Love An Action Not An Emotion

 

written for a Liturgy Focused on Loving Our Neighbour  - Romans 13: 8-10

 

Do you remember in grade school when you or your children were involved with the flurry of activity around Valentine’s Day?  Spending class-time making boxes or fancy envelopes with red construction paper and white doilies, lots of cut out and glued on hearts -  made to collect Valentine’s cards? Or were you responsible to make sure that your child had the tiny Valentine’s they were going to pass to their friends?

 

One year, grade 5 -when I was at the almost-too-old-to-do-it stage – I made cards for my whole class.  The cards were standing angels for the girls and origami beavers for the boys; 35 in total.  No, they were not all my friends. I didn’t even like some of them. I did it because I wanted to give them to my friends, but, how does one determine how much of a friend another person is? How does one draw a line, ‘you get one, you don’t?” They were standing cards and delivered to peoples’ desks; everyone was going to see who received one. So instead of hurting anyone’s feelings, everyone received a card.

 

Today’s liturgy focuses on loving one another, with a component of loving oneself. The reading from Romans challenges readers to ‘owe no one anything, except to love one another’ and further on ‘love your neighbour as yourself.”

What does it mean to love another? What does it mean to love yourself?

We get really messed up in what we think love is and what we expect love to feel like. In this era, most will identify love as an emotional state, at least having an emotional component.

 

Ask a couple newly in love .. ask a couple celebrating a 50^th wedding anniversary … ask a parent … ask a pet owner … Ask someone like Mother Theresa? Ask Jesus?  You will notice  different understandings, different practices, different experiences, and a variety of expressions of love and the feelings of love.

 

New Testament scholar, Paul Achtemeier, reminds readers in his commentary on Romans, that the Apostle Paul spent much time writing about the Christian responsibility and obligation to be good citizens of the state – including following laws, paying taxes, and respecting the authorities who administer and enforce both. The passage we read today draws readers to a fuller understanding of what Christian obligation means; more than just being good citizens a Christian’s larger obligation is to act in love toward fellow human beings. The focus becomes centred on a smaller societal unit, one’s neighbours.

 

Achtemeier also draws attention to love in Greek scripture referring not to an emotion, but, rather, action; an action that promotes the well-being of another.  The Romans passage mentions actions to refrain from -committing adultery, stealing, murdering, coveting- refraining from these, is love.  Luther’s Small Catechism offers the ‘opposite’ action, the loving action for each: honour each other in matters of sex, spouses respect each other, help others improve and protect their property and means of making a living, help others with their physical needs, help your neighbour keep what is theirs, and encourage people to remain loyal.

As actions, perhaps love is easy enough to practice. Yet, our experiences tell us differently because, human beings are not devoid of emotion. Love as action gets complicated as we attach love as an emotion to the action or the people receiving the action.

Achtemeier wrote, “to love an enemy therefore does not mean primarily to change one’s emotional state toward that person so much as it means to do good for that enemy, regardless of what one’s emotional response to that person may happen to be.”

 

I find this a helpful distinction and a clarifying thought.  Love, not an emotion. Love, an action.

If I think back on the cards I made for my grade 5 classmates, there were cards given out to people who bullied me, or ignored me, teased me; given to those who couldn’t receive them and immediately threw them out or left them behind.  I didn’t consider the emotions of that, only how I would feel if I hurt someone’s feelings.  Cards to the ‘enemy-sort-of-classmates’ weren’t given with a loving feeling at all – just an action; to protect those who I really did have emotional love for.  And when I really think about this example, I suppose in some ways it was really about self-preservation, not wanting to be hurt because I hurt someone else.

 

The Romans passage, after specifying action based on the Law, the Ten Commandments, action towards one’s neighbour; love as action; the Apostle Paul brings the discussion down to yet a smaller societal unit; smaller than one’s neighbour, is one’s self.

‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’  Do you love yourself? Do you love who you are?

Have you accepted your imperfections and see yourself as a work of art?

Do you love yourself? Action kind-of-love: where one sets aside the inner critic, unlearns the unhelpful messages received from the world, practices being non judgemental, stops self-sabotage, embraces being a work in progress – on a journey, lets go of shame and guilt, dispels feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, rises above fears, is willing to try and fail, shows self-compassion and kindness, and allows time for self-care.

Do you love yourself?

 

Victoria shared in Thursday’s Bible Study that her professor said, “that we need to make peace with the parts of us we don’t like because otherwise we embody hatred towards ourselves.”

When we harbour hatred towards ourselves and embody it, love – in either definition, action or emotion- ceases. If we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves, and we have embodied hate towards ourselves, this doesn’t bode well for the love of neighbour; and on a larger scale impacts our actions of good citizen within and towards the state.

 

The Apostle Paul’s words are love as action. Again and again he addresses the Christian community, building up self-esteem, self-worth. He preaches: you are God’s beloved, called to belong to Jesus Christ, justified by grace as a gift, adopted, children of the living God. He is speaking to the individual – the heart of the matter of love- ‘as you love yourself,’ remember you are loving God’s beloved, a child of the living God.

 

A few verses beyond where the Roman’s reading stopped, Paul writes, ‘instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.’  Consider this an action, -love- Paul is begging Christians to dress themselves with God’s action, God’s love.  To help us embody this clothing, Jesus enters the most vulnerable places inside ourselves, the places where we fail at self-love, self-compassion, and self-care. Jesus’ presence, God’s word, - the positive affirmations Paul presents to readers throughout Romans- continue to whisper ‘I am present, you are whole, love yourself.’

 

Practice love as action.  Act in love towards yourself. Act in the same way toward neighbour, toward enemy. Act in the same way toward society, to authority, to God. Free yourself from feeling and be about action.

 

The Valentine’s day cards given to the class – this congregation- from the letter of Paul to the Romans reads:

I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God (from the action of God) in Christ Jesus.

 

There’s a Valentine worth keeping.