Arranging Letters

Learning to love like Jesus in the Bible

01/23/2022

Lk 4:14-21 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Last week I did something I have never done before: I was part of an engagement (don’t worry, not mine). Last Thursday Will Smith, a Baptist boy from Fort Smith, proposed to Jordan Dart, a Catholic girl from I.C. here in Fort Smith. However, the difficulty was they were both in California while both their families were in Fort Smith. So, after the engagement that afternoon, they did a zoom call that evening and Will asked me as Jordan’s pastor to participate in the zoom call. My only question to Jordan during the call was: “Well, what did you say when Will asked you to marry him?” Jordan smiled and replied, “I said, ‘Oh, I’ll think about it.’”

Earlier that morning Will had called me to share the plans for his proposal and even to ask my advice about how he could be a good husband. Imagine that: a Baptist boy calling a Catholic priest – and a celibate one to boot – for advice on spousal love! I said, “Well, there’s no better advice for Christian couples than what St. Paul said in Ep 5:25, ‘Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and handed himself over for her’.” I went on: “And if you want to see a perfect example of Christ-like love, just look at the Cross.”

In other words, a husband must be willing to die for his wife, even if his wife is the one trying to kill him. That is, when you don’t know where to look for advice on love, look to the Bible, and that is what I did. Why? Well, because the Bible tells the story of God’s love, which is the highest form that human love can ever reach. And that is the kind of love that Will and Jordan are aiming for in their marriage. The Bible is a love story: God’s love story and hopefully our love story.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus returns to Nazareth, his hometown. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath (that is Saturday) and reads from Isaiah the prophet. But more importantly, after the reading, Jesus declares: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” Now, that was not only a surprising thing for Jesus to say, but also a highly scandalous thing for the Jews to hear. Why? Well, Jesus was asserting that the age-old prophesy of Isaiah 61 was being fulfilled in him. In a word, Jesus was claiming to be the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

Indeed, it was so scandalous to the people that, if you read a little further to verses 28-29 of Luke 4, the people want to throw him over the brow of the hill upon which Nazareth was built. Even though the Bible is God’s love story, and Jesus is God’s love on two legs, we often find it hard to accept such unconditional love and imitate it. And that is why Christ’s love was exactly like St. Paul described it: “Christ loved the church, and handed himself over for her.” And his Bride tried to kill him! Where the citizens of Nazareth failed, the citizens of Jerusalem three years later would succeed in putting the Lord of love to death on a Cross. The Bible – like we read in Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 – is a love story: God’s love story and hopefully our love story. But it is not always an easy or fun story.

Folks, for our meager and mortal human love to reach the lofty heights of God’s heavenly love is not only hard, it is impossible without God’s grace. I saw this meme lately that illustrates the challenge of living up to God’s love. A grandfather was walking through his yard when he heard his granddaughter repeating the alphabet in a tone of voice that sounded like a prayer. He asked her what she was doing. The little girl explained: ‘I’m praying, but I can’t think of exactly the right words, so I’m just saying all the letters of the alphabet, and God will put them together for me, because he knows what I am thinking.”

Isn’t that a perfect picture of our prayer-life, indeed, of our whole life? We don’t know exactly how to pray ,and we don’t know exactly how to live, and we certainly are clueless about exactly how to love. About the best we can do is to put the letters of our love-life out there, and let God arrange them according to his plans and purposes. In other words, if you are at the beginning of your love-life, like Will and Jordan, or in the thick of things, juggling kids and jobs and basketball games, or perhaps standing in the rubble of a ruined marriage that has ended in divorce, or maybe celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary, the plain truth is that none of us have loved perfectly or purely. That is, we don’t know how to arrange the letters of our love-lives to match Jesus’ love for his Church as described in Ep 5:25. So, maybe like that smart little girl we can just put the letters out there and let God arrange them. We can ask for his mercy on our mistakes and maybe show that mercy to others whose mistakes have hurt us.

This weekend is called “Sunday of the Word of God,” and the Church invites us to devote a little extra time and attention to the Sacred Scriptures. That is why we enthroned the Book of the Gospels between two burning candles after we proclaimed it. One way to do that is to see how the Bible is a love story: both God’s love story and the story of our love for him. And don’t worry if you cannot understand how God has arranged all the letters of the Bible, God knows how to arrange them just right to help us love more like Him. So, that husbands and wives will love each other, “even as Christ loved the church, and handed himself over for her.” Even if the wife is the one trying to kill the husband.

Praised be Jesus Christ!