The Emerywood Pulpit
“Loving Neighbor — It’s Never Easy”
Luke 10: 29-37

January 19, 2014

I don’t know about you, but quite frankly, I have a lot of sympathy for the priest and Levite.  Yes, they are portrayed as the “bad guys in this story — and to be sure they fall far short of the Good Samaritan — but think about this with me:  What did they do to deserve their portrayal?  They did not rob the traveler…they did not beat him or put him in the ditch…that just happened and in one way of thinking they came by at the wrong time.  A day earlier or later and no one would have said or expected anything.  Besides, this was dangerous territory — robbers were common on these roads.  Who is to say that there is anything wrong with looking out for one’s self in circumstances such as these?  Do we really have to stop and take care of every last person who winds up in the ditches of life?  Haven’t we really made too much of this Good Samaritan?  Do you really think that our Good Samaritan did this each and every day for each person he saw in need.  I doubt it…he would never get anything else done.
What does it mean to love our neighbor, i.e., particularly another to whom we are not related and with whom we do not have a prior relationship?  Am I really responsible for each and every needy person in the world?  With modern technology we are confronted daily with both still photographs and video of people, needy beyond measure, from around this globe.  What are we to do?  How shall we love them?  Does God really expect us to pick up every person who winds up in the ditch and get them back on their feet?  Does proximity determine love?  Does depth of need?  Do my resources?  What does love, in this context, mean, anyway?
There are four primary words for love in the New Testament:
Philia — friendship
Storge — affection
Eros — sexual love
Agape — divine love
Each of these is a proper manifestation of love in its particular setting.  With friends we have love and care that often runs deep but short of  familial. With family we have deep affection (storge), i.e., familial love that we share with those who know us best.  Eros, sexual love, is that which unites couples far beyond any other human union.  Agape — sacrificial love — is considered the apex of all human loves and the essence of divine love. Used very rarely in ancient times, it is the word that early Christians used to describe their experience of the accepting and forgiving love of God which they encountered in Jesus Christ.
In an interesting move Dr. Lewis claims that we can categorize these “loves” by their internal motivation:  need-love and gift-love.  Need-love comes out of our human frailty and emptiness, born of our insecurity and desire.  It is the most basic and most prevalent form of love which we encounter. Need-love’s best image is a circle — for it always seeks to possess and pull back into itself the object of its love.  When we say to another person, “I love you,” often what we are saying is that I need you and want you in order to complete myself. So often in marriage we see this where one spouse will say, in essence, to the other: “I will love you as long as you love me back and make me feel good about myself.  When you stop doing that…then I will stop loving.” In other words, “I love you not for who you are, but for how you make me feel about myself.”
Or, we see it in parenting where parents confuse love with control, seeking to form their child into their image, i.e., to fulfill their dreams through their child.  What looks like “pure love” is really need-love expressing itself through the lens of parental love.
The reality is that raw need-love is like a sink-hole which, on the surface looks solid, but eventually gives way and sucks all in around it.  All of our human loves, i.e., affection, friendship, and erotic love — all of these can originate in and express need-love.  If we do not recognize this in ourselves, then our loving will always be a struggle.  Unless When we think we are expressing gift-love, we are probably expressing need-love.
Gift-love is the love we ideally share with one another, for this is the love which each and every person needs at the core of their being. Gift-love loves the other person for who they are, desiring to bless and increase the other rather than subtract and lessen them.  Gift-love’s symbol is an arc, not a circle — for it gives and loves regardless of whether it gets anything back.  Gift-love works from an open hand rather than a closed fist, refusing to grasp that which does not hold onto it.  Rather than the sink-hole of need-love, gift-love is like an artesian well, flowing non-stop up from beneath and bestowing love on all, liberally and fully.  Gift-love never ceases giving, never ceases caring, and never stops loving. 
Interestingly enough, C.S. Lewis claims that there is a sense in which all our human love is bound up with need love.  No matter how much we may try, need is at the core of our longing for another — whether at the familial, friendship, sexual or even agape level.  We try and try to approximate gift-love, but we find it most difficult if not virtually impossible.  We are such a mixtures of motives and desires, needs and wants, that for us to ever love another with pure gift-love seems impossible.
