Atom“God so LOVED the world”
Hosea 3:1-5
“Love” took a major hit on the world scene this week. I walked into the house just before 9:00 p.m. the other night only to hear someone – who was obviously interviewing an important person on television say, “The world is stunned by this turn of events!” The world is stunned? I’d better listen. It took awhile to piece the stunning news together because I walked in on the very end of the interview, but later Holly helped me sort it out. It seems that (slide) Jason Mesnick, the 32 year-old single dad from Seattle who had been sorting out his love life for some weeks on the “reality” (Reality? Who really lives this way?) TV show, “The Bachelor,” had decided to dump his first choice, Melissa (slide), after six weeks and take up with runner-up, Molly (slide), because he still had “feelings for her.”
As I said, “love” took a real hit. Jason’s feelings for Molly apparently overwhelmed his feelings for Melissa and, well…it all makes for dramatic, “must-see-TV,” but also leaves us all a little less certain about love and about what love really is. If a guy can’t be sure about his feelings after the most ideal dating and relating conditions one can image, how can any of us be sure about love?
And it is such a slippery word to begin with – love, I mean. I often say to brides and grooms on their wedding day, “What is the difference between ‘I love Molly and I love my Ford truck?’” “I love Jason and I love lobster and drawn butter?” Or, “I love my husband and I love dark chocolate and peanut butter?” You see? Love is such a slippery word because we use it so easily to describe so many different feelings, from our feelings for the people in our lives to our feelings for particularly effective cleaning products.
So what does it mean when the Bible says, “love.” As in “love one another?” Or, “for God so loved the world?” Truth be told, the Bible has no such problems with the word because in fact the Bible in its original languages uses many different words to describe the dimensions of love. For example, in the book of Deuteronomy, we read:
“The Lord chose your ancestors as the objects of his love.” (10:15)
Nice. It sounds to me a bit like a Valentine’s greeting. But in the ancient Hebrew language this sentiment was much more vivid and powerful…and was not sentimental at all. The Hebrew word for love is “hasaq,” which speaks of a “tethering” love, as in a love that attaches itself firmly to someone else out of care-giving, protection-giving compassion – it ties itself to the other for the sake of the other.
Max Lucado uses the image of a mom connected by harness to a rather rambunctious five-year-old as they walk through the grocery store. “The strap serves two functions,” he suggests, “one for yanking and the other for claiming.” You yank your kid out of trouble and in so doing proclaim, “Yes, he is as wild as a banshee, but he’s mine.”
God also lashed himself to the people of Israel, not because they were particularly attractive or had anything to offer God, but out of a sheer act of the will – and act of care-giving compassion. Here is how Moses tells the people of their “selection” by God.
“God wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important – the fact is there was almost nothing to you. God did it out of sheer love, keeping the promise God made to your ancestors.”
Deuteronomy 7:7-8
God loves Israel and the world and all of us big or small, important or not, because God chooses to love. This is love that will not let go of that which it cares about…that seeks it out no matter where it tries to run or hide.
To illustrate such love today we have God’s story in the book of Hosea. Hosea was a prophet and the chief role of a prophet was not to predict the future as we sometimes think, but rather to speak for God or, in this case, to “act” for God. God calls Hosea to “act out” God’s love; he is to love a woman by the name of Gomer – to marry her and take her as his wife…even as God takes the people of Israel as wife. The problem in the story is that Gomer is about as unfaithful as any marriage partner could be. She continually runs off with other men, an act punishable by death in the ancient world; she ruins her own life and breaks Hosea’s heart. Finally, a broken and homeless woman, she is put up for sale at a slave market. And Hosea, faithful Hosea, who has never stopped loving her, goes to buy her back. It is of course an image of how God loves God’s people. Read with me again that today’s odd little passage from Hosea:
“Then God told Hosea, “Start all over: Love your wife again, your wife who’s in bed with her latest boyfriend, your cheating wife. Love her the way I, God, love the Israelite people, even as they flirt and party with every other god that takes their fancy.” (Hosea 3:1 Msg)
Can you imagine? Over and over again Gomer betrays Hosea’s trust and wanders off to find other lovers. Over and over again Hosea searches her out and takes her back. Over and over again God’s people betray God’s trust and wander off to find other gods. Over and over God seeks them out and takes them back. Over and over we wander off to find other objects of our affection, other sources of meaning. Over and over God seeks us and takes us back. Because God’s love, God’s hasaq, ties God to those God cares for. This is the love of John 3:16. In John 3:16, the powerful word hasaq is replaced by the equally powerful Greek word agape: “God so agapao the world.”
Agape love, Max Lucado would remind us is, “Less an affection, more a decision; less a feeling, more an action.” Agape love – God’s love is an exercise of the will, a deliberate choice to care and nurture “just because,” just because that is the nature of God. Not because God’s people are so loveable. Not because we are so cute or deserving, or obedient, but simply because God wants to. It is beyond feeling. It is decision. It is devotion to. It is act.
That is why I still like reading the Apostle Paul’s description of love in 1st Corinthians 13. It is the most requested reading at weddings – probably because it uses that word “love” over and over again. Yet what most couples do not realize is that this is not the same word for love we use to describe both our feelings for our spouses and for pizza. This love in 1 Corinthians is agape – it is determined action. Remember?
‘Agape’ is patient; ‘Agape is kind;’ ‘Agape 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 the wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
You see? Agape Love, God’s love is determined care-giving, patient and faithful, loving “just because” – just because you belong to God.
We all have seen glimpses of such love in our own lives where the lover loves the beloved even when they cannot return the love – even though their ability to respond is absent. Some of you have seen the movie, “The Notebook,” where James Garner plays the faithful, loving husband who comes day after day to the Care Center to be with his beloved wife who no longer remembers who he is and sometimes fends him off as if he is a stranger who would do her harm. This movie tugs at our heart strings of course because it is all too true. We have loved this way ourselves or seen our parents or neighbors going day after day to the care center to do whatever they can to care for the one to whom they tied themselves in love. There is no semblance of The Bachelor here. This is not the romance that we often equate with love. But this is love – God’s kind of love – full of feeling, and fueled by determined perseverance.
And yet, it is only a glimpse that only begins to give us the idea of how to understand God’s love. Using words as only he can, Max Lucado reminds us that our best love is “a preschool watercolor next to God’s Rembrandt, a vacant lot dandelion next to his garden rose. God’s love stands [redwood] strong; while our best attempts bend like weeping willows.”
But listen to his words now…as Max again gives us a glimpse of the love with which God binds us to himself…
A word from Max Lucado from “3:16” DVD, chapter 4.
“Mark it down: God loves you with an unearthly love. You can’t win it by being winsome. You can’t lose it by being a loser. But you can be blind enough to resist it. Don’t. For heaven’s sake, don’t. For your sake, don’t.” (Lucado)
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:18-19
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