All You Need Is Agape

'If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.'

--I Corinthians 13: 1-13

The Most Rev. Michael Curry at the royal wedding last year.

“If it ain’t about love, it ain’t about God!”  That has been the rallying cry for our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, even before the wider church—and non-church, for that matter—got introduced to him on the grand stage of the royal wedding a year ago.  "If it ain't about love, it ain't about God!" For some, though, these words reeked of sentimentalism.  It’s not that simple, folks scoffed.  It’s just fluff.  Love alone won’t repair the breaches in our world.  The Beatles were wrong.  You need more than love. 

Certainly love by itself, love that is a mere feeling and is not turned into action, cannot and will not accomplish such a monumental task as to repair the breaches and transform the world.  But love that is motivated?  Love that inspires and excites and is given flesh and blood and bone?  Love that can look at another human being and proclaim in the Nguni Bantu language, “Ubuntu!”—that is, “I am because we are!”—well, that is the kind of love that can transform the world.  That is the kind of love Bishop Curry preached then and that we hear proclaimed in one of the most quoted pieces of the New Testament.

There is a reason why we hear I Corinthians 13 at virtually every wedding we attend.  Paul’s great hymn to love is something that we pray for, that we hope to experience in our own time:  Love that is patient and kind;  Love that is not arrogant or rude;  Love that hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things; Love that never ends.  Oh how we long for that love!  We read this passage with such fire and passion at a wedding, praying that that kind of love will be lived out by the couple. Can any of us hear those words and not be convinced of the power of such love to make right all that has been wronged, to give life to that which is left for dead?

Still, those cynics come back and remind us that there are many kinds of love; in fact, the ancient Greeks had as many as six different words that our somewhat inferior English language translates into love—philia, eros, storge, pragma, philautia, and agape.  What kind of love, then, are we talking about here?  Is Paul saying that eros—romantic love—never ends?  Is he saying that philia—brotherly love—is the kind that hopes all things?  Or perhaps storge—the love between a parent and child—is so patient and kind?  No, it is none of these.  The word that is used over and over again is agape.  What agape is, however, is a bit complicated.

You see, of all the words that the Greeks used for love, agape is the hardest to translate. There is no real English equivalent—the closest we have is 'charity,' and that’s because Saint Jerome translated apage as caritas when he wrote the Latin Vulgate. It is a word that is not found in any of the contemporary Greek writers: Philo and Josephus never used it, nor did biblical writers like Luke, Mark, and James.  It is a word that is practically unknown to any writer outside of the New Testament.  What then, could it possibly mean?  Scholar Preston Epps wrote in his seminal piece Thoughts From the Greeks: "it appears to grow out of a certain instant appeal and beneficent lift to all that is best in human nature and feelings that some persons experience whenever they come into the presence of the one who so affects them." (Epps, p. 68).  It denotes a love that springs from admiration and veneration, love which chooses its object with decision of will, love that is rooted in compassion and self-denial.  It is, as one of my Greek resources puts it:  love in its fullest conceivable form. 

It is this kind of love that Paul proclaims to the splintered community in Corinth.  Rather than a piece of poetry that we have admired and turned into quotes for our wedding photo albums, this is a call to repentance, to a turning around of the individuals of the community, to see that all of their religiosity means jack squat if it’s not in the context of this kind of love.  While we have romanticized I Corinthians 13, it certainly was not a sweet, adorable hymn for the folks who first heard it. Make no mistake, brothers and sisters, these words were not easy for the Corinthians to swallow because they were a call for them to turn away from their current frame of mind and embrace something higher.  Honestly, they’re still hard for us to hear because the question inevitably is raised:  “How could anyone actually love like that?  "It’s not possible!"  Oh, but it is, and Paul tells us why in verse 12:  “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  Paul has been fully known by God, called—if you will—by God, and that knowledge, that being known by God, makes it possible for him to proclaim such a love.  That is how mighty the call from God is, and the other two Scripture passages from this past Sunday also highlight the power of such a call.

 'The word of the Lord came to me saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the Lord said to me,

"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you,

Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you."'

--Jeremiah 1: 4-8

'In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and began to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.'

--Luke 4: 21-30

Jeremiah was fully known, called by God as a young boy.  He tried to run, but God never gave up on him.  It was scary, as the people to whom Jeremiah went would not believe him when he called them to repentance.  Yet that call sustained him and allowed him to proclaim his message.  In the same way, Jesus was fully known, called by God, and when he came home to Nazareth and preached he had a message that was also hard for them to hear.  It wasn’t just of repentance, but it was of agape love, the kind of love that was not only for his own people but for all people.  The Nazarenes didn’t like this very much, which is why they tried to kill Jesus when he pointed out God’s redemptive love even for the Gentiles. Jesus was bold enough to proclaim that message because he was fully known by God, and he knew it.  He knew he was called, and when we know that we are called we can proclaim with the same boldness as Paul, Jeremiah, and yes, even Jesus, that such love can and will transform the world.  I have been called to do that.  You have been called to do that. 

It is that call that enables us to proclaim such a message with abandon.  We get excited when folks like Bishop Curry preach about it, but what we don’t realize is how radical that message is!  Agape love—love in its fullest conceivable form—is terrifying.  Because it means that what we thought we knew about the world is not all that there is.  It means that there might be other thoughts, other people out there on the other side of the tracks from me whom God loves just as much.  It means that my way of thinking about them and about God might just be limited, and that is scary.  When we are confronted with that we so very often lash out, we get defensive, and in the worst cases we hurt each other.  We kill the prophets, like Jeremiah.  We crucify the Lord of love and life.  We then retreat to our own silos and proclaim our own version of love that is just for us, and we let those people over there do their own thing while we do ours during the most segregated hour of the week.  That is not agape!  That is not the love that Paul proclaims or the love that Bishop Curry preaches.  If we really do want to change the world, we must start by being bold enough, vulnerable enough, to proclaim that agape is truly the greatest, that it is that which will forever abide, and that by living into it we can make alive what human sin has destroyed.

It was a tall order for Paul to charge the Corinthians with walking the way of agape love.  But he did it because he knew that he was known, just as Jeremiah knew, just as Jesus knew.  And brothers and sisters, I pray this day that you know, that you are known, that you are called.  You are beloved of God.  You are a son and daughter whom God knew before you were ever even born, and it is you whom God is calling now to proclaim with your lips and your very lives the power of agape love to heal this broken world.  God’s claim on you gives you that power! Do not let it go to waste.  The Beatles WERE right!  All you need is agape.