April - May 2010
Reflections - "A Crazy Kind of Love"
One of the things I enjoy as a priest is meeting with couples who are madly in love with each other. I have them share with me their experience of how they met and how the courtship continued until the day they decided they both wanted to get married.
I ask each to name what it is in the other that they cherish and value that they would want to spend the rest of their lives together. It is then when I get really nosey and ask them about the marriage proposal. I get great enjoyment in hearing how the guy concocted his plan to propose in a surprising, romantic, fun way. And then to hear the bride to be share her own perspective and experience of watching her future husband acting kind of strange, crazy, suspicious before pulling out the ring and asking the question. A Crazy kind of Love.
In the Gospel for 3 Easter (John 21:1-19) we hear the most entertaining of all the Easter Stories.
When Peter finds out that it is Jesus giving directions from the shore, leading to their catching
so many fish, large fish, 153 of them, that they could not haul it in, he acts in a strange, crazy,
erratic way. “It is the Lord!” John the beloved disciple shouts out. With that Peter gets dressed
because he’s been fishing naked all night, and then proceeds to dive into the water, swimming 100 yards to get to shore as fast as he can to greet Jesus. It is with a passionate, exuberant, crazy, kind of love, that Peter jumps into the water to greet Jesus, Risen from the dead.
The story continues with Jesus having a fire on the shore where all can grill their catch of fish for
breakfast. And in the context of bounty, abundance, divine, hospitality, conviviality, and delight, Jesus asks Peter the question. “Peter, do you love me?” It isn’t that Jesus doubts Peter’s love. It is that he wants to direct Peter’s love for the long haul, for the future. He asks Peter to use his
exuberant love for Jesus in loving others, feeding lambs, tending sheep, feeding sheep. In other
words, to take care of the disciples of Jesus. Love them, tend them, send them out to transform the world. A Crazy kind of Love.
At the end of the movie “The Hurt Locker,” Staff Sgt. Will James is home with his wife and small
baby boy. Will is a highly skilled bomb tech who defuses bombs in Iraq for a living. He attends to
the challenge of bomb removal like a surgeon, an artist, a puzzle solving savant, a tight rope walker who dances on the wire. After shopping in the local supermarket, trying to pick out the right cereal among 50,000 cereal choices, cleaning out gunk from the gutters of his home, he plays with his son who is standing in his crib. Will smiles at him and then says, “You know when you’re a child you love everything – your jack-in-the-box, your tin can, your stuffed animals. But when you get older the things you used to love are not special anymore. There are fewer things that you love. At my age (Will is 26) maybe the list gets down to one or two. And sometimes I think it may be only one thing.” In the last scene of the movie, Staff Sgt. Will James is back in Iraq doing what he does best, loving the one thing he loves - defusing bombs. Our single focused loves can sometimes be tragically addictive and destructive for our lives, as well as our souls.
The love we see and experience in our God, revealed in Jesus Christ is not a love that contracts,
reduces, shrivels up our heart. On the contrary the love of God increases, expands, multiplies our love without limit. The goal isn’t to have only one or two loves and maybe only one, but to have so much and so many to love that we don’t know how it’s possible that it happens, but that it does. God’s Love is a crazy kind of love. God becoming human, being a baby, a child, a teenager, an adult, a healer, a teacher, experiences fully the human life, including love and suffering, even dying on a cross and being the first of many to rise from the dead. I’d say that’s pretty crazy. It is an expansive, not contracting love, one that provides bounty, abundance, fireside breakfasts on the beach, and the call in the context of being loved so much, to love others too. To love without limit. Feed lambs, Tend sheep, Feed sheep. To send them all out to transform the world with a crazy kind of love!
Happy Easter!
