches, love is not about us at all. Love, or to use the word John and Jesus use, αγαπε is other-directed, is a servant caring for family, friend, and even enemy. Αγαπε is about doing what is good for the other without expectations for the self.
I have translated verse 7 using a definition of αγαπε every time John uses a form of αγαπε to make my point. Notice that αγαπε is used both as a noun and a verb. Here is my translation.
Beloved (αγαπε - you who I serve with compassion), let us αγαπε (compassionately serve) each other, because αγαπε (compassionate service) is from God, and all those who αγαπε (serve compassionately)are born of God and know God.
John uses some form of αγαπε fourteen times in these five verses. For John, and for me, God is αγαπε love, and to worship and obey God is to love. Not friendship love, a mutual exchange of caring, though that can teach us a few good things, nor erotic love, a grasping to possess the object of desire, though that, too, has its lesson. God is αγαπε love, which is compassionate and selfless service.
To know God, we do not have to know the right words or the right prayers, we don't have to have the right understanding of scripture or prophecy, we don't have to belong to the right church or right religion, in fact we may not belong to any church or religion, but we must love as Christ loved us. Those who know God, who are born of God and live in God, serve each other and all creation with compassion and justice. And it is in the serving of another that true faith and deep joy are birthed.
Those who carry a bit of another's burden will be discovered by the love they are seeking. But those who do not know αγαπε, who do not serve others with a care born of divine compassion, don't know God and do not live as children of God. It is a harsh thing to say, but I believe it to be the truth.
The most miserable people I have met are people consumed by themselves. They make their own hell because they lack love's gift for serving without self seeking expectation. The most miserable I have been in my life is when I make my life about me and think others need to please me, when I require gratitude or appreciation for my service. My joy is most full, most complete, when my life is about another.
This truth has been vivid for me as a parent. I am filled with peace and joy when I am cooking for my children, or listening to their struggles, or sacrificing for their education because they need me and I can serve them. To give life to another, to sustain that life even in the midst of the terrible twos or rebellions of adolescence, to watch that life grow and become an adult giving life to others, is the best life has ever offered me.
A second way that I have known God in αγαπε has something to do with teaching. Teachers, like parents, give their lives in service to all who would learn what there might be to know. The good teachers, the great teachers we have had, got little pay and spent long hours not because of what was in it for their glory, but what was in it for their students. When I am teaching, not for my sake, but for the well-being of the students, then I am happy, full of energy and joy, at peace with myself and my world.
And the most amazing thing of this grace, to me, is that it also works in reverse. When someone loves me unconditionally, serves me with the best they have and the best for me, when I am forgiven as a gift, when I am gifted just because, and I am able to receive their grace, their gift with gratitude, then I, too, know joy and peace, then, too, I taste a bit of heaven. To love God and neighbor is not only to serve them with grace, but is also to receive their service to me with grace.
Perhaps the greatest lessons for me in αγαπε have been as a husband. The joy of Vickie's and my marriage is at its best when I graciously serve her and she graciously serves me. It is at its lowest when I am self-engrossed.
A mutual service freely given is what I believe Paul was trying to teach the people of Ephesus when he says about marriage, “Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord… (and then the verse that dominating churches and husbands conveniently overlook) Husbands love (αγαπε) your wives as Christ loved (αγαπε) the church and gave himself up for her.1Ephesians 5:21-22, 25
When Vickie and I relate in a mutual servanthood, a partnership of each caring for the other without selfish expectation, a shared giving and receiving of αγαπε, then I am in heaven and my joy is infinite.
Knowing that God is αγαπε, we taste heaven as we serve and are served compassionately. This knowledge has led me to a simple trick for chasing away the blue days, the days I just don't feel loved. Instead of trying to make folks show me love, instead of counting the ways I am not loved, I have found that if I go out of my blue way to show others love, to act with some compassionate service, then the blues fly away. And if while serving, I remember how I have been, my joy is even more complete. It is the paradox of heaven that we find heaven when we give love, and heaven finds us when we receive the love offered.
To push this unexpected truth further, we hear Jesus ask us to αγαπε our enemies. The mysterious joy of heaven becomes even more profound when we find ways to love those we most fear with maybe something as small as a prayer or a note of encouragement. Then, as if by divine magic, peace descends upon the soul and heaven reigns in the heart and mind when seek to know ways in which our enemy has loved us.
I think God made me a pastor so I could learn and then share this simple thing; that true and deep joy comes from nothing but the giving and receiving of αγαπε.
I have a historical anecdote that I thinks illustrates both the giving and receiving meaning of αγαπε well.
Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the well-known composer, was far from being handsome. Along with a rather short stature, he had a grotesque hunchback.
One day, he visited a merchant in Hamburg, who had a lovely daughter named Frumtje. Moses fell hopelessly in love with her, but Frumtje was repulsed by his misshapen appearance.
When it came time for him to leave, Moses gathered his courage and climbed the stairs to her room to take one last opportunity to speak with her. She was a vision of heavenly beauty, but caused him deep sadness by her refusal to look at him. After several attempts at conversation, Moses shyly asked, "Do you believe marriages are made in heaven?"
"Yes," she answered, still looking at the floor. "And do you?"
"Yes I do," he replied. "You see, in heaven at the birth of each boy, the Lord announces which girl he will marry. When I was born, my future bride was pointed out to me. Then the Lord added, 'But your wife will be humpbacked.'
"Right then and there I called out, 'Oh Lord, a humpbacked woman would be a tragedy. Please, Lord, give me the hump and let her be beautiful.'"
Then Frumtje looked up into his eyes and was stirred by some deep memory. She reached out and gave Mendelssohn her hand and later became his devoted wife. 2Barry and Joyce Vissell, "True Love," Chicken Soup for the Soul, (Health Communications, Inc. Deerfield Beach, FL, 1993), 10.
Grandfather Mendelssohn gives αγαπε to Frumtje by carrying a humped back for her. But Frumtje gives αγαπε to Mendelssohn by carrying his humped back as her lover and husband.
"What the world needs now, is love, sweet love, that's the only thing that's there just too little of. What the world needs now, is love sweet love, not just for some, but for everyone."
When we are born we know next to nothing. As babies, our world is small and we are at its center. When we are hungry, we cry for food. When we are dirty, we cry for cleaning. It truly is all about us. But as we grow toward being adults, we learn that the weeping of our souls cannot be ended by others, but only by the αγαπε love we give when we feed and clean others, and by the αγαπε love we receive when others clean up after us and forgive us our trespasses. Those who remain babies in life mourn life, but those who give and receive αγαπε rejoice and are glad in the Lord always.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God and all those who love are born from God and know God. Those who do not love do not know God, for God is love.
Shalom and Amen.