Beloved
1 John 4:7-21
“Two brothers worked together on the family farm. One was married and had a large family. The other was single. At the day's end, the brothers shared everything equally, produce and profit.
Then one day the single brother said to himself, "It's not right that we should share equally the produce and the profit. I'm alone, and my needs are simple." So each night he took a sack of grain from his bin and crept across the field between their houses, dumping it into his brother's bin.
Meanwhile, the married brother said to himself, "It's not right that we should share the produce and the profit equally. After all, I'm married, and I have my wife and children to look after me in years to come. My brother has no one, and no one to take care of his future." So each night he took a sack of grain and dumped it into his single brother's bin.
Both men were puzzled for years because their supply of grain never dwindled. Then one dark night the two brothers bumped into each other. Slowly it dawned on them what was happening. They dropped their sacks and embraced one another.” [1]
The love expressed between these two brothers is a demonstration of agape love – a selfless, self-sacrificing love which thinks always of the other person. It is a divine and holy love modeled by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Agape is the Greek word for love, it is used in Scriptures and used twenty nine times within the fifteen verses that we read today from 1 John 4;
7Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent God’s only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
This morning we are going to simply look at the many facets and layers of love. Love is a many splendored thing. Love inspires people to write songs, music, create art, poetry, and stories about love or the object of their love. Love is both a noun and a verb. We love when we help our neighbor and those in need. Love is both a strong affection and emotion and is an action. They say that love makes the world go around and I would like to believe that is still true and that ultimately there is always more love at work in the world, than there is skepticism or greed. Love is used and manipulated by the entertainment world and marketing gurus to create the illusion that people can buy love, however most everyone really knows that love cannot be bought. People are looking and longing for love in their hearts and souls and in their life. Love never ends - it multiplies and it is amazing that there will always be enough love to go around. There is no deficit of love; love is not in a recession. Love's the place to begin, and there is no better place to start.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
This wonderful text today from 1 John is addressed to a community. It is written, very likely by the Apostle John who also wrote the Gospel of John. His address to the community and use of beloved is also from the Greek word agape and is translated “dear friends” or “my beloved friends.” John is addressing his remarks to a group of people whom are already loved. Beloved implies a relationship and that there is another. When Jesus is baptized at the beginning of his ministry and comes out of the water, a voice from heaven says “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." (Matthew 3:17) John is writing with deep agape love to a community experiencing collective anxiety. Today the passage is good advice for those of us in relationships thinking through the many facets and aspects of love and friendship, and for a Christian community during times of anxiety.
John goes on to talk to the Christian community about how they should behave towards one another – believer to believer. “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and the one who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” In other words if we truly believe in God then it must be in our nature to love others – because the love of God dwells or abides within us, which compels us to love others the same way that God loves us. Beloved and love are used twenty times in these fifteen verses, and so we know that love is the action and key ingredient in his instruction to the community. To be caretakers of one another in Christian community - we must be committed to the act of love.
The Greek language has four different words for love while our English language has only the one word. CS. Lewis in his book The Four Loves talks about the four Greek words for love; eros, storge, philia and agape love or charity. The Greek word eros, meaning a romantic love between two people, is not found in the Scriptures. The Greek word storge, according to Lewis means affection. He says it is a “warm comfortableness, this satisfaction in being together, takes in all sorts of objects.” [2] Two very different people can have a comfortable affection for one another, but so can a human being have love as affection with a dog, a car, or a cup of coffee for that matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
Philia is the love between friends. Lewis states that friendship- love is not biologically needed; therefore friendships are freely chosen and based on common interests. His metaphor for friendship love, as opposed to eros or romantic love was very interesting. Lewis said “Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”[3] Friendship love is “the least jealous of the loves” and flourishes even when there are multiple friends in one group because the light of those friendships will bring out all the beautiful facets of each person differently. Emerson also said that one’s “growth is seen in the successive choir of his (or her) friends.”
The highest form of love, as we have mentioned is agape love. Agape love is an unconditional love regardless of circumstance. Agape is the divine gift-love of God. Lewis defines a Gift-Love as one that wants only to give, serve, care for and is willing to suffer for. The song “What Can I Do for You” comes to mind as an expression of a Gift-Love. A Need-Love is one that asks for and wants something from another person, and so the song would have to change to “What can I get from you?” But we all need love from one another and from God. Not all need-love is a greedy love. Lewis also talks about Appreciative-Love which simply gives thanks. The Agape love that God has for us – is a Divine Gift-love. John points out that “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”
Agape love demonstrated by Jesus Christ shows us a way to live, think and act towards one another. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was he said, using agape, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind’ and the second was to: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.”
C. S. Lewis has a great deal more to say about love and the types of love, but they are not that easily defined or even delineated in the Scriptures. Love is a many splendored and complicated thing and we can easily get mixed up when dealing with love. It really is impossible to simply look at love – but when in doubt about what to do in any situation – simply love one another.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Beloved and dear friends…together we are all children of God. We are male and female, young and old. We are deacons, teachers, musicians, trustees, and missionaries. We are children, youth, parents, couples, singles, and seniors. We all breathe - we all cry - and we all hope. We are all a part of the same body of Christ – what Rev. Martin Luther King called the “beloved community.” Let us care for and demonstrate agape love with our family and friends, with one another in this community and all the places where love needs to be felt and seen. Let us continue to fill each other’s storage bins up with love so that our supply of love will never dwindle.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.
Amen
Rev. Deborah J. Blanchard
[1] Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul (Deerfield Beach, Calif.: Heath Communications, 1995), 37.
[2] Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves, (Harcourt Books, Orlando, FL. ©1988)page 32.
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