At this point I must agree with Dr. Lewis: though we try I do not believe that we ever completely and wholly come to the point of “gift-love.”  For pure gift-love is not disinterest or stepping back from involvement — but is involvement on the sacrificial level all the while ceding to the person one loves the final decision as to how that love will be received and be manifest in their lives. That, my fellow companions, is virtually humanly impossible.  All of us, when we invest that type of energy and emotion in any other person, wish to have our say as to the manifestation and direction of our love, not to mention the other.  Very few of us can or do see ourselves clearly enough to know exactly how we ought to receive that the love of another.  All of us need gift-love; again — it is my experience that very few of us really know what to do with it. 
Let’s be honest this morning and admit that in any and all situations where we love another, we always do so with at least one eye blind to our personal prejudices and perspectives.  Though we may think that we are expressing gift-love, in reality all our love is partial and tainted by self-interest.  Even our loving of God can be need-love — looking for the approval of a divine father-figure who will provide meaning and value in life.  While I do not agree with Sigmund Freud that God is nothing more than the sum of our wish projection of a father-figure, I do agree that for many this is the sum/image of the God they worship.  Do we love God from self-interest, i.e., for what we can get out of our relationship?  Do we only love God for what God can do for us, i.e., get us to heaven when we die?  Doe we ever really love God for God’s sake, i.e., for who God is rather than for what God can do in our lives? 
If we find loving God with gift-love difficult, then how difficult is it to love our family member, our friend, the anonymous neighbor — or even ourselves — with gift-love?  If we cannot even receive gift-love, how are we to ever share it?
The challenge is rooted in how we understand God and love.  We read “God is love” and that is correct.  However, too often we flip this around to mean that “love is God” — which is not so.  C. S. Lewis put it this way: We may give our human loves the unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods do not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred. When we configure love as God then we open the door to any and all distortions of love ruling our lives.  “All You Need Is Love” may have been a hit song of the Beatles, but it is at best a poor and incomplete theology.  Love of family, love of ethnic group, of tribe, of nation — all of these can be put in the place of God-love.  In fact, sadly I believe that much of what passes for “loving God” in many churches is nothing more than tribal love for our group.  Is this not the essence of civil religion — when we equate our country, our race, and our group with being God’s chosen people, with being those whom God loves best?
The agape love of the New Testament — the love of God which we meet fully and completely in Jesus Christ — this is the essence of gift-love.  Gift-love recognizes life itself as gift from God and sees every part and parcel of life as opportunity to know and share this love.  Gift-love knows that love involves pain, suffering, and self-sacrifice if it is to be love.  The struggle of Abraham in Genesis 22 is one that has amazed and challenged scholars, ministers, and ordinary folk for thousands of years.  How could God ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his son of promise?  The secret to this text is to realize where Isaac came from, anyway.  His birth was a total shock to this older couple who were, as Paul puts it, “as good as dead.”  His very presence was nothing less than gift.  Could Abraham see Isaac as gift and return the gift if God asked?  Did Abraham trust that God would raise up Isaac if he died, accepting that the promise and the gift were from God?
The reality is that real love, even gift-love, hurts and challenges us at our core.  Dr. Lewis put it this way: The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.  If we are to love, then we will be hurt…and hurt deeply.  To love another is to extend ourselves beyond all measure we have ever thought possible — and then to keep going.  If Abraham was to truly love God, then he had to be willing to give up that one who meant the most to him, even Isaac.  For it is only in the giving up that we discover the true gift and the Giver. 
In the classic novel Les Miserables Jean Valjean is nothing more than a common thief who, being paroled from prison spends a few days in the home of a Cardinal.  One night he slips outside and in so doing takes the silverware with him in order to sell it.  Jean Valjean is apprehended and returned to the Cardinal’s home.  The Cardinal, rather than accusing Valjean of stealing the silverware, remarks, “You forgot the candlesticks.  I gave you the silverware and the candlesticks.”  In a tremendous act gift-love the Cardinal transforms Valjean from a petty thief into one who has the strength to handle life.
Discovering the gift and the Giver is another way of expressing one’s coming to faith in God and Jesus Christ.  For it is in that total surrender of ourselves that we discover a love so wonderful — and a Lover (God) so incredible — that nothing else in this universe comes even close.