Ah, love [Quinquagesima]

 READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 1 Samuel 16:1-13

• 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

• St. Luke 18:31-43

To all of you who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
 

Who speaks to us today, saying,

“And Jesus said to him, ‘Recover your sight; your faith has saved you.’”
 

In fact, when we talk about faith, hope, and love, heard in the Epistle reading, we don’t really mention hope or love at all. This is because when Jesus does His miracles, it is always faith that saves, as He said today, and it is always faith that justifies the sinner. 

 

Love does not save or justify, but it is always a command, it is always the bare minimum of work for the Christian: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 23:39), “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:44), “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…” (Mt 10:37), and the like. 

 

This is because God is love and true love is not found outside of God nor is it found apart from God, though we try hard to make it so. Even Christian love is incomplete at best(What Luther says). For as we hear today in the Epistle, things in this world are only done in part (1 Cor 13:12) and we cannot help but be in this world.

 

In fact, when you say and speak about “true love”, that’s not what you actually say. You say “to blave” which means to bluff. As in, you tell someone you love them, but you are just bluffing and are only in it for the benefits you get. Hence, the nasty emotions of jealousy and betrayal and the skyrocketing numbers of divorce and children born outside of wedlock..

 

Case and point: you say you “love your neighbor”, but when you take away his job and his means of providing for his family, is that love?

 

In the world of Hollywood, however, true love always seems to win. Of course it is all make-believe and nonsense, you rarely get truth from movies, but only because they miss the real reason that true love conquers all. That is, because there is strength to support and defend it.

 

Love, as we have been programmed to believe it, cannot stand on its own. It is yielding. It is hypocritical. It is self-serving. And at most, we can only truly love one person and forget about the rest of them. At least, the one we’re with in that moment. Because we can love many people, but only one at a time. Otherwise, that’s called cheating.

 

In these last days, “because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold”, as Jesus says in Mt 24:12. This Word has come to pass in front of you. Because your love is the opposite of everything St. Paul describes today, your love for God and others has failed. At a very basic level, humanity cannot function without interaction, without close physical community, without love.

 

In Faith, these things take place. Faith is the virtue that is unyielding and unchanging. In love, we should permit the robbing of our goods, reputation, life, and everything we have; but we should not bear to have the Gospel, faith, Christ, or the Sacraments taken from us; and accursed be the humility that here shows itself compliant.” (Luther, Weimar 40:I:181ff)

 

Faith is the immovable champion that secures a safe space for true love and hope is the binding agent that allows community and interaction to take place, because hope seeks the greater good in both faith and love. “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1), “I hope for your salvation” (Ps 119:166), and “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8) in the crucifixion of Christ Jesus (Rom 5:8).

 

The key to understanding true love is not found on your TV or internet, but it is found in Christ on the Cross. What this means is that in order to understand the love of God in Christ on the cross, you must believe that the love of God does not first discover what is pleasing to it, but it creates it.

 

Strip away all the bluffing and false veneer of human love in the world and all that is left is sin and death. Get rid of that, even, and what is left but God’s almighty, creative love alone. God speaks, and whatever He says is brought into existence. The Word of God created all things and His love is no different. In a world of “love gone cold”, God’s love creates out of nothing, that which it will love.

 

Man is different. Man needs an already existing object that pleases him in order to love. He must search to find his object and will more than likely toss it aside when he tires of it. There is no danger of this happening with God, for He will create what He loves and can not possibly un-love it afterwards. 

 

God’s love even goes a step further and loves the unlovable. For God loves sinners, evil people, fools, and weaklings in order that He make them righteous, good, wise, and strong. God does not wait for a special person to show up to deserve His love, instead He gives His love at the start, making the sinner loved. 

 

Sinners are not loved because they are appealing or attractive or paragons of character. In fact man avoids such sinners and evil people for that reason. 

 

But Christ came to call sinners, not the righteous (Matt 9:13). Instead of turning towards something already righteous and beautiful, Jesus turns towards the direction where He does not find good that He may enjoy, says Dr. Luther, but turns where He may confer good upon the bad and needy person. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” after all, says Acts 20:35.

 

From our Old Testament reading, David is the leftover son, the unlovable. In the Gospel, the blind man is so unlovable that he is left to fend for himself, begging on the streets. In all of history, God is the most unloved. For when He shows up to give His love to a thousand generations, “he [is] delivered over to the Gentiles and [is] mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they killed him” (Lk 18:32-33).

 

Yet this unloved and unlovable Son was going to rise again, three days later. In His ascension, He was not only going to heal all diseases, but He is granting the state of “Beloved of God” to those who believe in Him. In Christ’s operation to save all sinners by His Body and Blood, He pleases His Father by making creation loveable again.

 

And this state is granted in Word and Sacrament. Jesus operates in His own reasonable body and soul, as both man and God. In His work He unites the physical and the spiritual. He takes up man’s false love and turns it into God’s love. Christ must first be a sacrament, before He is an example. So we receive His work sacramentally, as pure gift, just as He offers it.

 

We need human interaction. So much so, that God gave Eve to Adam, even though Adam already had God. We need human interaction, face to face. If you want to love God you must face Him regularly, weekly even. But you cannot face God without Him having a face. You cannot love God without Him first showing love. You cannot have faith or hope…you get the idea.

 

So now we return to our Epistle with this new light of understanding and read:

“Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant or rude. He does not insist on His own way; He is not irritable or resentful; He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” “So now faith, hope, and Jesus abide, these three; but the greatest of these is Jesus.

 

The hope of a [sinful, faithless] man is false says Job 41:9. 

“Give thanks to the Lord because he is good, because his faithful love endures forever.” (1 Chron 16:34)

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, overlooking the sin of the few remaining for his inheritance? He doesn’t hold on to his anger forever; he delights in faithful love.” (Micah 7:18)

nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord…(Romans 8:38-39)

But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

 

God’s love trumps the hatred of sin, death and the devil. God’s love is given to us, in faith, as we go about our lives. God’s love is set down for us into death on a cross and God sets His love in front of us on a silver platter, inviting us to take and eat.