Love is not only the aim of Christ’s gospel but also its method.
The ministry of Jesus Christ is essentially Love in action; Jesus taught with His life. His movement was a message in and of itself. He went to people, He listened to them, He asked them questions, and He touched their hearts with His stories.
He commissions us to continue His work, and it’s a convicting purpose because to receive God’s gift of grace is one thing but to walk in the way of love is another task entirely.
Jesus loved everyone – the people who listened just the same as the doubters who dismissed Him. Perhaps Jesus accepted their taunts as the force necessary to break open the truth and spread it to more people, just as a glow stick needs to be bent and broken in order to fully shed its light.
Christ’s call to teach others the Way is also an invitation to participate in a giving love, which is creative and compassionate.
This type of love acknowledges that we break in order to build others up.
It’s a love that notices the source of my sorrows as the stimulus to help you heal yours.
It is sad to see that, in our highly competitive and greedy world, we have lost touch with the joy of giving. We often live as if our happiness depended on having. Joy, happiness, and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. … That truth, however, is usually discovered when we are confronted with our brokenness.
Henri Nouwen
Luke’s gospel narrative presents chronologically, so it’s a helpful perspective to witness how Jesus’ public ministry developed and the obvious shifts in pace and intensity as He managed the tragic earthly reality of being broken to the point of death.
In the final months of His life, Jesus predicted and vividly described His death three times. Luke reports that eight days after the first prediction, Jesus goes with three of His apostles to a mountain to pray. On the mountain, Jesus is transformed “as bright as a flash of lightning;” Moses and Elijah appear, talk with Jesus, and explain the fulfillment of His purpose.1
What Jesus actually understood from that encounter, clarity of detail or reassurance from His heavenly Father, is unknown, but we can witness His actions afterward. He set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem, where Jesus knew He would be captured and crucified, and is visibly resolute and focused, both in His teaching and His confrontation with authorities.
Consider the intention poured into ensuing activities. He appoints and sends out 72 to advance His message, telling them, “whoever listens to you, listens to Me.”2 He responds to a challenging inquiry from an expert in the law with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which not only teaches having mercy on others but also disqualifies social boundaries that restrict who can be friends and neighbors.3
“Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge,” Jesus said.4
Thus, we perceive Jesus’ reason for dispatching 72 new teachers in His name and also for His pace; once Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, Luke reports, He was daily “teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the leaders among the people were trying to kill Him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on His words.”5
The people hung on His words.
That’s the whole point. Jesus was, in effect, delivering Himself into the “hands of men,”6 to be mocked and flogged – broken – so He could touch and transform the hearts and minds of the people who were willing to listen.
Jesus understood that dying and rising was the fulfillment of His fate, so He didn’t fear the hands of those who would make it happen. It’s not that Jesus didn’t care about the elders, chief priests, or teachers of the law who were vilifying Him, it’s that He didn’t worry about them – Jesus trusted them into God’s judgment and His Father’s mercy as His way of loving them too.
Christ’s total focus was giving away His love, speaking the truth, and saving as many lives as He could from ignorance and spiritual blindness.
Jesus wanted to help by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony, our death. Only by being one with us has He redeemed us. We are allowed to do the same.
Mother Teresa
Jesus Christ had a special calling which nailed Him to a cross. Each one of us has a calling that is just as specific and yet entirely different. Part of our work as people is to understand our calling to the extent that we lay down the burdens God never asked us to carry and be more authentically present to bear the cross of each moment. In doing so, we love God fully and are fully available to Christ, who wants to continue loving and helping others through our lives.
A giving love is a living sacrifice. In our weakness or emptiness, at the edge of our limits or the fringe of our ability, we are open and available for God’s grace and power to work with us and through us. By inviting in and allowing God, our Loving Creator, we leave room for what the Holy Spirit does best – heal, renew, restore, and transform – and our love is giving and creative.
