What the world needs now is love, sweet love!

When Jesus was asked, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" he replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind' - this is the great and foremost commandment, and there is a second like it, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. The whole Law and Prophets hang on these two commands." (Mtt 22:37-40, Mark 12:28-34).

The ancient Greeks had four words for four different sorts of love. At the bottom of the scale of love is epithemia, meaning simple desire or lust. Think of Jimmy Carter's famous campaign confession. Next up is eros, the Greek word for a love of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Further up the scale of love is philia, the affection that one has for one's family and friends. Highest of all on the scale of love, though, is agape. Agape is the apex, the greatest form of love. It is actually agape that Paul means when he says, of faith, hope and love, ". . .the greatest of these is love."

"What the world needs now is love sweet love,
It's the only thing that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now is love sweet love,
no not just for some but for everyone."

We need agape love; the love that takes us out of ourselves and our own selfish concerns, challenging us to love not only those who love us, not only those who need us, but even those whom we do not know and may not yet understand, and...most difficult of all...who may not even like us.

The 20th century theologian Daniel Day Williams wrote:
Love does not put everything at rest; it puts everything in motion. Love does not resolve every conflict; it accepts conflict as the arena in which the work of love is to be done. Love does not separate the good people from the bad, bestowing endless bliss on one, and endless torment on the other. Love seeks reconciliation of every life so that it may share all the others.

Those of us in long-term, committed relationships, know that love is change. It is never static. To build a relationship on epithemia only is folly. We can't always manage to be eros or "good, true, and beautiful." We do not always hold each other in philia or brotherly or sisterly affection, either. So what are the odds that we can reach agape? Whatever the odds, we must try. Where there is love, there is transformation...and transformation IS what the world needs now!

I'm holding the high watch!

Rev. Donna