“What Does Love Look Like?” by Rev. Paul Berghout

“What Does Love Look Like?” by Rev. Paul Berghout

Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 479

Piety

Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. Ephesians 4:32-5:2

Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked Nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, But delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on his law day and night. Psalm 1:1-2

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.” Luke 13:10-13

Study

It is the story of the courtship of Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the great German composer Felix Mendelssohn.

Moses Mendelssohn was a small man with a malformed, humped back. One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a lovely daughter. Though Mendelssohn admired her greatly, she avoided him, seemingly afraid of his grotesque hump.

On the last day of his visit, he went to tell her good-bye. Her face seemed to beam with beauty, but she cast her eyes to the floor when he entered. Mendelssohn’s heart ached in love with her. After some small talk, he slowly drew to the subject that filled his mind. “Do you believe that marriages are made in Heaven?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the young woman. “And do you?”

“Of course,” Mendelssohn answered. “I believe that at the birth of each child, the Lord says, ‘That boy shall marry that girl.’ But in my case, the Lord also added, `But alas, his wife will have a terrible hump.’

“At that moment, I called out, ‘Oh Lord, that would be a tragedy for her. Please give me the humped back and let her be beautiful.’”

The story goes that the young woman was so moved by these words that she reached for Mendelssohn’s hand and later became his loving and faithful wife.

Isn’t that a beautiful story? Hold on to it. We’ll come back to it in a few moments.

Which of God’s laws is greatest? We heard in our Gospel reading Sunday that set the stage for our week of lessons.  The answer isn’t as straightforward as we might prefer.

WHEN WE ASK FOR ONE COMMANDMENT, JESUS GIVES US TWO. The questioning student did not ask for a second-place commandment. He only wanted to know what the number one, greatest single commandment.  However, Jesus gave two commandments instead because the whole law and the prophets depend on two commandments, not one.  These are, namely, that we love God with our entire being and our neighbor as ourselves.

If you are keeping the first without keeping the second, you’re not maintaining the first. If X is more important than Y, we’ll treat Y as something to get around to sooner or later, once X is complete. 

Our focus, he says, must be thoroughly divine and no less entirely humanitarian. (source: ANDREW WILSON Two Commandments for the Price of One).

A pious Catholic maxim is, “At all times, have a special love for your companions, and this mutual love must come from God and tend to God.”

However, your neighbor is anybody. For example, in Sunday’s first reading, we heard that you should not oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. Oppressing a foreigner means economic oppression, but the root meaning is forced labor. Nevertheless, when the undocumented (so-called “illegal”) alien cries out to me, I will hear him, says God, for I am compassionate. This common biblical theme implies that God has his ear particularly cocked for the plea of those without resources and recourses. God is the guardian and avenger of those who lack social protection, which includes the unborn.

We see the face of God in others, especially in the faces of undocumented, law-abiding people who have been working and paying taxes for decades yet are not allowed to become citizens. Of course, we have the right to protect our national borders and manage immigration in a just way, but one that works.

The second commandment also checks fanaticism because you can’t say “I love God” and kill non-believers of your religion. It is not necessary to like everyone, but only to accept them. Jesus bases the second law on the other person’s relation to God. It is unconditional love, not unqualified approval.

The bonus is that if you keep one and two, you get three because Love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self all grow together and sustain one another.  If one is absent or neglected, the other two can suffer.

However, it’s not just about the self-understanding that comes with a relationship with God.  That can remain too subjective, individualistic, and inward-focused. They neglect the third essential component to Christian spirituality: love of and service to other people, a spirituality of action to serve the eternal benefit and eternal life of others, and their material well-being as a life goal.

Regarding love of one’s self- that is implied in the second: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

We hear Paul tell the Ephesians (5:28): “A husband who loves his wife loves himself.” Love of self here is a given—not a command per se.

St. Paul continues by writing to them: “After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church.” St. Catherine of Sienna offers the same insight when she says that we love other people with the same love we see when others – including ourselves -- love us.  If I do not accept myself as I am, it will show resentment and conflict with others as projections of our interior battles.

However, the phrase “Need love” is always born of emptiness. Only through a life a prayer can that emptiness be filled daily.

Action

What does love look like? 1 John 4:9 “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him…”

I said we’d return to that beautiful story from our beginning -- the story of Moses Mendelssohn, the small man with the large hump on his back. Remember he told the girl he loved, I believe that at each child's birth, the Lord says, that boy shall marry that girl. But in my case, the Lord also added, his wife will have a terrible hump. Please give me the humped back and let her be beautiful.

What does love look like? It’s like a man taking on a hump on his back so that his wife can be straight and beautiful.

But instead of a hump, let us say, as we think of the message of the Gospel, it’s like a man who takes a cross upon His shoulder so that you and I might be free from the power of sin and death and solely because of God’s love for us.  Amen.