It’s complicated, love is. It’s what makes the world go round, yet we often feel it could slip away in an instant; it’s as fragile as an orchid and stronger than death. It is at the heart of the Christian faith, but how often is it found in our church communities?
The story My Sister’s Keeper, both a novel and a movie from this summer, explores many of love’s facets. I won’t spoil the plot for you if you haven’t seen it, but I encourage you to see it or read it if you haven’t. (And if you have, please post your comments at the end of this editorial online.)
The tension is between the many loves in a family undergoing considerable strain. Because the loves are human, they are both good but limited. Each is both life-giving and selfish. You can’t help but be moved by the plot. The love is raw, raging, fledging and mature, and is not limited by death.
I’d argue that it’s God’s greatest gift to us not only because it allows us a glimpse of God in this world, but because it is what will frame our relationship with God in existence unhampered by the limits of time and space.
So why do people so often feel unloved or unworthy of love? As part of some spiritual exercises, people will be asked to look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves if they feel worthy of their partner’s love. Of their children’s love? Their parents’ love? God’s love?
It’s a serious question, because we say that according to our faith God created each of us to love and be loved. As any therapist will tell you, if you cannot be vulnerable enough to be loved, you cannot love others as fully as you are able.
Christmas is the season when we celebrate Love’s incarnation. But our tendency in church is to sanitize it or make it maudlin. Love is life. It’s not just about cute children helping us recall a story when God entered history. It’s the messy, visceral story of how God is still in the midst of our history and of our lives.
It’s one of the points that David Clark makes in his excellent essay in this issue on the Spirit. Too often we talk about the Spirit in dry, inaccessible academic terms. Clark makes the point that the Spirit is active all around us.
Here’s another approach. In My Sister’s Keeper – or, if you don’t know it, pick any love story you know; Romeo and Juliet is perfect – you feel you can almost touch the love between some of the characters it’s so strong. The love is tangible.
That’s the Spirit, according to St. Augustine. It’s the love between God the Father and God the Son, the Son who took on human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. That love is God.
One of the casualties in Western Christianity from the Renaissance onward has been the loss of mystery in favour of the cold light of reason. Don’t get me wrong, reason has its place. But it can’t explain everything.
It can’t explain love and it can’t explain God. Or how God interacts with us.
The ancient Israelites believed in special beings, called messengers of God. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the word angelos, angel. Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in these angels, and that they are creatures who exist beyond the constraints of time and space.
My Sister’s Keeper proposes that love transcends death. That’s a Christian belief, too. If we can believe that love between people carries on even after death, is it any more difficult to believe that God’s love and God’s messengers of love also carry on?
The directors and staff of the Presbyterian Record join me in wishing you, your family and friends a wonderful Christmas. We hope you will experience God’s love in the midst of all your celebrations. And when you sing about the angels who greeted Jesus’ birth, we hope you will hear them still singing about God’s love for you.
