Love so Amazing, so Divine

"Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."  -- Isaac Watts

Maundy Thursday: March 24, 2016

With my forbears, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was fully human, just like you and me.  In this moment this fact is painfully clear. His death was terrible, and in that time its manner brutally common. Yet, I also believe that Jesus lived Divine Love purely, as fully and perfectly as any human can.  He did not sway from the course of his mission to make present the Love of God for the world.  His death was the consequence of his unwavering devotion to every soul God has made: the powers of jealousy, hatred and evil that exist within us have always found this way of living to be an unacceptable threat.

Divine love is that love of which we are commanded, on Maundy Thursday — the Thursday of the command — You shall love.  Human love is so often preferential: it is easy to love those like ourselves.  It easy is to love those we are attracted to, those of our same opinions, skin color, sexuality, religion.   The love made visible tonight is more than this -- though this love includes and perfects our own.  It is treating every soul as a child of God, even our enemies. Every soul God hath made, is beloved, of inestimable worth.  We do not come by this loving naturally; it wells up in our souls from some mysterious source that we gesture at with the word God. Christians, speak of this astonishing gift as grace: love unmerited, love unconditional, love divine.

This is how I understand the wisdom my forbears taught me to proclaim: Jesus the Christ: fully human, fully divine.  The Christ is Divine love made visible, the love that authors us. Yet tonight I must also admit that in the death of the flesh, its source, remains hidden to me.

The philosopher Søren, Kierkegaard speaks of this mystery in a passage I have returned to again and again over the years. I share it with you as our final words tonight: 

Love’s hidden life is in the innermost being, unfathomable, and then in turn is in an unfathomable connectedness with all existence.  Just as the quiet lake originates deep down in hidden springs no eye has seen, so also does a person’s love originate even more deeply in God’s love.  If there were no gushing spring at the bottom, if God were not love, then there would be neither the little lake nor a human being’s love.  ... 

Just as a quiet lake invites you to contemplate it but by the reflected image of darkness prevents you from seeing through it, so also the mysterious origin of love in God’s love prevents you from seeing its ground.

… In the same way the life of love is hidden, but its hidden life is in itself in motion ... however calm its surface, is actually flowing water, since there is the gushing spring at the bottom — so also love, however quiet it is in its concealment, is flowing nevertheless. But the quiet lake can dry up if the gushing spring ever stops; the life of [Divine} love, however, has an eternal spring.  This life is fresh and everlasting.  No cold can freeze it.  

And no darkness can over come it, not even death.   Jesus made this eternal ever flowing love visible in his life with us, for us.  So, on this night, we are commanded to follow and do the same. 

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