Love in the Time of Corona
This week’s sacred story comes from Mark 12:28-44, a religious leader asks Jesus about which of God’s commands are most important. Spoiler, it’s love. But then what does that love look like in the world and how does it establish a new normal? Religious leaders pray in loudly public and an impoverished widow puts all her money into the temple tax box. Jesus has a word. Read the full text here.
What is most important? Isn’t that the question of the hour?
Safety? Stuff (not knocking stuff)? Access? Work? Friends? Family? Connection? Health? Education (school or trustworthy news)? Shelter? Food? Faith?
If we have to choose where to focus our energy, where should it go?
There are lots of voices telling us what’s important on an average day, but now it seems particularly loud. The scribe comes to Jesus to ask, what does GOD have to say is most important?
Jesus’ answer…is love.
Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Love your neighbor as yourself.
I’ve heard this paraphrased as Love God, Love Others and that’s not a bad shorthand. But it leaves out a critical clause…love others AS YOURSELF. When God talks about the importance of love, and divine love…love of self is a vital part of this trinity. It’s something I noted with a passing glance before, but was brought more into focus this past year when I read the book “Love Big” by our friend Rozella Haydee-White and it seems particularly pertinent now.
I just say that because it’s really these three commands and they’re all interwoven into one another. We’re loving God when we love our neighbor and ourselves. When we love our neighbor, it is love toward God’s very self.
And this conversation with Jesus about what’s most important , and how central loves is to all things, allows the one asking the question to recognize that love is more than the routines and even the rituals, more than the things we thought God and the world needed from us for there to be love.
Still, it’s hard, if not impossible to fully wrap our minds around, to process, so at least for a moment…no one dares ask another question.
But there were still questions and without anyone saying a word, Jesus knows them and articulates them even when no one else does.
The questions are essentially: how does this all work? What does this look like, this all-encompassing interwoven reciprocal love? How do all these stories we’ve heard fit together? How does this divine story connect to the story of our people? How does this love arrive exactly?
In true Jesus form, there’s no single one-size-fits-all straightforward answer, available now w/ free shipping for a series of low-low payments (for well-qualified customers, of course). But he DOES talk about what it DOESN’T look like.
Love is not maintaining the appearance of keeping it all together, the illusion of being able to do it all and crush it and call that holy. Love is not about our productions values, putting on a really great show, even a show of faith…
especially…if that show has become disconnected from love, from our hearts and our neighbor
especially…when it results in gouging or stockpiling or building systems on the backs of the vulnerable and then cutting their benefits
…so that those who have little have even less.
While this is indeed a time when we will need to anchor ourselves in generosity and share what God has given us…Jesus watches the impoverished widow put all that she has into the offering box and draws our attention to her. Jesus is not lifting her up as an example of heroics, but setting in front of us the impact of living without love. It is exhaustion, a hollow emptiness, and exploitation.
So what does this imperative to love God with our whole selves, and in the same way love our neighbor as ourselves…look like? What does it feel like?
Perhaps that can be our prayer each morning and our reflections each night.
God, show me what divine love looks like today. Jesus, help me see where this divine love was evident and experienced today?
I invite you to consider not only the big obvious grand gestures of love, but also the small spaces in between that might normally slip through unnoticed. I was reading Brene Brown’s book “Dare to Lead” last week and as she talks about trust and vulnerability and their interconnected nature, she learn that while we might expect trust to be built in the sharing of big life-altering moments, but really the research shows that it is most often made strongest by the smaller things in between…remembering someone’s grandparent’s names, being invited to the digital hangout, receiving even a short note of care or encouragement.
What does this divine love look like?
Perhaps Washing hands, and NOT gathering or going out if at all possible – and listen, that is a difficult thing when the bills still need to get paid or life at home is not a place of solace, so perhaps love, that divine love of self, also looks like asking for help when we need it. Love is checking on each other and taking time to rest; it’s county judges declaring that there will be no evictions and sheriffs offering compassionate release to non-violent prisoners
As we envision this love, notice how it’s not exclusively romantic or emotional (although those are holy too), but this is also love embodied.
God, show me what divine love looks like today.
Jesus, help me see where this divine love was evident and experienced today.
I know God will be with us and will respond, and IS responding within all these ways – large and small that love continues to dwell among us. That’s not to put a silver lining or rose-colored glasses on anything. This love does not need us to put on a good show. This love does not dodge the hard questions or ignore our other feelings, but yet persists. This community of love still holds and the work of the church continues.
Maybe that love looks like this.