Enchiladas Through a Glass Darkly

*Note: this one is Christian in tone. So we've got the "He" for God and Jesus being assumed to be the son of God, and so forth. When talking about the Christian Bible, it's hard to speak of God in a gender-neutral way. I don't think God is a male, but that's a topic for another time.

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I think one of my favorite passages in the New Testament is 1 Corinthians 13.  I particularly like the Complete Jewish Version (which was produced for Messianic congregations, which is why it has the New Testament in it) because of its poetry.

I may speak in the tongues of men, even angels;
but if I lack love, I have become merely
blaring brass or a cymbal clanging.

I may have the gift of prophecy,
I may fathom all mysteries, know all things,
have all faith — enough to move mountains;
but if I lack love, I am nothing.

I may give away everything that I own,
I may even hand over my body to be burned;
but if I lack love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not boastful,
not proud, rude or selfish, not easily angered,
and it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not gloat over other people’s sins
but takes its delight in the truth.
Love always bears up, always trusts,
always hopes, always endures.

Love never ends; but prophecies will pass,
tongues will cease, knowledge will pass.
For our knowledge is partial, and our prophecy partial;
but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
thought like a child, argued like a child;
now that I have become a man,
I have finished with childish ways.

For now we see obscurely in a mirror,
but then it will be face to face.
Now I know partly; then I will know fully,
just as God has fully known me.

But for now, three things last —
trust, hope, love;
and the greatest of these is love.

It gets quoted at weddings a lot, and I think the middle bit is wonderful for a wedding; it offers a beautiful and lasting definition of love. At a Christian wedding service, it should be one of the first verses quoted. Even at a non-Christian service, you can respect the definition offered.

But all that is missing the point, because the middle section shouldn't be taken out of context. And the whole passage isn't about weddings. It's about holy love, and yes, that can be shown by marriage, but to view it as "romantic" love does a disservice both to the passage and to the love it is being used to describe.

Sometimes "love" in this verse is translated as "charity" instead, and while I disagree with the translation, I can see why it might have been chosen. This is not the love of balladeers, the love of flowers and hearts, the love of a romantic comedy.

No, "love" here is describing difficult love. The love you have when you don't have anything else. The love of your fellow man that makes you care for a stranger for no other reason, the love of your enemies, the love of those who have hurt or failed you, those whom you owe and who owe you, the love of the slave for the master and the prisoner for the jailer. Hard love. In today's world where popular culture seems to demand that we fall in love at first sight and that everything will work out if you just have love, we don't get to hear about hard love much (unless it's an entirely different sort of hard, and that's not a topic I intend to pursue at the moment).

I should preface the following by saying that not only am I not a priest, but I'm also not a scholar of the Bible or of New Testament Greek. I can only base my interpretations on a reading of the various translations which have come down to us. But as we don't have a copy of the original documents in any case (if they find a letter to the Corinthians signed, "Love to all my homies, the Apostle Formerly Known As Saul," then I guess we'll get to find out what he actually said) we're all working in translation, albeit at greater or lesser distances from the source.

John 15:13 (in the King James, because it's the one everyone knows even if they don't know from whence that knowledge comes) says: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Many have interpreted this in the macro sense: e.g. that the greatest devotion to (pick a cause/country/deity/group) is to die in service of it. I find the language interesting though: "that a man lay down his life..." That turn of phrase, "lay down... life," occurs in all but one of the translations to which I have access. The lone outlier says, "give up his life."  And yes, this probably means "die for." But there are words in Greek for "die for" which aren't the same as "lay down life for."  John uses similar wording in other places, and some commentators have argued that he was referring to Christ's sacrifice of his life for humanity as an example of love, but not the be all and end all.

God loves the world; John says as much. "For God so loved the world," that God offered Jesus as a sacrifice to atone for the world. That's a hard love. And maybe that's the greatest love, as John says in 15:13, or maybe that's just an example of the greatest love.

"Love never ends." God has no beginning and no end, and so His love of the world, His hard love, a love constantly tried and tested, a love that persists even when nothing else does, can have no beginning or end. And if God loves the world fully, then we must love it too.  "Friends" may be interpreted to mean just that, but Jesus didn't die for his friends. He died for everyone, for the sinners (well, that's everyone too), the holy, the people of all races and creeds, those who persecuted and executed him, everyone. No exceptions. Whether you believe it or not (for the record, I have my doubts, but I appreciate the thought), Jesus died for you. Isn't that what evangelicals say? Christ died to redeem everyone. He loved everyone. And if he loved everyone, who are we to say whom we should and shouldn't lay down our lives for?

