Homily on “True Love” based on the Gospel of Matthew 22:34-40:
A couple will be celebrating their golden wedding anniversary… have been husband and wife for 50 years. A friend asked the woman how they had done it. The friend asked “Did you ever think about getting a divorce at any time during those 50 years of marriage? ” And the bride said: “No, I never thought about that. I did not consider divorce to be one of my options.” Then with the twinkle in her eye, she added: “But I've thought about murder a few times.”
In our Gospel today, Jesus reminds us that the true measure of our love for God is inseparable from the way we love and treat our neighbor.
In other words, loving one’s neighbor expresses one’s love of God and to love God calls for loving what God loves – meaning - everyone, everything.
We know that in Jesus’ language – “neighbor” means anybody and everybody. Nobody is excluded. We are to love all people everywhere all of the time; but, admittedly, many of us are inclined to dismiss that as mere church talk. It may be a good sermon material on Sunday but for the rest of the week - out in the real world - it does not make any sense at all because there are just some people whom we simply cannot love and we are too honest to pretend otherwise.
There are just people out there that we feel nothing but resentment and distrust toward them. At best we can tolerate them and leave them alone but it is sheer nonsense to expect us to love them.
So - What then is the meaning of this Christian commandment to love all people?
The word “love” has become one of the most frequently used and most misused of words and people attach quite different meanings or different realities on the word love.
When we hear the English word "love," we usually associate it with feelings.
But the word love as used in the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves require a form of love that does not depend on attraction or emotional closeness or feelings.
To put in better perspective - the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the everyday common Greek language of the first century. In Koine Greek there are four principal words that can be translated as “love." Unfortunately, in English, we only have one word “love” for all four.
There is ἔρως (erōs) This is love as desire and attraction: romantic, sensual longing that draws us towards what we find beautiful or good… but this word “eros” was not used in the New Testament.
Then there is στοργή (storgē). The word refers to the natural affection found within a family: between parents and children, or between siblings. This word also does not appear in the New Testament.
There is φιλία (philia) which refer to the love of friendship, warmth and personal attachment. This word was used in the New Testament in John's Gospel to describe the affection that Jesus has for Lazarus. It refers to real closeness and tenderness, the kind of love that grows out of familiarity and shared life.
But this word philea was not used in the New Testament commandment to love our neighbor or to love our enemies.
Whenever the New Testament commands us to love God, to love our neighbor, even to love our enemies, it uses ἀγαπάω (agapaō) – the word “agape” … which Matthew uses in today’s Gospel: ἀγαπάω (agapaō) — which was used about 320 times in the New Testament.
Unlike the language of friendship or affection, ἀγαπάω (agapaō) – Agape - does not necessarily depend upon emotional warmth or personal attachment. It is the kind of love shown in deliberate action rather than simply an emotion. Agape – true love - is seeking the good of the other, treating others according to what God requires rather than according to how one happens to feel.
So, agape is the kind of love that can be commanded because it is not based on emotions. It can be lived out even when affection or warm and fuzzy feeling is absent. A person can forgive, refrain from vengeance, act justly and pray for another’s good without feeling warmth or closeness towards that person.
That is why, whenever the New Testament commands us to love, it uses the word Agape (verb ἀγαπάω agapaō). When Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, Jesus is not commanding us to experience a particular emotion. Jesus is calling us to a way of life.
To love God is to order our lives around God, seeking God’s will above our own. To love our neighbor is to seek their good, to act justly towards them, to forgive them, to show them mercy, and to treat them with the dignity that belongs to every person created in the image of God. None of that depends upon whether we happen to feel affection at a given moment.
Today’s first reading from the book of Exodus gives us a concrete example of what that love looks like. God commands Israel not to oppress the stranger, not to exploit the widow or the orphan, and not to take advantage of the poor.
In this sense, love is not presented as a feeling but as a way of treating those who are most vulnerable. That is why Jesus can even command us to love even our enemies. Jesus is not asking us to like our enemies, or to admire them, or to feel warmly towards them. Jesus is asking us to refuse hatred, to reject revenge, and even to seek their good, even to pray for our enemy, pray for those who persecute us – even when it is costly.
So - seen in that light, Jesus' answer to the question: “What is the greatest commandment?” – out of the 600 plus commandments - Jesus’ answer is not simply one commandment among many. It is actually the key that unlocks the whole Law. Every commandment ultimately asks this same question: In this situation, “what does genuine love require?” That is why, as Jesus says, "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
We may try to point out again that some people are just utterly unlovable but Jesus in essence is telling us that He knows that and Jesus is really not interested in how we feel about people. That is not the issue. Jesus’ concern is on how we treat other people.
Love is what we do to one another and therein lies the meaning of Christian love. The truth is that Jesus did not expect us to have warm fuzzy feelings for all people. Love begins with a conscious commitment. In this sense, true love – Agape Love - is not blind, so to speak.
All of us are fond of certain people. We like them. Well and good - but there is no virtue in liking people. By the same token it is no sin that we are not at all fond of or that we do not like some other people. The virtue or the sin - comes - in what we do with those feelings. That is where Jesus always plays the emphasis - not on how we feel but on what we do and how we act upon our feelings.
The last story that Jesus told was his parable of the final judgment and it all has to do with deeds or action. Feelings are completely omitted. Jesus did not say: “I was hungry and you felt sorry for me. I was naked and you were embarrassed for me. I was sick and you had sympathy for me.” All of that might have been nice but Jesus did not say that. The only thing that counted for Jesus was: the hungry who were fed, the naked who were clothed and the sick who were visited.
True love is found not in the way humans usually love but in the way God loves.
God proved his boundless unconditional love for us in the fact that God loved us even before we were deserving of God’s love. In St. Pauls’s letter to the Romans (Romans 5:8): “Christ died for us while we were still sinners”…. even while we were so unlovable.
That is why at the last supper - Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love – Agape – unconditional love - for one another.” (John 13:34–35)
Amen.
God bless…
