Today in the wake of Valentine’s Day, I want to reflect on love. Not only love in the romantic sense, but in the fullest sense. For love is a big word: concrete and practical, yet wondrous and mystical; experienced and known, yet unknown and awaiting.

Love also affects every part of our life, including our understandings of faith. As John Caputo says, “If you want to know what you truly believe, ask yourself what you truly love.”

The Greek language, the language the New Testament was written in, offers us eight different words for love. Agape, sometimes considered the highest form of love (though I would be careful in creating a hierarchy of value), was used to refer to unconditional, selfless, and sacrificial love.

We need to be careful with those adjectives. Sacrificial love has been used to understand Jesus’ death, and the death of soldiers. As if they chose to die soothers would live. Jesus did not choose to die, he was executed. Likewise, most soldiers do not choose to die.

Similarly with the word selfless. There was a time when, especially women, were told not to consider the needs and desires of their own self. Yet the commandment ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ infers a love of self (Philautía)being almost a prerequisite for, or at least symbiotic with, other loving others.

The adjective ‘unconditional’ though, linking as it does with the work of philosophers and with the work of theologians like Tillich and Caputo is worth further exploration. Personally I find the story from the Islamic Sufi tradition, as retold by Fr. Tony De Mello, of Malik and the wayward young man, a helpful entrée into differences between unconditional and conditional love.

In this tale conditional love is personified in Malik, an upright citizen, and unconditional love is personified in a God figure who talks, presumably in Arabic.

The youth’s behaviour is reprehensible, and so Malik as a neighbour and upright citizen feels it’s his duty to do some reprimanding. Though, for a long time,Malik, as most of us do, hoped the problem would magically solve itself and he would have to do nothing.

When logic and other methods of persuasion fail, Malik threatens appeals to higher authorities. Like the Sultan. Like God. But the youth calmly informed Malik that he was a friend of the Sultan, and God was far too forgiving to reproach him. Malik left exasperated.

However, in time, as the youth’s behaviour continued to deteriorate, Malik tried again.

And here the storyteller not only gives God language, but has God say the unexpected. Indeed this is the point where the story’s audience is left dumbfounded. For God defends the young man, and in so doing seemingly defends his reprehensible behaviour, and in so doing upsets the normative moral universe in which the audience lives.

Yet it is not only Malik and the audience who are disturbed by the deity’s words, but the young man himself. He cannot believe this ‘word of grace’. That God has called him ‘My friend’. That God’s friendship towards him is not conditional upon him repenting and changing his ways. That God is indeed all forgiving, even when he has not asked for God’s forgiveness.

The story concludes with Malik, years later, meeting the young man in Mecca. The word of grace had touched the young man’s heart and then led him to seek to emulate that unconditional love by giving himself in unconditional service to others. Or at least striving to be unconditional in his service.

Much of our world and our dealings are transactional, namely based on a conditional exchange where each person expects a specific benefit or reward in return for their contributions. We give in order to get. We give on the condition of getting, if not immediately then sometime in the future, if not like for like then at least some goodwill.

And to be clear, the God in the story is not befriending the young man because God knows what the outcome will be. No, this God loves unconditionally because that is the essence of God. Regardless of outcome.

The transactional understanding of love, like the ‘zero sum game’ understanding where love is a finite resource, is deadly to personal relationships and marriages that strive for mutuality, reciprocity, and empowerment. And it’s also deadly to faith.

The transactional world, and its religious equivalents, have often tried to squeeze God within its parameters. So if you give to God, you will be blessed by God. If you give, it will be given to you. If you are good, kind, and faithful, then you will be repaid with goodness, kindness, and faithfulness – and if you don’t experience it in this life, then there’s always the next.

But God, the symbol of unconditional love, is not transactional but transformational. To quote Thich Nhat Hanh "You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free." Not obligated. And such love and freedom can bring much change for the good.

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Our Pānui Rua today, 1 Corinthians 13, is an intriguing text. Is this also about Agape, about the unconditional love symbolized by the word ‘God’? Or is this about the Greek word Philia, the deep friendship, camaraderie, and affection between equals? Or Prâgma, the long-standing, mature, and enduring love of a couple over many years? Or Storgē, the love and affection in a family? It probably touches upon them all.

From chapter 12 we can gleam that the Corinthians have been arguing about which people in their community are the most important. Which talents, skills, or gifts are the most valuable? What varieties of service are more prized?

And the outcome of this argument, I guess, would be a hierarchical listing of skills and gifts, which would lead in turn to the importance and influence in the community that those so gifted should have. Not surprisingly though, the argument has not produced an unanimously supported outcome, so they’ve written to Paul for advice.

It is in this context that Paul shares, like he did in his letter to the Romans(chapter 12), his body metaphor. Namely that we are all different (as an eye is to a little finger), we are all connected (by nerves, blood, etc), we are all needed for a body (a church) to be whole, and we are dependent on one another(when one suffers we all suffer). And, unlike in the pseudo-Pauline letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4:15-16), Christ is not the head of this body, but inbeing all connected as a community we are together the body of Christ.

But then Paul concludes this passage on gifts and varieties of service by undermining their understandings of worth. He wants to subvert the whole hierarchy thing so prevalent in his society (and in ours). Even when he points out in his body metaphor that the purpose of any skill or ability is to serve the common good of the whole (and note the words ‘common good’ are in verse 7), and we are dependent on each other, and have a duty to each other, I suspect he knows the cultural pull of his society (and ours) to reward and praise the talented, and affix status and worth to some above others, will lead in time to disparities, to biased favouring, and to prejudice and privilege being entrenched in policies.

So, he says, simply, ‘there is a better way’, and leads into what we know of as 1 Corinthians 13.

The first paragraph is the rhetorical device of an ascending antithesis (“If I have(this), but do not have (that)”). Love surpasses human eloquence (highly prized in the Greco-Roman world) and heavenly, spiritual languages (the ability to conserve with divine beings). Love surpasses all knowledge (also highly prized in the Greco-Roman world, and in ours). Love surpasses all faith (maybe the gift most prized by religions and religious). And love even surpasses all possessions (which for many, particularly in our day, seems to be the purpose of life).

But this love is not a possession. We don’t own it. We can’t cash it in. We can’t exploit it. It won’t make us rich or important or influential. It is simply forgiving away. "The love we give away is the only love we keep"  (Elbert Hubbard)

And as we give love, and give more of love, give more even than we think we have of love, love will begin to change us. Love will produce patience and kindness, gentleness and politeness. It is a transformative energy enabling us to see an imperfect person perfectly (Sam Keen). It will help us to listen and learn and not presume. It will help us deal with, even heal, the hurts and resentments we all carry, in one form or another, in lesser or larger quantity, from our past. It will help us understand truth, not so much right versus wrong, but as that which leads to a transformative goodness for the benefit of all, which in turn will bless us.

And, Paul concludes, love might look weak. For his society, like ours, pedestalize the powerful with their swords, words, money, and minions. For his society, like ours, values accumulation, the appearance of strength, and the imposition of one’s will. Whereas love doesn’t. Rather love bears all things, all people –especially the nuisances and nobodies and our worst selves - in kindness, gentleness, and hope. Love believes all things, believes in people, believes in you and me, even when we find it hard to believe in ourselves. Love hopes all things – that the upending of the injustices of the world will come, and we and all our planet will breathe in new life, and we will be at home with each other sharing joy and hospitality and finding meaning. To this end love will endure all things, and in the end only love (and its offspring courage[i] and hope) will endure.

[i] ‘Faith’ to distinguish it from belief is better translated as courage.

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