Dave Berlach muses on the hard and bloody love of Christ…
There have been countless number of words written about love, indeed, the most memorable stories throughout history are inevitably stories of love and sacrifice, redemption and justice, stories of unrequited love or love lost, of longing and passion. It seems that we have a natural gravitation towards them – as if our souls have been indelibly marked by this mysterious search.
If we are to believe the stories we are told by the cultural architects of our time, love is only a feeling to be grasped at, attained only for a brief time until it peters out, at which point we must begin our search once more. We’re told that life is but a series of quests for recognition and love whereupon our old age we will look back and ponder our journey in the hope that we have quenched our thirst.
What we are not told by the Empire is that there is an infinite amount more than that fleeting flutter of butterflies and sexually fuelled passion of young love. We are not told that love is hard and bloody, and more often than not bloody hard. Or that one can love in the presence of hatred. Or that love is a more powerful force than violence.
Jesus shows us a kind of love that is real, tangible, brutal and fleshy… it is not pleasant or nice (or very “Sunday school” for that matter). It is not the kind of display that will always enamour us to our consumer driven culture, in fact it is more likely to see us ridiculed. But it is this kind of active love, gritty and unflinching, that inspires me most because it is loving sacrifice, not lust or romance or a fleeting feeling, that continues on beyond and beside ourselves. Sacrifice (which Jesus told us is the best example of Love) seems to have a mystical power to heal and renew, and it is His sacrifice that has the greatest power for redemption. When we choose to sacrifice we see glimpses of that great cosmic redemption that is offered to all humanity.
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Dave Berlach is editor of Stoop Magazine and also blogs from time to time at dberlach.blogspot.com and twitter.com/dberlach
