Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Preventing Grace

Home
Evangelical
Love is Love

Love is Love

Last updated on: December 15, 2019 at 7:46 am by Anne Kennedy

Love is Love 2019-12-15T07:46:41-04:00 Anne Kennedy

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It looks like Hallmark has finally been caught in the net of this age’s god. Twitter is steaming mad, flinging all their sugar cookies to the ground in a rage, that, after a group called One Million Moms protested, Hallmark actually pulled an ad featuring a lesbian wedding. It was deemed “too controversial,” which is a fascinating turn of events, because I’m pretty sure the whole thing is not that controversial anymore. Just as an aside—and because love is love, and love is all you need, and the season of holiday cheer is flourishing in my loving heart*—I did live blog my way through The Christmas Prince: A Royal Baby. It’s going to be my Christmas present to all of you. I have to apply some sprinkles and sparkles to it, though, so you’ll have to be patient.

In the meantime, Love is Love. That’s what everyone on Twitter is offering as the deep logic by which they know that Hallmark has done something very very wrong in canceling the ad. Love is Love, see, it just is. And also, Romance is Romance. Some people really did tweet that. Romance is Romance.

One might just as well say, and I suppose some have, Sex is Sex. What’s the problem. There is no problem. Except from the likes of you who choke on the bland uselessness of a slogan like Love is Love.

Instead of that, come to church with me to sit in the spare, bleak winter light and hear the disappointment and heartbreak of John the Baptist. He came on the scene last week, calling for you to turn around and go the other way, to repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. And everybody went out to hear him, rushing down the road to see what all the fuss was about, the dust of thousands of feet ascending up as a cloud. Now, a week later—but really many many months at least—Jesus has superseded him, has picked up John’s own words, so that none of them should fall to the ground—Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is here—and John is in prison.

I’m sure you remember how he got there. Herod Antipas, believing that love is love, took his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias, back home after some family holiday or something. There they all were on the Mediterranean Sea or somewhere, eating olives and drinking wine, a gentle breeze billowing through the curtains, light dappling across the water. Herod and Herodias—I mean, it’s practically fate or something, they even share the same name—gazed into each other’s eyes over the head of Philip. They fell in love. Nothing could keep them apart. I mean, really, nothing could because Herod was some sort of pseudo king and could basically organize his sex-life the way he wanted to and nobody had the wherewithal to say anything about it.

Except for the freak John, fanatical John, bigoted John, not good at moderating his tone John. John who can’t mind his own business and see that Love is Love. He strides up and down the Jordan, denouncing “the relationship,” and a lot of people, probably even his own disciples, wonder how it was that he got so far off message. Why be so personal? Doesn’t everybody do wrong things? Sometimes? And nobody really cares what the Herods do in their own bedrooms.

Herodias can’t take the criticism. “I need to be affirmed,” she rages at her new “Love.” “I can’t live with this kind of negativity.” Herod turns away from his new jumbotron tv screen, Joel Osteen’s shiny teeth scattering light over his confused mind, and nods. She’s right. There’s no reason to stomach a madman’s outmoded feelings about virtue. He sends his people to scoop John up and fling him into prison. Sometimes, though, he goes down to hear what John has to say, whenever Herodias isn’t paying attention. It’s sort of strangely compelling. Though mostly it is so hard to understand what he’s even preaching about.

In other words, Merry Christmas. How ‘bout a little culture war with your eggnog. Wrap some presents, turn on the Hallmark Channel, hit the button on Pandora, wrap up in your cozy blanket, it’s the merriest time of the year…as long as you don’t let Jesus in, nor any of his relatives.

John, discouraged, depressed, wondering if he is wrong about everything, sends his disciples to Jesus to find out what on earth has gone wrong. Just the way that I stare at my whole life, at the confusion and muddle of everything, the piles of emotional detritus in every corner, attempting to align what I wanted Jesus to give me with what he has actually given me, finding the two do not resemble each other at all, and retreating into my phone or somewhere. And Jesus, who holds the universe in the palm of his perfect hand, offers John—what? A personal letter? Some heartwarming feelings? The rejoinder that Love is Love? What?

It’ll disappoint you, too, when you see it. This is the thing that Jesus is always ready to offer, and the thing that none of us think will be helpful. He sends John some bible verses, or, maybe, the whole book of Isaiah. Or at least this bit:

Strengthen the weak hands,
    and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who have an anxious heart,
    “Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
    will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
    He will come and save you.”

I mean, Love is actually Love. Not Love Actually (which, just to indulge in a little wrong think, is a terrible movie), but Love Divine All Love’s Excelling. Love is never telling a lie about what is good. Love is never taking the cheap way out. Love is being willing to die for the sake of another. Love is lifting up the lowly, the faint-hearted, the poor in spirit, the lost, the destitute, the one who is perishing and pointing each to the God who made them, who knows them, who has the authority to tell them who they are and what they should do wherever they are, in their bedrooms, in the corner of a cab, on the highways and byways of social media. Love is the God who doesn’t affirm you in your sin, who doesn’t send your gray hairs in sorrow to the grave without reaching out his hand to pull you up, who offers you a salvation that you couldn’t possibly win for yourself for the first and most sickening reason that you don’t even really want it and cannot admit that there is even a problem. Love is sending John into the basement of Herod and Herodias, his voice wafting up through the heating ducts, to be on the spot to tell them how they are sinning before they finally have enough and do him in. Love is walking the narrow way to the cross to die, nailed there by a world that desperately hates him and wants him to stop speaking.

Love is that voice crying out across two thousand years, the pages fluttering in the breeze wafting through the hundreds of thousands of little churches (and big ones) where it is heard read in spirit and in truth even this morning. God is Love, someone said in that very book, but it’s not you that gets to say what the love looks like or how it should go. Your love is not God.

John dies as a party joke. You and I stagger through our lives, trying to keep our heads on as long as we can. And because the Love of God is bigger and more perfect than we can know or understand, he comes right to us, to save us, to heal all our diseases, to open our blind eyes, to unstop our deaf ears, to let us out of the prison of sin and destruction, to tell us the truth about everything.

*That’s just a little joke. Don’t worry, I’m more scroogie than ever this morning.

Previous Post

December 13, 2019

7 Party All The Time Takes

Next Post

December 16, 2019 Happy Hogswatch Etc.

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category books Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Children in Conversation culture watch Daily Devotions Demotivations with Anne faith alone for the grandparents GAFCON In conversation with children In the News Kitchen Notes Lambeth Learning Notes Life Going On Men are Human Notes from Home Pictures Reading the Bible Saturday Links Sermons Signs of the Apocalypse The Bad Word Association The Prayer of Jonah Travel Notes Uncategorized Witless Wednesdays Work and the Christian

Select a Month June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Jesus" name mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God saves Anointed one Savior Messiah

Books by This Author Books by Anne Kennedy

See All Titles »