Acts 11:1 – 18 / Psalm 148 / Revelation 21:1 – 6 / John 13:31 – 35
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, May 15, 2022.
“LOVE AND LIKE”
(Homily
text: John 13:31 -35)
In
today’s appointed Gospel text, we hear Jesus tell His disciples, “A new
commandment I give you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you,
you also are to love one another.”
The
theme of God’s love for us, made known in its fullest sense in the person and
work of Jesus Christ, and the necessity of our love for God and for one another,
is a frequent theme found in John’s writings. Today’s instruction was made
somewhere near the beginning of the events that took place during the Last
Supper. Jesus will repeat His commandment near the end of the account of the
events that took place that night, in chapter seventeen of John’s account.
Love
is a frequent theme all throughout Holy Scripture. A brief look at a
concordance of words as they appear in the Bible will show how often the word
“love” appears. For example, we say, “God is love”, denoting the idea that
God’s essential nature is one of love.
It’s
possible that the concept of “love” is often misunderstood in our common
understandings in our culture today. It’s also possible that we can confuse the
idea of loving someone with the concept of realizing that it’s a different
matter altogether – at times – whether or not we “like” someone.
Perhaps
it’d be helpful if we look at the nature of “love”, and then to take a look at
the idea of “like”. They are different realities, I think (though I don’t claim
to be an expert in the full extent of the meaning of either one!).
We
begin with love.
Loving
someone, or loving God, it seems to me, informs us that we and the other that
we love are in a relationship, an ongoing, deep relationship that should be
strong enough to survive the inevitable ups and downs that characterize any
relationship. The English language, for all its richness and fullness, has only
one word for “love”. The Greek language (the language that most of the New
Testament was written in), has three words for “love”: 1. Eros: This
would be romantic love; 2. Phileo: This is a brotherly sort of love (as
in Philadelphia, which is the city of “Brotherly Love”); and 3. Agape:
That self-giving, purer form of love that elevates the value of the one being
loved to a high place in our estimations.
Liking
someone (or something that someone does or has done) is a different reality
altogether. “Like” has the sense of approving of something that someone is
doing or has done. Liking someone or something is more dependent on a
contemporary situation or condition, I think. For example, we love our
children, but we may not like something they are doing at any given moment.
It’s
possible, in our culture today, to tie the idea of loving with liking. We make
our relationships dependent on the temporary realities of our relationships
with others. In effect, we might say something like, “I don’t love that person
anymore because I don’t like what they do.”
But
if we love another, wouldn’t we want the very best for them, even if it means
enduring behaviors or attitudes that we don’t particularly like? Shouldn’t our
affection for that other person be deep enough so that we would be able to
stick with the relationship, in order that, perhaps, our presence and our love
for that other one might prompt some sort of beneficial change?
Our
relationship with God can be affected by the confusion caused by equating
“love” with “like”. Our relationship with God can suffer because we dislike
God’s reprovals or corrective actions for something we’ve done or for some
attitude we continue to harbor. But the Book of Revelation reminds us that those
that God loves, He disciplines. (Revelation 3:19). Such discipline might seem
unpleasant at the time, but it is, ultimately, for our own good in order that
we might grow into the full stature of Christ.[1]
Other
comment deserves a mention: Sometimes, it might be possible to equate “love”
with permissiveness, of the sort of idea that if we love someone, we will allow
them to engage in whatever sorts of behaviors and beliefs they might find
appealing. In such situations, liking someone is overcome, it seems to me, by
the idea that if we love someone, we’ll set aside our approval of their
behaviors and beliefs. Here we find another danger in confusing “love” with
“like”.
AMEN.
[1] The letter to the Hebrews, chapter twelve, has much to say on this topic.
