Fourth Sunday After The Epiphany
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
Love is the test by which all other spiritual gifts are measured.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 1:4-10
The Call Of Jeremiah
(This passage is also the lectionary selection for Ordinary Time 21.) For the next two weeks, the lectionary's First Lesson choices describe the call of two of the greatest prophets. This week is the call of Jeremiah. This call is significant because of its strong predestinarian emphasis: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" (v. 5a). Jeremiah becomes aware of his prophetic destiny early in life, but is afraid of the consequences (and with good reason -- for as he grows older, he will be the butt of all kinds of persecution and abuse). Yet the Lord calms the boy's fears, reminding him, "I am with you to deliver you" (v. 8b). In verse 9, the Lord physically reaches out and touches the boy's mouth, consecrating his prophetic speech for divine purposes. The final verse of this section is a short description of the prophetic vocation, that includes not only tearing down that which is unjust, but also "building and planting" all that is godly. Jeremiah's prophetic ministry will include both these elements, for at various times he will be both a prophet of doom and a prophet of hope.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Hymn To Love
This, one of the best-known passages in the New Testament, is associated in many minds with weddings. It is Paul's famous "hymn to love" -- although the love he is speaking about is the hard-won love arising out of bitter church conflict, rather than the starry-eyed affection of the newly married. These words are actually more appropriate for a congregational meeting in a deeply divided church than they are for a wedding. In introducing this passage, it is important to revisit chapter 12, to provide the full context. Paul's body-of-Christ image (see Third Sunday After The Epiphany) addresses the need of members of the Christian community to live together in peace, honoring differences, and attending to the diversity of spiritual gifts. The love that is celebrated in 1 Corinthians 13 is no mere emotion. It is an act of the will -- a determined, intentional love that triumphs over selfish factionalism. Yet there is far more at work here than merely a grim determination. On the other side of painful conflict, faithfully and lovingly resolved, there awaits a deep and abiding joy: that joy is what Paul celebrates here. Maybe 1 Corinthians 13 is more appropriate for a fiftieth-anniversary celebration than for a wedding -- for it is only the seasoned veterans of marriage, who have experienced the depths as well as the heights of human love, who can fully comprehend the impact of these stirring words.
The Gospel
Luke 4:21-30
The Nazarenes Reject Jesus
Today's selection opens with the final verse of last week's lesson: Jesus, in the Nazareth synagogue, closing the Isaiah scroll and audaciously declaring, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Subsequent verses tell of the reaction by the hometown crowd to his claim of messianic authority. The neighbors' response is predictable: "Is this not Joseph's son?" (v. 22). The people find it hard to accept that this man, whom they remember as a young boy, could be set apart by God for such an extraordinary role. Jesus responds to the hecklers with a proverb: "no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown" (v. 24b). He then cites two scriptural stories of prophets who did great works not among their own people, but among Gentiles: Elijah's visit to the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-14) and Elisha's healing of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-27). The Nazarenes' reaction to this scriptural reproof -- which implies that God's presence is less evident among them than it is among the Gentiles -- is rage. They become a mob, driving Jesus ahead of them to the edge of a cliff. But then, in a powerful display of prophetic authority, he boldly walks straight through the hostile crowd to safety.
Preaching Possibilities
Visit an old-time amusement arcade, and you may still find, tucked away in some dark corner, a little machine called a "Love Tester." It's a venerable old machine, as arcade games go. Once upon a time it may have occupied a place of honor right at the entrance, but that place has long since been commandeered by some glitzy, high-tech video game.
The "Love Tester" is decidedly low-tech. What it is, essentially, is a metal handgrip with an array of electric lights behind it. The harder you squeeze the handgrip, the more lights come on. Each light symbolizes a rung on the ladder of physical attractiveness: from repulsive wimp to red-hot lover. Someplace on the machine, written in small print, is this stern disclaimer: "For Amusement Only" -- as though anybody could ever mistake the Love Tester for a real piece of scientific apparatus!
I don't imagine anyone ever does take the Love Tester seriously. It's more of a joke -- an "amusement," as it says upfront. Yet even so, for a generation or more, this little amusement has raked in enough nickels, dimes, and (in these days) quarters for the arcade owners to keep it around.
Why is that? Why do visitors continue to plunk their hard-earned money into the Love Tester? Could it be that there's a little part of a great many of us that secretly wishes there were such a thing as a Love Tester? Think about it: You could bring your friend, family member, or spouse to the Love Tester anytime you want, and check that person out. You could analyze the one you love, to see if the spark is still there, if the feelings still run strong.
