There has been in this generation such a huge tsunami of selfishness and fear that has overtaken us. It is a monumental effort not to get caught and drowned by those toxic waters. I think this is particularly difficult for younger people, Gen X, Millenials and Gen Z. I have a friend who is in a potentially dangerous situation. I mentioned this to another friend, who is Gen X and my worry about him, and he retorted that I should get over it because there is nothing I can do to help. A community nurse taking my blood presssure had a different opinion. She thinks it means that I care.
Neoliberal capitalism has traumatized us. It has ripped the soul out of our humanity. It has turned us into psychopathic poor bashers. Since the 1980´s I have seen with my own eyes how the abundance of iniquity and selfishness has caused the hearts of so many to grow truly cold. Love has become almost a dirty word. What's love got to do with it, sang Tina Turner, a pop icon of the eighties and nineties. What does love have to do with it.
Well, everything. Love is what created us, love is what sustains the universe, love is what we are called to be and do and how we are called to live. When we truly love, there are no strangers, no distances, no enemies. I had a conversation with a friend over coffee this morning. We politely agreed to disagree about war. Like many people, my friend dislikes war, cannot help but see war as at times inevitable. I know so many who carry this view, and I suppose in the most basic, greyest pragmatic sense, that they could be right.
As a pacifist, I have opted for rather a different view. But this is also because I have long ago dedicated my life to love. I don't mean the romantic hogswallop of Valentine's Day and romantic getaways. I mean the very unconditional love that was born to a teenage girl in a stable in Ancient Palestine, I believe in the love whose arrival in the world was announced by angels and heralded by lowly shepherds. I mean the love that was visited by kings and astrologers from eastern lands bearing costly gifts. I believe in this love. I have dedicated myself to this very love whom, as a twelve year old boy, challenged and baffled with his intelligence and insights the wisest and most learned people of his day. I am referring to the love who humbly asked to be dunked in water by a seeming madman prophet who lived in the wilderness, the same love who overcame evil in the wilderness and rejected the temptations of materialism, self destruction and power. I mean the love who wandered throughout the land preaching peace, love and liberation to the poor and oppressed, the same love healing the sick and delivering those tormented by devils. The same love who challenged and exposed and publicly rebuked the powerful religious hypocrites of his day. The love who challenged the rich and comfortable to abandon their riches and privileged and trappings of power that they might know and proclaim and incorporate in their lives the true message of love.
This is the love who accepted, pardoned and befriended the lowliest and most despised of his community. The love who declared his flesh and blood as holy bread and holy wine. The love who was ignominiously whipped, beaten, tortured and nailed to a piece of wood, who died and entered the realm of the dead to liberate souls and then rose again from the dead. The very love that could not remain dead because love is eternal, immortal and indestructible. The very love who is the living word born of the immortal creator, the word who was from the very beginning, the word who was with God. The word who was and is God.
And yes, this is Jesus, who has called me to follow and walk with him. The very word of God, the very living message of the very living God. The message that is love.
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