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Today’s Scripture
25So Jesus told them:
Foreign kings order their people around, and powerful rulers call themselves everyone's friends. 26But don't be like them. The most important one of you should be like the least important, and your leader should be like a servant. 27Who do people think is the greatest, a person who is served or one who serves? Isn't it the one who is served? But I have been with you as a servant.
*Luke 22.25-27 (CEV)
Wisdom Story
A woman was religiously devout and filled with love for God. Each morning she would attend morning Mass. On her way children would call out to her happily and beggars would beg for money or food with yearning. So immersed was she in her devotions she did not stop to pay attention either to the gleeful calls of children or the pleadings of beggars.
One day the lady walked her customary route and arrived at the sanctuary just in time for Service. She pushed the door. It did not open. She pushed it again, harder. The door did not open, for it was locked.
Distressed that she would miss Service for the first time in many years, and not knowing what to do, she looked up. Right before her face, she saw a note.
The note said, “Turn around. I’m out there!”
Comments
Like many stories, this tale goes to an extreme to focus on an important lesson. Of course, the devoutness of the woman was admirable. Certainly, her love for God and attendance at morning Mass daily was wonderful. However, in Christian terms, we could say eros was not balanced with agape.
Love, in simple terms, can be seen as basically eros and agape. The Early Christians used agape for the self-denying love that led God to appear among humans as Christ. This was a totally new formulation of the meaning of love. The Church adopted the Greek eros, which in Platonic thought spoke of the soul longing to return to the celestial world from which the soul had descended to earth. These two ideas merged over time.
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Both eros and agape are part of True Love in the Christian sense. Eros can speak of our longing, in spatial terms to connect with and return to God, our true Home. Agape speaks of our yearning to connect with others in compassion and care.
Many of the great saints, among them the mystics who were resolved to contemplation and ascent to God, also, were active persons who did much good in service to others. Their eros, or devotion to God, empowered them with amazing fortitude and energy to agape.
The paths of ascent to God and outreach to creatures are not, in essence, two paths. The so-called active lives and contemplative lives complement each other: really, they are one Love. This blending of the active life of service to others and union with God is a great gift the Church offers the world.
Without eros, agape loses its sacred basis and selflessness in the Wholly Other; without agape, eros becomes a selfish orientation to devotion divorced from Christ in the face of the other.
Comments
How are you nurturing yourself in devotion to God daily? In what ways do you see God using you to be of humble service to others?
Prayer
Open my heart, Holy Spirit, to the joys and sufferings of others. Enable me, by grace, to offer the Christ. May my gift of Christ be empowered by love for the Father and Son, and beautified by kindness and patience. May my heart, when serving, be free of need of merit or praise. Grace me to do the task that brings no credit and no notice. Help me not to run ahead of you in desire to help, and may fear of not knowing what to do or say lead me to lag behind when the other needs my act or voice. In Peace, Amen.
Brian K. Wilcox, Pastor of Christ Community United Methodist Church, offers OneLife Ministries, a contemplative ministry, and daily devotionals as part of outreach and nurture ministry of the congregation. Please share these devotionals with others and invite them to write Brian at shalom77@embarqmail.com .
©Brian Wilcox 08-15-07 (no. 4)
*Story from Anthony de Mello. Taking Flight.
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