In ancient Hebrew times love was an action not dependent on feelings. It doesn’t mean that people didn’t fall in love in biblical times. It does mean that where the word love appears in Scripture it probably doesn’t mean romantic love.
There are many words for love in Hebrew. They range in meaning from the love of parent for a child, the loyalty of family bonds, devotional love, a deliberate choice of affection and kindness, love that is expressed in compassion, the physical act of making love and love as a celebration of joy.
Greek, the language of the New Testament, also has multiple words for love. The meanings include erotic love, familial love, friendship love and the self-giving love that mirrors God’s love for us.
The reason any of this matters is that when we speak of God, we usually speak of God as love. So, it’s important to have some idea of what we mean by the word. In Scripture it usually means unselfish, self-giving action that is not dependent on feeling.
Action that is not dependent on how we feel is hard. It’s the root of loving our enemies. Heck, we have a hard enough time loving the people we are supposed to love. At its best, biblical love desires for everyone else what we have for ourselves. There is a generosity to biblical love that mirrors God’s generosity toward us.
Many of us are familiar with words from 1 Corinthians 13. We hear them all the time at weddings: “Love is patient and kind, love is not envious or boastful or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”
These words were originally intended for the gathered community of faith. They are words about how we are to be with each other in daily living. It is not a marriage text; it is a guide for living each and every day.
Advent celebrates the coming of God’s most complete example of love into the world. We can learn a lot about love by looking at how Jesus lived in the world. He was always at the margins with the unclean and the broken, with the outcast and the downtrodden. His love in action was about remaking the world.
Welcoming Jesus in this season is an invitation to sign on for the same work in the world.
The Irreverent Reverend 