The Biggest Red-Flags for Love
Are you better at loving people today than you were a year ago?
Love is a hard thing to measure and an even more difficult thing to track, so it’s kind of a difficult question. So let me ask it in a different way. Do you want to be better at loving people one year from today?
If the answer is yes, then you’re in luck! Because today’s Gospel is all about Jesus bringing awareness to two distractions that severely handicap our ability to love.
The first distraction is the need to be exalted.
Jesus says he who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Exalted. It’s an old word we don’t use very often anymore. It’s defined as being held in high regard by other people. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that being exalted is bad. I think there is often a temptation to read this passage and think any kind of public exaltation is anti-the-Gospel. Like to be a Christian is to avoid or be embarrassed by public appreciation of any kind. But it’s not. What Jesus is concerned with is not whether or not we are exalted. It’s when we make exaltation our aim that there is a problem. In other words, we get into trouble when we start needing to be preferred over others.
A great modern example of this is the virtue signaling that happens constantly on social media. Spend five seconds on social media and you will find someone publicly expressing an opinion to demonstrate that he or she has good character or is on the “right” side of a particular issue. Whether that person believes that thing or not isn’t why they’re doing it. They’re doing it to be exalted by the people they want to be exalted by. They're doing this because they need their platform to be preferred over others.
The problem with this is, when being exalted is the aim, it forces me to look at other people as competition. So, when I look at you, I don’t actually see you. What I see is a means to whatever I want to achieve. Are you higher or lower than me, status wise? If you are higher, how do I use you to get above you? If you are lower, can you do something for me to elevate my status? It’s a hierarchical worldview where my worth is found in being celebrated by the people I want to be celebrated by and my comfort is in looking at all the people below me reveling in the knowledge that I am not as lowly as they are. Eventually, if this is taken far enough, life becomes a zero sum game where any success for you is bad for me, giving me incentive to either use you or work toward your misfortune because it is just as effective toward raising my status as doing something worthy of being honored.
Hence why aiming for exaltation is such an inhibitor to love. It’s actually impossible to see other people as means to the end of being exalted and love them at the same time. One has to give.
So if you want to increase your capacity for Love, Jesus says wean yourself off any attachment you have to being preferred over others and intentionally set out to grow in humility. Practically, Jesus suggests taking the lowest place in whatever context status is measured in your life so you can stop thinking, worrying, or concerning yourself with status. So you can say, “I’m not going to make any decisions or spend any time on what my status is or isn’t. My focus is going to be on other people. On loving them, listening to them, and giving them the best way I can. If I’m elevated to a higher place after that, great, if I’m not, oh well. That’s not what I’m here for anyway.” What a beautiful place to be in and a wonderfully practical suggestion from Jesus.
Doing something because you want to have your status recognized or elevated in the eyes of other people will corrupt you and limit your ability to love. Humility will free you from that prison and give your mind and heart the freedom to love people as people rather than use people as a means to an end.
The second distraction is reciprocity. I do something for you because I can expect that at some point you will provide something of similar or greater value to me.
This is Old Testament thinking. This is not Jesus thinking. It’s an eye for an eye, quid pro quo, policy that limits generosity rather than expands it. It tries to relegate love to an exclusive club where only those who can pay me back are welcome.
In other times during his life, Jesus says, what good is loving those who love you back? Everyone does that. If you want to be my follower you will give to people who can do nothing for you in return.
When I hear this reading, I think about what Dorothy Day once said, “I only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”
Looking at it that way changes things doesn’t it? It does for me at least. When I think of the people who I love the least, do you know what I see? All the reasons why I am totally justified in treating them the way that I do. She is selfish and manipulative. So I am totally justified in being sarcastic and cold. He is arrogant and conceited so he deserves it when I mock him behind his back. They deserve it after all!
But who do you think Jesus wants me to see when I think of the person I love the least. Those selfish and manipulative and arrogant people I have in my mind?
No. I think Jesus wants me to see Him…in disguise. And to realize that how I act toward her reveals the truth of what kind of lover I am. Loving those who love me back reveals nothing. But how I respond to those who can’t repay me…or who, worse yet, ignore my love and just go on being awful…well how I respond to those people…it reveals everything about who I am, what I’m about, and how well I love.
For the Righteous Jesus refers to in the Gospel, what they may or may not get in return is nothing more than a distraction to love. Love one another as I have loved you Jesus says. Love without counting cost. Love as Jesus loved, not based on what I deserve or don’t deserve. But fully, without measure, regardless of the response.
So, if you want to be better at loving people one year from now, take heed of this week’s message. Step away from the distractions of exaltation and reciprocity and step into humility and love without measure.
And if you’re feeling inspired be sure to comment in the section below to continue the conversation on how this week’s Gospel is impacting you.