Today's New Testament lesson is about a different sort of "love test." It's not a test of attractiveness to the opposite sex, but rather a test of that rare and selfless kind of love the Greeks call agapé. Paul supplies us with the marks of that kind of love and if we could somehow set up a Love Tester to check them out, there they'd be, an electric light by each one:
• Is that love patient?
• Is it kind?
• It's certainly not envious, nor boastful, nor arrogant, nor rude!
• Does it insist on its own way? (It can't!)
• Is it irritable or resentful? (No way!)
• That love always seeks the truth.
• It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
• That love never ends.
Yet, Paul's purpose here is not to provide a field guide to true Christian love, it is to offer us us a spiritual Love Tester. His point, rather, is that love itself is a test, a measuring stick, a standard: for it is by love that we assess the validity of all other spiritual gifts. Love itself is the test.
Paul has been writing to those quarrelsome Corinthians about spiritual gifts. He has laid out for them the rich variety of gifts God has given to the church to use "for the common good." He has reminded the Corinthians that they are "one body of Christ" -- each member playing a vital role. And now, in this passage which some consider the greatest words he ever wrote, Paul crowns it all with this hymn to the highest gift of all: the gift of love.
As any preacher will attest, 1 Corinthians 13 is the number one, primo, most popular passage for weddings. Brides and grooms flock to this passage like bears to honey. Taken by itself -- plucked out of the overall context -- it does indeed sound like a marvelous piece of romantic poetry, a hymn to the glories of human love.
What most brides and grooms fail to realize, though, as they choose this passage, is that 1 Corinthians 13 isn't about the love between a man and a woman -- not specifically, anyway. It's about love among church members, struggling and stumbling through the painful process of living in community.
Those Corinthians have been fighting with each other about everything: power, prestige, whose faction is on top. Paul is sick and tired of it. So he admonishes them, reminding the Corinthians that they are members of one body, that they have been called not to exalt themselves, but to glorify God.
It's impossible to understand 1 Corinthians 13 without referring to the passage that precedes it. Looking back a few verses, we hear Paul ask, chapter 12, verse 27: "Are all apostles? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?"
Of course not! There are no super-Christians, who can reach deep within themselves and pull out every spiritual gift -- as Batman, in the comic books, always seems to find the perfect tool attached to his utility belt. It's only when we all come together in the church, and pool our gifts as the body of Christ, that God's work begins to be accomplished in the world.
Then Paul encourages them to: "Strive for the greater gifts; and I will show you a still more excellent way." That "excellent way" is the most wondrous spiritual gift of all: the gift of love. To Paul, love is the master gift, the one from which all other gifts of the Spirit spring. This means that, if you want to test out any spiritual gift, what you do is hold it up against the gift of love, and see how it measures up. Even faith and hope are inferior gifts, compared to this one: "Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."
Paul himself demonstrates how to apply the love test, right here in chapter 13. He begins by citing a few hypothetical examples of successful Christians: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
Paul goes on, then, to speak of the most impressive spiritual success he can imagine -- and here's where we are in danger of losing his train of thought, for ours is not an age where Christian martyrdom is common, nor even desirable: "If I give away all my possessions, and hand over my body so that I may boast" -- or, as some translations put it, "if I hand over my body to be burned" -- "but do not have love, I gain nothing."
The love test. How do our lives measure up?
As the people who know us best are standing around one day in the future, after our funeral -- eating those little finger sandwiches, and talking about our life -- what will they have to say about our capacity to love? They may speak of impressive achievements -- diplomas earned, money accumulated, trophies on the mantelpiece. Maybe they'll talk about healthy, happy children raised to adulthood, or volunteer hours given to the community. They may recall a successful business, or a steady advance through the ranks of a profession, or a multitude of many artistic gifts; but if they never mention love, Paul says, all these accomplishments are as nothing.
When we reach the end of our lives, will we have passed the Love Test? We're not talking about a cheap arcade machine that measures the grip of the human hand, but rather of the gratitude of others who have seen in our lives the firm grip of another's hand, the guiding hand of Jesus Christ. For he is love -- love incarnate, as the scriptures teach -- and if our lives manage somehow to share that love with others, even in the most tentative way, then we will have succeeded beyond all measure!
