A Past, Present and Future Hope

REFLECTIONS
February 21, 2010

We have just celebrated Valentine’s Day. To some, it’s a soporific celebration created by florists and the manufacturers of greeting cards and candies. To others, it’s a perfect day set aside to consider matters of the heart. A day when we claim the power, purity and possibilities found in hearts conditioned to hope and care.

The philosopher, Buckingham, wrote, “All true love is grounded on esteem,” and the thought does make sense. Our lives along with the signs of life around us in flora and fauna are signs and symbols of the esteem, the love and care God has for creation. The nurture, support, care and leading we receive from parents, friends, and family come because of the esteem in which we are held. While passion is certainly important in a committed relationship, psychologists have found long marriages have a common element in unconditional regard for the other’s welfare. That is, people who stay together hold each other in high esteem.

The love which comes from God and is best known through Jesus is AGAPE. It is a Holy type of love. The passionate love one feels for a mate is EROS. It is physical, yet in the best sense is emotionally and spiritually pure. The love which binds communities is called PHILIAL; as in Philadelphia, “The City of Brotherly Love.” Each of these loves and any other we know or define can only be effective when both the transmitter and receiver of love are open to the power of esteem.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601

Beyond the Casket of Selfishness

REFLECTIONS
February 7, 2010

Some years ago Tina Turner had a hit song with the words, “What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a second hand emotion.” We know from her biography and interviews that this song was for entertainment purposes, and that in fact Ms. Turner has serious thoughts about how important love is as a source of hope and healing. If we look at the writing of Paul, we could easily say love has everything to do with it. For the apostle, even through bold and sometimes harsh exhortations to those his letters are addressed, opens and closes his epistles with words of loving care and encouragement. He dedicates the entire 13th chapter of his first letter to the people of Corinth to the concept of what it means to live a love-centered life, closing with the phrase, “So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

The late theologian, C. S. Lewis, spent thousands of words on hundreds of pages describing the concept in a book titled the Four Loves. He suggested the first love is Eros the love of attraction. This is the science of hormones where through biology and circumstance we become drawn to one another. He says the second love is Philial, a Greek term for love of another, as if they were brother or sister. Many of us in childhood experience a bond with a friend which becomes lifelong, and though no relation, these folks become family. The third word he uses is Storge, usually pronounced store jay, a Greek word for familial love. The family of origin, nuclear family, dysfunctional or otherwise they are our own. The character Sir Toby in Shakespear’s Twelfth Night expresses this when in frustration he fumes, “Am I not consanguineous? Am I not of her blood?” Illustrating the adage that while we may not choose them as friends; we are related by blood, they are family. Dr. Lewis spends a great deal of time with the fourth love which he calls Agape, the Greek word for Holy love, that transcendent gift we experience in the person and presence of Jesus. According to Lewis, it can never fully be ours because the power of God’s love is meant to be shared.

Still, talk of love is difficult for the simple notion that we are people who say we believe the Bible is the truth of the love of God, yet we feel free to use it as a tool to judge and often hate people who are different than ourselves. The Gospels record that a scribe, in an attempt to trick Jesus, asked what the greatest commandment was. Jesus in response issued two new commandments as the summation of all Mosaic law. “To love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” The word on love, be it from Matthew, or Paul to the Corinthians, or in the voice of C. S. Lewis remains the same. It is all encompassing and its etymology can be traced to the heart of God.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601

Finding the Key to Awesome

Reflections

February 14, 2010

Theologian Frederick Buechner offers some insight into the term Holy. In his book Wishful Thinking, he writes, "Only God is Holy, just as only people are human. God's holiness is part of his Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something to do with God's mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize."

To experience the holy in the terms the Reverent Buechner means is to look at our experiences differently. To look at those around us and even ourselves with uncommon expectations. Jesus moved throughout his ministry with just such a model of faithfulness. When healing, He focused not on disease but health and wholeness. When criticized for breaking the laws of faith, He reminded the people that laws were made to serve people, not the reverse; and the ultimate service was toward God. The people Jesus chose as disciples and later sent as apostles were folks who had seen holiness in him...in his speech, touch, manner and movement. We experience anew that holiness when we read the story of faith in Scripture. Be it the story of the patriarchs, the narrative of Bethlehem, the calling of the disciples or the letters of Paul to mission churches, we see and feel the holiness in the story. We fail as modern believers if we view it as something holy which happened. The holiness of God which Jesus spoke and the Bible records is happening still.

What does it mean to experience a holy moment? Most of us have had one if we take the time to remember. Births, baptisms, communion, weddings, funerals all provide opportunities for holy moments. However, holiness is not regulated to houses of worship or worship events. The beauty of a rainbow can be a holy moment. Wild flowers blooming in the desert are holy. The sun rising over the mountains is holy. The sun setting over the water is holy. You and I, if we dare, can be holy for each other and this world when we allow something of God's love to show in us.

Imagine if we looked at each other with reverent expectancy, counting on good and glorious things to come from each other. If you are one who believes holiness happens only in lofty surroundings, take the time to watch a child chase a butterfly or two old folks play chess. Holiness happens not because of us, but in spite of us because of God's grace in our midst.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald

First United Methodist Church

4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601