Matthew 1:18-25
Please pull down your lap bar. Once the sermon begins, please remain seated and keep your arms and legs inside of the sermon at all times.
We’re heading toward the Advent Four theme of Love, but we are beginning with Plato, and I’m not talking about Sal Mineo’s character in “Rebel Without A Cause,” for the geezers and classic film buffs who know that movie. I’m talking about the ancient Athenian dude that died three and a half centuries before Jesus was even born.
Plato is still studied, though his influence has waned slightly since elite schools abandoned the study of “the Classics,” and by classics, I mean old texts in old languages. Even Neoplatonism was not so “neo” anymore by the Middle Ages, and yet here we are. I’ve argued that trying to shove Holy Mystery into a God-shaped box, which is to say a super-sized human-shaped box, has created a monster, and that box was created using Platonic blueprints.
Specifically, Plato suggests that every thing has behind it some absolute and ideal form. Some thing that does not and cannot change. Consider the impossibility of a perfect circle, abstract mathematics the most precise tools cannot ever achieve, atoms being squirmy little things.
Another example: we might see hundreds of different dogs in our lifetime, but Plato’s theory of forms suggests there is another realm of being where there is an absolute dog, the perfect embodiment of dog-ness. While originating in the Pre-Modern Age, the idea fit the project of the Enlightenment rather well. Isaac Newton and his lot convinced us that we could dissect and experiment and measure our way to knowledge, believed that there was such a thing as absolute truth, bowed at the altar of human reason.
While the tools of modernity are still useful, the project itself went a little belly-up just over a century ago with the science of quantum mechanics and the reality that human reason did not lead us to utopia, but instead has brought us to the brink of self-destruction, a precipice upon which we still perch. People looked at the dead in Flanders Fields, technology turned deadly, and figured out that we were not going to think our way out of hate, and that even before the horrors of World War II.
Which brings us back to dog.
In the postmodern age, we no longer appeal to some Platonic idea of “dog.” When I take my puppy to City Hall, most folks gush about how cute he is, which is absolutely true, and critical to his survival when he is barking in the crate at 2:00 am or chewing on a chair leg. But there is one court officer who backs away. She is trained, armed, and scared of Harvey.
“Dog” may be a set of genetic markers for one mostly-domesticated species, but in practice, dog is the sum of all of your previous encounters with dogs. There was a reason the first fire-rescue I remember my grandfather bringing home was called Snapper, a reason I learned about stooping down to pick up rocks while walking the backroads of Saipan, where packs of wild dogs were not uncommon.
There are wild dogs, working dogs including service dogs, and companion animals. I recognize their intelligence, acknowledge the hubris of those who claim they experience nothing like our emotions, especially love that goofy perfect breed developed by Sir Dudley Marjoribanks at his estate in Scotland.
“Dog” is not a particularly complicated concept. I mean, it does seem a little remarkable that a Great Dane recognizes a Chihuahua as a dog from a hundred yards away, but they do.
If every one of us has a unique and sometimes contextual definition of dog, how much more complex is defining something abstract, something like America, or today’s Advent theme, love.
Though there is reproduction without love and love without reproduction, there is certainly a tie between emotion and evolution in the mating patterns of our species, something we call romantic love. The same goes with our parenting, because we remain vulnerable little primates for a fairly long time, cue hormones and cuteness, and so we have familial love, families we don’t always choose and those we do.
We use the word love to describe a form of attachment to anything from a hobby like knitting to a sports franchise owned by some billionaire and subsidized with our tax money. “Go Bills” and all that…
I spoke of peace two weeks ago, challenged the concept of a “good war,” but we cannot deny that some use the word love to describe the willingness of the soldier to kill in the name of some arbitrary identity, patriotism as love of country, for good or for bad.
And, for the record, I love me some Key Lime Pie.
We lump this huge range of emotions into a single word, but the ancient Greeks had several words for love, back in the age of Plato and Jesus. “Philia” can be found today in both bibliophile, the love of books, and philanthropy, the love of humans. “Eros” is most famously found in erotica, though it classically included both sexual and non-sexual romantic love. And the love that sacrifices for another is “Agape,” found dozens of times in the Christian Testament, including in John 15:13, which says “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
We find slightly different language for this in one of Paul’s authentic letters, in a passage that seems to be a quote from an early Christian hymn. The evangelist describes Jesus, using the phrase “Christ Jesus,” as choosing to become a human, choosing to be humble and obedient to God’s Word, even when that meant suffering crucifixion. In theological language, this idea is called “kenosis,” self-emptying, and found in Philippians 2:7.
This captures, I think, the sort of love we are aiming for when we say we wish to follow on the Way of Jesus, a practice of expansive Torah. We might borrow from the wisdom of the East and say that “agape” love is the practice of no-self, of love that does not pull inward, but always pours outward. It is why I find such resonance between the contemplative spiritual practices of Buddhism, contemplative forms of Islam like Sufism, and what I consider the heart of Christianity, not some fever-dream of a violent apocalypse, but humble and faithful service to others.
Let others go down the road of a Jewish teenager filled with joy to be pregnant out of wedlock. We can certainly make meaning out of Mary’s story, and truth be told, I prefer Luke’s nativity, lifting up the voices of the women who are anticipating the overthrow of empire, the raucous angels in the sky and the sleepy and smelly shepherds fresh from the field. But even if we ignore the claim of divine parentage, we have Joseph in Matthew’s nativity, who could have cast her off, should have cast her off according to the patriarchal standards of his day, this man who loves the woman and co-parents the boy who will forever change the world.
In a sense, this “agape” love shares no-self with transcendence. When I get lost in the Second Movement of Honegger’s Third Symphony, I lose myself for a moment. But love is not just transcendence. Love is a verb, and “agape” love requires action, as radical as a cross on Golgotha or a charge across a blood-soaked battlefield to save a platoon mate, as quiet as peeling potatoes in the soup kitchen.
I enjoy the endless stream of sappy Hallmark movies this time of year. Many of them are a thinly disguised version of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” of Ebenezer Scrooge, of the successful predatory capitalist discovering their heart, saving the community center, moving back to the small town.
I need those stories, however cheesy, and improbable, because it is all too easy to fall into despair. Our national value system is a “battle royale” of “I got mine,” pretty much the opposite of agape, and has been for most of our history. We are told the billionaires are on top because they deserve to be on top, not because they were born rich, not because they manipulated markets, destroyed businesses, poisoned communities with opioids, drove people to death. Bob Cratchett should just pull himself up by the bootstraps, bring his own coal to keep warm, and not expect handouts! Cue the three ghosts…
We guard our battered hearts with sarcasm and satire. I get it. Self-emptying is risky. But leaning into love does not mean getting lost. Love is who you are meant to be.
Who needs Plato and God-boxes? Let your love run wild. Go find your pack, dachshunds and dalmatians, or whatever miraculous mutts you may find. Amen.