Prayer For The Day
We have heard, O Lord,
what the scriptures teach:
we love because Christ first loved us.
Yet so often, we fail to drink
from that fountain of divine love within us.
Instead, we look for love in all the wrong places.
Keep us faithful to the sort of love we see in Jesus Christ:
love that always seeks to discover and cherish the best in others,
love against which all lesser loves are measured. Amen.
To Illustrate
There's a philosophy that's pervasive today, in our society -- one that doesn't score very highly at all when measured up against love. It's not a new way of thinking, especially; in fact, it's very, very old. It trades under the motto, "the ends justify the means."
It doesn't matter how you get there, say the proponents of this philosophy -- just so you do get there, and just so the place to which you get seems to be a good one. It doesn't matter how many bodies you climb over on your way to becoming chairman of the board. It doesn't matter how you abuse your children emotionally, just so they're polite in public and impress the neighbors. It doesn't matter if you cheat on the exam, just so you don't get caught.
There are plenty of ends-justify-the-means people who think this way. Many of them become successful, according to the world's standards. They've planned well, worked hard, and "looked out for number one." From all outward appearances, they are healthy, wealthy, and maybe even wise. But, says the Apostle Paul, they are going straight to hell.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say they are already in a kind of living hell. For if hell is a place where hope is unknown and love is a stranger, then the people who truly believe the ends justify the means know that place all too well.
Success isn't a place at all. That's the insight of Christianity. It isn't a destination at which you and I end up after a long and arduous journey. Success is found in the way we make the journey. And that way is the way of love.
***
There once was a young woman who had a baby boy. Just after her son's baptism, a ragged old man came to her and offered to grant her one wish, on behalf of her son. Desiring only the best for her baby, the woman wished that her son would always be loved by everyone he met. The old man said "So be it," and vanished.
It turned out just as he said. As the boy grew, everyone loved him so much that he never lacked for anything. Yet, as often happens in stories of magic wishes, things did not turn out as expected. As adored and admired as this young man was, when he grew to adulthood he experienced a terrible emptiness within him. He could have had anything in the world he wanted, just by asking -- but he had no real friends, just admirers. He never knew the joy of a day's work well done, or an achievement richly deserved -- for his neighbors gladly took care of all his needs. The young man became cynical, jaded, selfish -- for no action of his ever brought him any negative consequences.
Finally, the day came when his aged mother died. At the funeral, the same mysterious old man appeared, and this time he offered the son one wish. The young man took him up on his offer, and asked that his mother's original wish for him be changed. Rather than being loved by everyone he met, the young man asked the old wizard to give him the power to love everyone he met.
And, the story goes, from that day forward he knew happiness such as no one on this earth has ever known.
***
I remember being with a lot of my friends at the moment of death and their very last thought before they breathed their very last breath was never about how much money they made or what an incredible house they lived in or what a nice car they drove. Instead, it was always about how much they were loved and how much they loved others.
-- Dirk Shaefer in Man of the Year
***
The mother of the family was celebrating a birthday and the rest of the family was treating her to a party. When the time for the presentation of the gifts arrived, she was instructed to sit in her favorite living room chair. One by one, the father and the two older children came in from the kitchen bearing their gifts on a tray, solemnly presenting them to her as though they were in the presence of royalty.
The smallest girl, too young to have had much of a role in the birthday plans, had been pretty much left out. Yet watching the process unfold before her, she rose to the occasion. Just when the others thought the gift-giving was over, she appeared from the kitchen bearing an empty tray. Approaching her mother she placed the tray on the floor, stepped onto it herself, and with declared, with a childish wiggle of joy, "Mommy, I give you ME!"
***
In L. Frank Baum's book, The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman tells the sad story of why he thought he was in need of a new heart. It seems a Munchkin girl had promised to marry him as soon as he had earned enough money, chopping and selling firewood, to buy a house. The girl's mother hired the Wicked Witch to stop the wedding.
By enchanting the axe, the witch caused the woodman to slip and cut off his leg; the tinsmith made him a new one. Later, the axe cut off the other one, then both arms, and even his head. Each was replaced by tin, but his heart remained in love. In frustration, the witch caused the axe to split him in half, breaking his heart. Only then did the Woodman sadly conclude, "I had now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl and did not care."
The sort of love the Tin Woodman describes is a shallow, obsessive sort of love. Toward the end of the story, he learns that he has the capacity for deep, selfless love after all -- and he doesn't need to place a new heart into his chest in order to realize it.
