WORKS OF LOVE — free as the sky

Prayer

How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O God of Love, source of all love in heaven and on earth, You who spared nothing but gave all in love, You who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in You! How could love properly be discussed if You were forgotten, You who made manifest what love is, You, our Savior and Redeemer, who gave Yourself to save all! How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O Spirit of Love, You who take nothing for Your own but remind us of that sacrifice of love, remind the believer to love as he is loved, and his neighbor as himself! O Eternal Love, You who are everywhere present and never without witness wherever You are called upon, be not without witness in what is said here about love or about the works of love. There are only a few acts which human language specifically and narrowly calls works of love, but heaven is such that no act can be pleasing there unless it is an act of love–sincere in self-renunciation, impelled by love itself, and for this very reason claiming no compensation.

Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

Søren Kierkegaard’s prayer before his reflections on the Works of Love is magnanimous. As a “Christian” philosopher and an avid critique/prophet against the encrusted institutional Christianity of his time, his prayer above sums up his grand narrative of the big reality. In this short prayer, Kierkegaard articulates a vision of who God is, how God operates, the roles of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in love, who we are, and how we join in the vision of love.

The prayer phrase that remains with me is, “be not without witness. . . ” God who is infinite Love and who is endlessly sufficient needs witnesses, agents, or channels of love. I do not know how that is true but I think I know that to be true. There seems to be an implied step in the prayer that a witness must first and perpetually experience the God of love, personalize the sacrificial love of Jesus, and place oneself under the ongoing influence of the Holy Spirit’s reminders to love throughout life. That witness while not perfect becomes a channel or conduit for God’s ongoing redemptive acts of love, engulfing everything in sight in love while drawing everything to Love who is God.

I know I am not perfect and have no problem admitting that I struggle to love, unconditionally. I calculate and measure what can be rewarded or reciprocated. I become quite adept at loving something or someone that might reciprocate my calculating love. I know experientially that I cannot change by trying to change. My focus, or at least I tell myself, should be that I return to God’s first love. God first loved me, and God continues to love me perpetually as if it is the first time again and again. That is the spring well I must drink out of.

The act of drinking translates into experiencing God’s unconditional love while I am a sinner, not when I think I am a saint. I can destroy my sinner-in-me out of a “rule-based” or legalistic standard of perfection in order to make my ego feel good. Rather than helping me to become better and love better, my life can and has in the past become religiously driven but really a lifeless life. Lifeless because it is my ego in charge, not the love of God who forgives and accepts, ad infinitum. The ego simply melts away in the presence of Love.

Then there is another step of being a faithful witness. Love that is born out of freedom is true love. While we can obey to love, an obedient love, which is admirable and sometimes in great need, free love is transformative at all levels. Jesus willingly gave up and laid his life for us after authentic human struggles. Jesus’ death on the cross was the epitome of free love, impelled out of freedom and “claiming no compensation.” Jesus’ discourse in John 13 of the “New Commandment” of loving one another was followed by his ultimate example on the cross. Jesus did what he told his disciples.

Free love becomes transformative because it unlocks and gifts the very free will God bestowed upon humanity, and we are employing the free will to choose to love. We give back to God what God gave us—Love—willingly and not out of obligation. It is also transformative because it does not seek anything in return. Free love moves without an owner or a controller other than the author and the perfector of Love, God. When there is no one that can claim dominance or compensation, love blossoms, multiplies, and blankets everything in sight toward the common good.

Heaven is actualized through self-emptying acts of love by human witnesses and agents on this earth. And that is God’s Kingdom of love coming on this earth as it is in heaven.