Love Incarnate

I will not try to research this right now, but only to go from memory of what I leaned from Dad, in collage at the College of Wooster, a Presbyterian school where I was required to take both Old and New Testament, and in my graduate education at Chicago Theological Seminary. Many of the following ideas are not the typical views held by many religious people, including “scholars” of the Bible who allow their own preconceptions to blind them. In all of my education, we were taught to study the Bible to understand what it is saying in its historical context and how the book came into being. This is what I want to share with you.

The concept of Love Incarnate goes back at least to the Old Testament prophets. [By the way, the word for prophet in Hebrew means “dreamer.” Think about that. They were dreamers and visionaries and their message calls us to be dreamers and visionaries as well. My personal thinking on this subject is that it can be equally understood by those of faith through the Bible and those who see the “prophets” in a fully secular sense as simply dreamers – perhaps in a sense similar to the writings of Carl Jung. ] They lived in a world even more badly broken that now. The most brutal forms of slavery, bestiality, murder, rape, violence, economic exploitation by the rich…were rampant and flagrant.

The greatest difference between then and now is that we now have the power to act on much wider scales today. A war then might burn one city and kill a few tens of thousands of people at worst. I wish that were true today when we have the ability to destroy the whole fabric of life on our planet in the hands of our militaries. Actually – following the prophets – I wish were would realize the futility of war and put an end to it forever. The prophets, if you read them carefully, tell us that is our duty, our calling if we believe. They cried to the Lord for relief and saw visions of how, at some point in the future history would be changed. By what? By Love. Their very first awareness was that only love

They realized that they were entirely too imperfect themselves and that the world was not yet ready at that time, but in their mind’s eye foresaw that at some point in the future an “anointed one, a Messiah,” in Greek Kristos or in English Christ would come. They are all translations of the same word. He would be the “first born of many sons”[ Romans 8:29] to perfectly embody or incarnate Love. They saw that there first had to be one to open the gate for the rest of us. That’s what they prophecied whether you believe Jesus fulfilled the prophecy or not.

The point is that they saw that only such Love could begin the process of redeeming the world. They were very clear that they were talking about a redemption taking place in the realm of human history, in this world. How do we know that? At the time of the early prophets, the Hebrews had no concept of the “afterlife” at all. Their concept was Sheol or Gehenna – the garbage dump burning just outside the wall surrounding the Temple Mount. That’s where people “slept” after they died. No heaven or hell. No conscious existence after death at all. The redemption was of the human experience in this life. My seminary professor of OT was able to trace the exact wording in Hebrew and history of this in detail. Sorry I can’t remember more.

One of the Biblical concepts we learned in seminary is “progressive incarnation.” Again I wish I could remember all of the Biblical citations which describe this concept. The best I can do is to say that it’s really there, but you have to put aside preconceptions and to look carefully for it. Love was a concept barely present in the ancient world. At best it was partially embodied in one’s own family or maybe extending to their immediate neighbors and kin. But even this love is mostly lacking in the Biblical accounts. I think it was Abraham who was ready to turn his wife over to the mod outside his door to have their way with her sexually rather than to fight for her safety or honor. Imagine that of one of the founders of our faith tradition.

Again the point, Love as a way of acting in the world has been a long time coming. The teachings have been given not only through our Judeo-Christian heritage, but through virtually all of the great surviving religious traditions. Maybe we can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the prophets made it totally clear that God acts through human agency. That’s another theme we were shown in our Biblical studies.

So, we are the ones, the ones we have been waiting for. If love doesn’t come to the world through us and our actions, then just where do we think it will come from. You say from God. Well yes, but will we be His/Her agent of love to heal the world? That’s the central calling of our religious heritage.

Amen