Love is the test by which all other spiritual gifts are measured.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 1:4-10
The Call Of Jeremiah
(This passage is also the lectionary selection for Ordinary Time 21.) For the next two weeks, the lectionary's First Lesson choices describe the call of two of the greatest prophets. This week is the call of Jeremiah. This call is significant because of its strong predestinarian emphasis: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" (v. 5a). Jeremiah becomes aware of his prophetic destiny early in life, but is afraid of the consequences (and with good reason -- for as he grows older, he will be the butt of all kinds of persecution and abuse). Yet the Lord calms the boy's fears, reminding him, "I am with you to deliver you" (v. 8b). In verse 9, the Lord physically reaches out and touches the boy's mouth, consecrating his prophetic speech for divine purposes. The final verse of this section is a short description of the prophetic vocation, that includes not only tearing down that which is unjust, but also "building and planting" all that is godly. Jeremiah's prophetic ministry will include both these elements, for at various times he will be both a prophet of doom and a prophet of hope.
New Testament Lesson
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Hymn To Love
This, one of the best-known passages in the New Testament, is associated in many minds with weddings. It is Paul's famous "hymn to love" -- although the love he is speaking about is the hard-won love arising out of bitter church conflict, rather than the starry-eyed affection of the newly married. These words are actually more appropriate for a congregational meeting in a deeply divided church than they are for a wedding. In introducing this passage, it is important to revisit chapter 12, to provide the full context. Paul's body-of-Christ image (see Third Sunday After The Epiphany) addresses the need of members of the Christian community to live together in peace, honoring differences, and attending to the diversity of spiritual gifts. The love that is celebrated in 1 Corinthians 13 is no mere emotion. It is an act of the will -- a determined, intentional love that triumphs over selfish factionalism. Yet there is far more at work here than merely a grim determination. On the other side of painful conflict, faithfully and lovingly resolved, there awaits a deep and abiding joy: that joy is what Paul celebrates here. Maybe 1 Corinthians 13 is more appropriate for a fiftieth-anniversary celebration than for a wedding -- for it is only the seasoned veterans of marriage, who have experienced the depths as well as the heights of human love, who can fully comprehend the impact of these stirring words.
The Gospel
Luke 4:21-30
The Nazarenes Reject Jesus
Today's selection opens with the final verse of last week's lesson: Jesus, in the Nazareth synagogue, closing the Isaiah scroll and audaciously declaring, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Subsequent verses tell of the reaction by the hometown crowd to his claim of messianic authority. The neighbors' response is predictable: "Is this not Joseph's son?" (v. 22). The people find it hard to accept that this man, whom they remember as a young boy, could be set apart by God for such an extraordinary role. Jesus responds to the hecklers with a proverb: "no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown" (v. 24b). He then cites two scriptural stories of prophets who did great works not among their own people, but among Gentiles: Elijah's visit to the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:8-14) and Elisha's healing of Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-27). The Nazarenes' reaction to this scriptural reproof -- which implies that God's presence is less evident among them than it is among the Gentiles -- is rage. They become a mob, driving Jesus ahead of them to the edge of a cliff. But then, in a powerful display of prophetic authority, he boldly walks straight through the hostile crowd to safety.
Preaching Possibilities
Visit an old-time amusement arcade, and you may still find, tucked away in some dark corner, a little machine called a "Love Tester." It's a venerable old machine, as arcade games go. Once upon a time it may have occupied a place of honor right at the entrance, but that place has long since been commandeered by some glitzy, high-tech video game.
The "Love Tester" is decidedly low-tech. What it is, essentially, is a metal handgrip with an array of electric lights behind it. The harder you squeeze the handgrip, the more lights come on. Each light symbolizes a rung on the ladder of physical attractiveness: from repulsive wimp to red-hot lover. Someplace on the machine, written in small print, is this stern disclaimer: "For Amusement Only" -- as though anybody could ever mistake the Love Tester for a real piece of scientific apparatus!
I don't imagine anyone ever does take the Love Tester seriously. It's more of a joke -- an "amusement," as it says upfront. Yet even so, for a generation or more, this little amusement has raked in enough nickels, dimes, and (in these days) quarters for the arcade owners to keep it around.
Why is that? Why do visitors continue to plunk their hard-earned money into the Love Tester? Could it be that there's a little part of a great many of us that secretly wishes there were such a thing as a Love Tester? Think about it: You could bring your friend, family member, or spouse to the Love Tester anytime you want, and check that person out. You could analyze the one you love, to see if the spark is still there, if the feelings still run strong.
