While many things stand at the center of the Christianity practiced in our country–power, profit, position, only one thing stands at the center of the Christianity portrayed in our Bibles–love. This is what makes biblical faith so beautiful. This is what makes the absence of love among its adherents so ugly. Loving God, and neighbor, is, according to our Scriptures, the one true intended destination of every human’s priceless life-journey. Love is not a rest stop or a small town we pass by on the way to some other larger destination. Love is the one place we passionately press toward, at all costs, until we fully and finally arrive:
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. (Mk. 12:28-34 ESV)
The most important command, one of greater importance than whole burnt offerings and sacrifices, is to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength. This is why James K. A. Smith in You Are What You Love proposes a renewed understanding of discipleship:
“Discipleship, we might say, is a way to curate your heart, to be attentive to and intentional about what you love.”
Discipleship is not about how many Bible books we’ve read or how often we’ve read them. Discipleship is not about confirming our reservation in heaven. And it is clearly not about learning to use religion as a cover for the abuse of others. It is, simply, love.
The earliest Christians, those with the richest experiences of God and the greatest impact on others, embraced this vision wholeheartedly. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite nun who lived in Spain in the 16th century wrote of this in her book Interior Castle. Teresa pictures our journey as movement through a castle filled with many rooms:
“Let us now imagine that this castle, as I have said, contains many mansions, some above, others below, others at each side; and in the center and midst of them all is the chief mansion where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.” (Interior Castle, 42)
The Christian journeys from the outer courtyard of the castle, through successive rooms in the castle, finally reaching the most interior room where complete union with God takes place. Intimacy with God is the point of our daily pilgrimage. Experiencing and expressing his unfathomable love is the destination toward which we are traveling. Teresa herself was so caught up in rapturous love for God that she died reciting lines from Song of Songs, that extended love-story in Scripture about God and us.
Julian of Norwich was an English ascetic in the 14th century who devoted herself to prayer and spiritual counsel. Notice Julian’s focus on love in her book Revelations of Divine Love:
I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us. He is our clothing which for love enwraps us, holds us, and all encloses us because of His tender love, so that He may never leave us. (Reading Eight Chapter Five)
Life with God was more about romance than it was about religion for these early followers of Jesus. Their adoration of and affection for God provide a compelling picture of just how simple and how all-consuming life with God can be.
Loving God is not hard. It will call us to hard things. But loving God itself comes rather easily. Andrew Garfield was one of the stars of the Martin Scorsese film “Silence,” based on the book Silence by Shusaku Endo. The film takes place in the 17th century and focuses on two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan in search of a fellow priest. In order to prepare for his role as a Jesuit priest, Garfield was led through the Ignatian Exercises. At their heart, these are a series of meditations based on readings in the Gospels. Here is what one interviewer wrote about Garfield’s experience:
“When I asked what stood out in the Exercises, he fixed his eyes vaguely on a point in the near distance, wandering off into a place of memory. Then, as if the question had brought him back into the experience itself, he smiled widely and said: ‘What was really easy was falling in love with this person, was falling in love with Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing.’ He fell silent at the thought of it, clearly moved to emotion. He clutched his chest, just below the sternum, somewhere between his gut and his heart, and what he said next came out through bursts of laughter: ‘…That was the most remarkable thing—falling in love, and how easy it was to fall in love with Jesus.’
Falling in love with God, with Jesus, with the Spirit is the central point of the Christian faith. It is easier than we might imagine.
This love, then, is what empowers us to do the impossible. French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery once commented on shipbuilding–an arduous task. He said if you want to build a ship, you have two choices. On the one hand, you could try to motivate people to collect wood, and assign them tasks and make them work hard. On the other hand, he wrote, you could “teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” In other words, you could help them fall in love with the sea. Get them to fall in love with the sea and they’ll do almost anything–even the laborious work of shipbuilding.
This is even more true when it comes to faith. Fall in love with God, with Christ, with the Spirit, and we’ll do almost anything, including the work so needed in our time, the ending of prejudice, oppression and devaluing of human’s lives. Consider this poem by Pedro Arrupe.
Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.
Love God. And it will decide what gets you out of bed, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart and what amazes you.
It will, especially, decide who you love and how you love them. It will put an end to every form of ageism, sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. Fall in love with God, stay in love with God, and it will decide everything about the way you treat those who have been created so lovingly by the One who now holds your heart. Love God, and you will, in turn, love all he has made.
