Church of the Holy City

His Love Endures Forever

His Love Endures Forever
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 22, 2009

Deuteronomy 7:1-15 Luke 7:1-15

We have looked at truth as pointing the way to good; we have looked at good as being truth expressed from the heart; our subject today is love. Love is the object of religion. Teaching the ways of love is what all Christianity is about. God is love itself. And religion is about a person’s relationship with God. When we let God into our hearts, we are letting love into our hearts. We only love truly when God is in us.
But the word love has a wide range of meanings in our society. But I think all these meanings can be captured in the way Swedenborg talks about love. In Divine Love and Wisdom, Swedenborg writes,
Love is a person’s very life; not only the general life of his whole body, and the general life of all his thoughts, but also the life of all their particulars. This a person of discernment can perceive when it is said: If you remove the affection which is from love, can you think anything, or do anything? Do not thought, speech, and action, grow cold in the measure in which the affection which is from love grows cold? And do they not grow warm in the measure in which this affection grows warm? (DLW 1)
So it is love that motivates us to do anything. And when we are involved with what we love, we are in delight, enjoyment, and blessedness. So when we speak of love, we are also speaking of what gives us our delights and enjoyments. Take away our delights, and we will not want to do anything. In fact, one of the sad facts about the illness called depression is what psychologists call “avolition.” Avolition means a lack of will. In depression, a person loses feelings of pleasure, and consequently, in depression a person can’t get up the motivation to do anything. When we are healthy, however, and when we are happy and in a condition of delight, we are in a state of love. Imagine our delight, enjoyment, and blessedness when we are involved with the infinite Source of all love.
Since love is what gives us our sense of delight, everything we enjoy is a reflection of love. So loving is doing and it is also giving and receiving love in an interpersonal way. So we are not abusing the word when we say that we love working on cars, or playing the piano, or preparing balance sheets for businesses. And we all recognize that when we are showing care and compassion for others in an interpersonal way we are also loving.
But when love is defined as that which gives us enjoyment, we can speak of different kinds of love. There is love for our occupations, there is love for our significant other, there is love for children, there is love for our country. There is also healthy and unhealthy loves. In religious language, there is good and there is evil love. Humans are capable of finding delight in both good and evil loves.
Make no mistake, however, there is only one Source for love. There is only one power. Only one reality. And that Source, that power, that reality is good. That Source is God. God is love itself; and God is goodness itself. And God’s love is infinite. We are created out of finite substances—both spiritual and material—proceeding out of God. As such, we only receive love from the Source. We do not love from ourselves. We are not the source of love. God’s infinite, good love flows into us and we receive it according to our nature. If we are consumed with self and ego, we turn God’s love into selfishness and other vices and depravities. If we are spiritually advanced, we receive God’s love in a more direct way and our expressions of love are healthy and good. There is no anti-God that is an opposite source of evil loves. There is only God’s love that is twisted into depraved forms by the nature of the human that receives it. It is true that there are hellish beings who inspire our souls with evil loves, but these beings are still recipients of God’s good love. They have chosen to twist love into self-interest and mean-spirited expressions.
Our loves change over time, if we are advancing spiritually. We can see this by paying attention to the things that we enjoy. Over the past few Sundays we have looked at the progression of spiritual development. We saw that we begin by learning truth for its own sake. We then apply truth to our lives. And finally we are doing good from a love of good. All these stages in life are motivated by love. We learn truth because we enjoy it. We love learning and then learning is the way love is expressed. Then when we start to apply truth to our lives, a love of doing good motivates us. Actually, at this stage in our development, we are doing truth. Then when we feel delight in goodness, we are loving goodness itself.
Corresponding to these stages of love are also changes in our primary motivating love. Swedenborg calls this our ruling love. In his system, there is a dominant, all inclusive love that motivates our life. All the other things we love are like streams flowing out of this primary river. These ruling loves come down ultimately to two heavenly loves and two hellish loves. The ruling loves of hell are a love of the world, or love of wealth, and a love of self, or love to control others. The two heavenly loves are love to God and love to the neighbor. All these loves are part of our growth toward heaven. In the natural progression of life we begin with a healthy love of self and the world. These loves are a necessary stage in human development as they fit us to meet the needs of life—home, food, clothing, and money. But in the natural course of life, we grow out of these loves and become aware of our neighbor and from self we turn to God. From a dominant attitude of, “What’s in it for me?” we grow into an attitude of, “What can I do for you?” In this sense, evil is really a matter of arrested development. An individual becomes evil when that person fails to advance in love to the higher levels and remains ruled by a love of wealth and control. Then, a person is stuck with an attitude of, “What’s in it for me?”
All good and evil, all sin and salvation have relation to what we love. Salvation and good are in a person to the extent that God’s love flows through one into his or her life. In this sense, evil is simply that which blocks God’s love from shining through us. Spiritual growth is a matter of getting rid of the blocks. Being reborn is a process of letting God into our lives ever more fully—even to our very actions in this material world.
This brings us, finally to our New Testament story. This story teaches us about the dangers of being judgmental, and it points the way to a deeper understanding of saving faith. These themes are all brought up in a story about an act of love. At the very beginning of the story Jesus is invited to the home of a Pharisee. I find it striking that Jesus goes to the Pharisee’s house. He didn’t discriminate against anyone—even the Pharisees who so often are the subject of Jesus’ denunciations. I take it that Jesus saw that he could reach out even to the Pharisee, and bring his teachings to him, too—which is exactly what happens in the story. The teaching happens around a so-called sinful woman. She shows her love for Jesus by washing Jesus’ feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, and anointing them with perfume. This event is striking in and of itself. Here we find Jesus on the receiving end of love. So often we think of Jesus as the healer, the comforter, the miracle-worker—the one who is always giving to humanity. But here Jesus also receives love. It reminds us that our relationship with God is a mutual relationship. Like every loving relationship, God loves us and desires our love in return. The Pharisee in this story is concerned with ritual purity, and would have refused the woman’s expressions of love. He thinks to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:39). But what kind of woman is she? She is a woman brimming over with love. And it is this love that makes her other failings of no account. Recall that sin is only that which blocks God’s love. Whatever her other deeds, this woman was so filled with love that it possessed her totally. Therefore Jesus can say, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much” (7:47). And later Jesus reaffirms this teaching when he blesses the woman, “Jesus said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you, go in peace’” (7:50).
I would ask you to take this story to heart. It seems to me to capture the nature of religious life. We have two people involved in a loving relationship. We have the woman showing love and we have Jesus accepting love. So we are called to give love and to become vulnerable enough to receive love from others. Honoring love when it is shown us can be more difficult for us than expressing love. The power dynamic becomes reversed when we are on the receiving side of love. When we are the giver we can see ourselves above others. But when we are the object of love from others, we can become uncomfortable. We may wish to downplay it, say, “Oh, it is nothing,” or remain unmoved. But this story shows us how important it is for us and for others to open up, become vulnerable, and accept love. So in this Gospel story we have love in both its dynamics—giving and receiving. And we are taught to both give and receive. So may it be said of us, as Jesus says to the woman, “her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much.”