Today's New Testament lesson is about a different sort of "love test." It's not a test of attractiveness to the opposite sex, but rather a test of that rare and selfless kind of love the Greeks call agapé. Paul supplies us with the marks of that kind of love and if we could somehow set up a Love Tester to check them out, there they'd be, an electric light by each one:
• Is that love patient?
• Is it kind?
• It's certainly not envious, nor boastful, nor arrogant, nor rude!
• Does it insist on its own way? (It can't!)
• Is it irritable or resentful? (No way!)
• That love always seeks the truth.
• It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
• That love never ends.
Yet, Paul's purpose here is not to provide a field guide to true Christian love, it is to offer us us a spiritual Love Tester. His point, rather, is that love itself is a test, a measuring stick, a standard: for it is by love that we assess the validity of all other spiritual gifts. Love itself is the test.
Paul has been writing to those quarrelsome Corinthians about spiritual gifts. He has laid out for them the rich variety of gifts God has given to the church to use "for the common good." He has reminded the Corinthians that they are "one body of Christ" -- each member playing a vital role. And now, in this passage which some consider the greatest words he ever wrote, Paul crowns it all with this hymn to the highest gift of all: the gift of love.
As any preacher will attest, 1 Corinthians 13 is the number one, primo, most popular passage for weddings. Brides and grooms flock to this passage like bears to honey. Taken by itself -- plucked out of the overall context -- it does indeed sound like a marvelous piece of romantic poetry, a hymn to the glories of human love.
What most brides and grooms fail to realize, though, as they choose this passage, is that 1 Corinthians 13 isn't about the love between a man and a woman -- not specifically, anyway. It's about love among church members, struggling and stumbling through the painful process of living in community.
Those Corinthians have been fighting with each other about everything: power, prestige, whose faction is on top. Paul is sick and tired of it. So he admonishes them, reminding the Corinthians that they are members of one body, that they have been called not to exalt themselves, but to glorify God.
It's impossible to understand 1 Corinthians 13 without referring to the passage that precedes it. Looking back a few verses, we hear Paul ask, chapter 12, verse 27: "Are all apostles? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?"
Of course not! There are no super-Christians, who can reach deep within themselves and pull out every spiritual gift -- as Batman, in the comic books, always seems to find the perfect tool attached to his utility belt. It's only when we all come together in the church, and pool our gifts as the body of Christ, that God's work begins to be accomplished in the world.
Then Paul encourages them to: "Strive for the greater gifts; and I will show you a still more excellent way." That "excellent way" is the most wondrous spiritual gift of all: the gift of love. To Paul, love is the master gift, the one from which all other gifts of the Spirit spring. This means that, if you want to test out any spiritual gift, what you do is hold it up against the gift of love, and see how it measures up. Even faith and hope are inferior gifts, compared to this one: "Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."
Paul himself demonstrates how to apply the love test, right here in chapter 13. He begins by citing a few hypothetical examples of successful Christians: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
Paul goes on, then, to speak of the most impressive spiritual success he can imagine -- and here's where we are in danger of losing his train of thought, for ours is not an age where Christian martyrdom is common, nor even desirable: "If I give away all my possessions, and hand over my body so that I may boast" -- or, as some translations put it, "if I hand over my body to be burned" -- "but do not have love, I gain nothing."
The love test. How do our lives measure up?
As the people who know us best are standing around one day in the future, after our funeral -- eating those little finger sandwiches, and talking about our life -- what will they have to say about our capacity to love? They may speak of impressive achievements -- diplomas earned, money accumulated, trophies on the mantelpiece. Maybe they'll talk about healthy, happy children raised to adulthood, or volunteer hours given to the community. They may recall a successful business, or a steady advance through the ranks of a profession, or a multitude of many artistic gifts; but if they never mention love, Paul says, all these accomplishments are as nothing.
When we reach the end of our lives, will we have passed the Love Test? We're not talking about a cheap arcade machine that measures the grip of the human hand, but rather of the gratitude of others who have seen in our lives the firm grip of another's hand, the guiding hand of Jesus Christ. For he is love -- love incarnate, as the scriptures teach -- and if our lives manage somehow to share that love with others, even in the most tentative way, then we will have succeeded beyond all measure!
Prayer For The Day
We have heard, O Lord,
what the scriptures teach:
we love because Christ first loved us.