The martyrdom complex of religion has twisted this as well: laying down your life has become synonymous with death, but perhaps it's meant less morbidly. Certainly, there are times when that ultimate step is the greatest love, but perhaps not always. Laying down or giving your life might be a slow martyrdom. It might be making those difficult choices to act with love even when you have nothing to gain, even when you lose. It might be devoting your life to something rather than laying your life down for something.

But I guess, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man devoteth his life to his friends," lacks the punch, and also doesn't teach the lesson: Christ died for you, his friends, for we are all friends in Jesus. Plus, and brace yourselves for a little sacrilege, John was a bit hot for Jesus anyway. I think he took Jesus' love personally. I'm not saying he was gay; have you never had a friend for whom you'd do anything? That's not sexual, but it is a deeper bond than mere friendship.

And 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about that sort of laying down of life. It doesn't say, "Love is patient, love is kind, love dies for its beloved, and that's pretty much it, so go out and find someone to die for." Honestly, while it might seem like the hardest thing, dying for someone is painful but short. Living for someone will eventually kill you (life always does) but it's slow and hard.

So life is slow and hard and painful and we all die. Why don't I just kill you right know, right? But that's not what Paul is saying. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known," (again, King James, because "a glass, darkly" is the one everyone knows, even if it sounds more like sunglasses than a mirror). Yes, it's about what happens after you die, but it's also about what happens when you love. It needs to be taken in context.

He's saying that the only way to see even a glimpse of the face of God is to see His love in our fellow humans and to embrace them as part of the family. A giant, often-dysfunctional, noisy family that we may fight with all the time and may forget to give us Christmas gifts and steal our stereos to buy meth, but a family, and we should love them. We should devote our lives to them. You want to tell me that that isn't the greatest and hardest love? The scripture isn't a call to marriage; it's a call to service. We must love everyone, and love isn't words or thoughts, it's actions. When they are poor or sick or lame or crazy or just plain annoying, we have to love them. That's hard.

But the reward is that we get a sneak preview of God's love, because while we can't approach God's intensity, we can get as close as we can, see through that mirror, darkly, and look on the face of God because it's the face of everyone in creation. We were all made in God's image; I think that animals, plants, and rocks were also made in God's image because God looks like everything, even things that we can't comprehend or imagine. That's why seeing God in others is a mirror; it reflects us as well, shows us that we are loved as well, and it's obscured because God's face is all faces and we just don't have the eyes to see it all at once.

Well, long story short, I had a talk with Paul; he's had the past 2000 years to think about it, and he agreed that the problem was with King James. Paul really meant to say, "Without love, nothing I can do or have matters. Let me tell you what love I mean, because I don't mean the kind you feel for a baseball team (except maybe the Cubs). See? That sort of love. The hard kind, the kind that isn't just going to throw in the towel, the kind that loves with nothing expected in return. Yes, you may think you know things, may think you know what will happen, you may speak wisely even, but all of that is temporary, because we're all going to die, kids. And then you'll know real love. It'll be like when you grow up and suddenly you see the world as an adult. Now, all you can do is love as hard as you can, because that's the best way we have to see God. It's like a mirror that's all covered in schmutz; you can't really see who's in the mirror, but you get a vague idea. So we have this vague idea of love, but like I said, all our ideas and knowledge and everything are going to be vague because they're temporary and partial. God sees all, knows all, etc. so He's up there knowing us, and when you get to know Him it's going to blow your freaking mind. But just remember: all you've got, all you know take with you, all that truly matters in the end, are three things: trust, hope, and love. And the reason why I've been talking about love so much and haven't really touched on trust and hope is because love is the big enchilada. Love everybody. Infinite love to the P-Funk and my boy Grandmaster Flash. Peace!"

That all goes back to the beginning, with weddings. A wedding is indeed a time to celebrate, because through the love of the couple for each other, we can see a faint echo of God. And a wedding is a commemoration of that love, and also that vow to devote one's life to one's partner, which is the greatest love. But it's possible that we shouldn't bring any of the rest of it in just then; leave the, "And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea..." stuff for another day.  Maybe save up the rest of the verses for comfort when someone who loved and was loved in return dies and presumably gets to move the mirror away and see God waiting to give him or her a big hug (I'll talk about the afterlife some other time). The important part is the love, not the death. Trust, hope, and the big enchilada.