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Love
In
this is love, not that we loved God, but that God love us.
1 John 4:10
Today's
epistle provides the best commentary on Jesus' teaching concerning
the Great Commandment, with which we begin each service of Holy
Communion:
Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength;
and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Mark 12:30-31
In fact,
our epistle provides the logical link between the two halves
of what is really a single commandment:
He
that loveth not his brother whom he has seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
1 John:4:20
Our gospel,
The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), gives a specific
instance of love of neighbor, namely, love of the poor. Luke
has been called "the evangelist of the poor," and this particular
story has a very contemporary ring, for today the "great gulf
fixed" (verse 26) between rich and poor becomes ever wider.
The picture of Lazarus lying at the rich man's gate "full of
sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table"(verse 20) brought to my mind those I see
today sitting on the sidewalks of the city, either in filthy
rags, or with a sign, such as "single mother, out of work."
Today, of
course, there are government agencies which are supposed to
help those on the margins of society, and we are afraid--not
altogether without reason--of being taken in by con artists
who display their misery so publicly. "Surely this is not my
problem! Didn't Jesus himself say, 'The poor you have always
with you' (Mark 14:7)?"
Contrasting
with such indifference and compassion-fatigue, there are, thank
God, inspiring examples of generosity. The unlikely duo consisting
of the Irish rock star Bono and U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill have been traveling through Africa for the cause of
poverty relief. Society surely needs all the help it can get
in coping with those who cannot help themselves.
But society
doesn't care about motivation. Revenue Canada is not interested
in whether I pay my taxes in order to help those in need, or
simply in order to avoid penalties. In the Christian way of
thinking, however, motivation is everything. Paul writes to
the Corinthians, "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver
my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing" (1
Corinthians 13:3). Christianity is not a religion of "do-goodism."
Christianity is a religion of love. Whatever we do has value
only from the love out of which it proceeds, and this love,
in turn, is rooted in God's love for us:
Not
that we loved God
--or our neighbor--
but that God loved us.
1 John 4:10
Today there
are liberation theologians who would like to reduce the entire
scripture to the single thesis of "God's preferential option
for the poor." Now there is nothing clearer in the gospels than
Jesus' love for the poor. But the poor, for Jesus, are not simply
the economically marginalized. The poor include the religiously
marginalized, "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew
10:6; 15:24), the "tax collectors and sinners" (Mark 2:15) who
were marginalized because they practiced a profession which
was considered sinful.
When Mother
Theresa visited New York City, she said that she found the spiritual
poverty there far more appalling than the wretchedness in the
slums in Calcutta. Jesus was not a proletarian hero like Che
Guevara. His mission was to bring into the presence of God's
redeeming love all those who had been alientated, morally or
economically. This ministry of Jesus, in which the spiritual
and corporal works of mercy were so closely interconnected,
provides the model for our Christian mission in today's world.
June 02,
2002
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