Yet so often, we fail to drink
from that fountain of divine love within us.
Instead, we look for love in all the wrong places.
Keep us faithful to the sort of love we see in Jesus Christ:
love that always seeks to discover and cherish the best in others,
love against which all lesser loves are measured. Amen.
To Illustrate
There's a philosophy that's pervasive today, in our society -- one that doesn't score very highly at all when measured up against love. It's not a new way of thinking, especially; in fact, it's very, very old. It trades under the motto, "the ends justify the means."
It doesn't matter how you get there, say the proponents of this philosophy -- just so you do get there, and just so the place to which you get seems to be a good one. It doesn't matter how many bodies you climb over on your way to becoming chairman of the board. It doesn't matter how you abuse your children emotionally, just so they're polite in public and impress the neighbors. It doesn't matter if you cheat on the exam, just so you don't get caught.
There are plenty of ends-justify-the-means people who think this way. Many of them become successful, according to the world's standards. They've planned well, worked hard, and "looked out for number one." From all outward appearances, they are healthy, wealthy, and maybe even wise. But, says the Apostle Paul, they are going straight to hell.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say they are already in a kind of living hell. For if hell is a place where hope is unknown and love is a stranger, then the people who truly believe the ends justify the means know that place all too well.
Success isn't a place at all. That's the insight of Christianity. It isn't a destination at which you and I end up after a long and arduous journey. Success is found in the way we make the journey. And that way is the way of love.
***
There once was a young woman who had a baby boy. Just after her son's baptism, a ragged old man came to her and offered to grant her one wish, on behalf of her son. Desiring only the best for her baby, the woman wished that her son would always be loved by everyone he met. The old man said "So be it," and vanished.
It turned out just as he said. As the boy grew, everyone loved him so much that he never lacked for anything. Yet, as often happens in stories of magic wishes, things did not turn out as expected. As adored and admired as this young man was, when he grew to adulthood he experienced a terrible emptiness within him. He could have had anything in the world he wanted, just by asking -- but he had no real friends, just admirers. He never knew the joy of a day's work well done, or an achievement richly deserved -- for his neighbors gladly took care of all his needs. The young man became cynical, jaded, selfish -- for no action of his ever brought him any negative consequences.
Finally, the day came when his aged mother died. At the funeral, the same mysterious old man appeared, and this time he offered the son one wish. The young man took him up on his offer, and asked that his mother's original wish for him be changed. Rather than being loved by everyone he met, the young man asked the old wizard to give him the power to love everyone he met.
And, the story goes, from that day forward he knew happiness such as no one on this earth has ever known.
***
I remember being with a lot of my friends at the moment of death and their very last thought before they breathed their very last breath was never about how much money they made or what an incredible house they lived in or what a nice car they drove. Instead, it was always about how much they were loved and how much they loved others.
-- Dirk Shaefer in Man of the Year
***
The mother of the family was celebrating a birthday and the rest of the family was treating her to a party. When the time for the presentation of the gifts arrived, she was instructed to sit in her favorite living room chair. One by one, the father and the two older children came in from the kitchen bearing their gifts on a tray, solemnly presenting them to her as though they were in the presence of royalty.
The smallest girl, too young to have had much of a role in the birthday plans, had been pretty much left out. Yet watching the process unfold before her, she rose to the occasion. Just when the others thought the gift-giving was over, she appeared from the kitchen bearing an empty tray. Approaching her mother she placed the tray on the floor, stepped onto it herself, and with declared, with a childish wiggle of joy, "Mommy, I give you ME!"
***
In L. Frank Baum's book, The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman tells the sad story of why he thought he was in need of a new heart. It seems a Munchkin girl had promised to marry him as soon as he had earned enough money, chopping and selling firewood, to buy a house. The girl's mother hired the Wicked Witch to stop the wedding.
By enchanting the axe, the witch caused the woodman to slip and cut off his leg; the tinsmith made him a new one. Later, the axe cut off the other one, then both arms, and even his head. Each was replaced by tin, but his heart remained in love. In frustration, the witch caused the axe to split him in half, breaking his heart. Only then did the Woodman sadly conclude, "I had now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl and did not care."
The sort of love the Tin Woodman describes is a shallow, obsessive sort of love. Toward the end of the story, he learns that he has the capacity for deep, selfless love after all -- and he doesn't need to place a new heart into his chest in order to realize it.
