Loving as God loves - The art of loving

Sermon preached at St Alphege, Solihull 8.00am Eucharist on 15/07/07
Trinity 6 (Proper 10) - Year C
Readings: Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37

[Based on Art of Loving in Focolare Spirituality. For more details see page 77-87 or 237 in "Essential Writings" by Chiara Lubich, New City Press, London 2007]



The parable of the Good Samaritan is Jesus’ explanation of what it mans “To love your neighbour”. This is crucially important. Jesus summarised the whole of the Law and the prophets in the two commands “Love God with all you’re your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself”, so “loving your neighbour appears to be half of all the Law and the prophets! So what does it mean to “Love your neighbour”.
If we look at the love shown by the Good Samaritan we quickly start to see that it has some extraordinary characteristics. This is not mere human love, and it has very little to do with the images of love that are displayed to us in TV and cinema. Rather it is love with divine qualities and it has a transforming effect on those who encounter it. Let’s think about these divine characteristics.
First of all, divine love loves everybody without distinction. We can assume that the man loved by the Good Samaritan was a Jew, so he was from a different race and from a different religion. Furthermore the Jews and Samaritans did generally not get on. However the Good Samaritan appears not to have considered this. Instead he saw a fellow human being in need, created like him in the image and likeness of God, and loved like him by the same Father in heaven. To love someone does not mean that we agree with them or get on with them or approve of the choices they make. Rather it means that we want their good. We want God’s creation in them to come to fulfilment. We want to love them as God loves them. God loves everybody, even our enemies. As we seek to grow in love we too are called to love everybody.
Second the Good Samaritan is the first to love. He does not recognise the man as someone who has been good to him in the past. He does not wait for the man to be good to him now. Rather he gets straight on in their and takes the initiative in love. St John tells us to love, because God has first loved us (1 John 4:19). This is a second characteristic of divine love. God takes the imitative in love, and we too are called to take the initiative in love.
Third, the Good Samaritans love is about practical service. In a practical way, he does what he can to help. This too is a characteristic of God’s love, and this too is something we are called to. Let’s make our love practical service to help others. This might mean preparing food or laying the table. It might mean washing the car or reading the map. It might mean helping someone to look for something that they have lost. It might mean visiting someone. Let’s make sure we show practical love.
As a fourth characteristic of the love to which the Good Samaritan calls us, let’s notice that he is ready to set aside his own agenda to love the person in front of him. He doesn’t think like the priest, “I’ve got some important praying to do…I can’t get involved here.” He doesn’t think “I have brought this donkey for me to ride on… I can’t use it for someone else.” He is prepared to set aside his own ideas and his own plans in order to love the other person. And we too are called to this and it can be very demanding and costly, because it we have to be ready to lose things, even good things. It calls us to be empty of self. Sometimes we have to hold off saying something in order to properly listen to someone else speaking. Sometimes we have to forget about something we think is important, in order to take on board something that is important to someone else. Sometimes we have to give up on the newspaper, in order to play a computer game with the grandson. We need to be empty of self in order to welcome and be fully present for the other person. This requires great trust in God, because often the things we are called to set aside are genuinely good things…things of God even.
So these are four characteristics of the love of the Good Samaritan; four characteristics of the love that we are called to as we love our neighbour. Love everybody. Be the first to love. Love in practical ways. Be empty of self in order to welcome the other.
In our day to day lives let’s try to love other people in these ways. It will be demanding, and it will require effort, and many times we will fall short. But let’s not be discouraged. God wants to fill us with his love. If we practice and pray and ask for God’s help, then over time love will grow in us. We will start to love more and more like the Good Samaritan and we will find more and more than we have fulfilled all that God asks of us in the Law and the prophets.