Let Love Wax Warm

Long ago and many miles from where we live now, Paul and I accompanied a church youth choir on their week-long magical mystery summer tour. Married for little more than a year and barely older than some of the students, adulthood at that time felt kind of like new clothing--sometimes crisp and well-fitting and at other times itchy and uncomfortable. My adult clothing felt especially fragile as I immersed myself in the youth community that week. For one thing I was angry and hurt soon after the tour began as I learned that Paul had chosen to dorm with the guys rather than me. In time, however, I was able to straighten my adult clothes, and found myself in a better place to get to know the students, themselves reaching for adulthood and scared of it. Girls sidled up for advice and to lament relationships; even some of the boys willing to express concerns and fears, some serious enough to make me wonder when the real adult would show up to take charge. And then I'd look around and shiver, realizing that I was the adult I was looking for. 

As I listened to issues afflicting and unsettling my younger friends, I found it remarkable that a particular song in their repertory, sung night after night, didn't seem to frighten them at all. The piece was musically sophisticated and challenging, and the text, serious and alarming, was based on Jesus' "Little Apocalypse" from Matthew 24 and Luke 21. The song began slowly and ominously with the words, "Lord, what will be the sign of thy coming?" In this song, the question is followed by a brief, dramatic pause, and then--BOOM! The piece explodes into cacophony, listing the catastrophic events prophesied in the passages and so startlingly you could hear pews cracking all around the church auditoriums as shocked listeners left and then bounced back into their seats.

A recovering end-times casualty myself (1), I was already very familiar with the text. From childhood I had heard the dark predictions preached, broadcast, and brooded over so often I expected any and all of them to happen at any moment. The youth choir's Little Apocalypse song well-exemplified in tone and text the earth-shattering events the reader can look forward to, and it still surprises me that none of the worries expressed by the students that week included the message they sang, sometimes screeched, night after night.  

The song remains, 43 years later, lodged in my brain, and the line "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" has recently risen from the text and is even now singing its lungs out. This "sign of thy coming" is the focus of my post because today the words feel as frighteningly close as any apocalyptic event mentioned.  

Iniquity, one of King James' favorite bad words, stands for every representation of vile human behavior, thought, and intent. The meaning of iniquity doesn't seem to be limited to individual sins, but is force and trajectory of any will, personal or communal, bent on itself. So when iniquity or lawlessness increases, love diminishes to the destruction of soul, community and even nature. And how horrifying to think that a sign of Jesus' return would be cold love, which of course means no love at all.

As I read about and sometimes witness what appears to me to be abounding iniquity, I've felt my pointer finger begin to itch, and then stretch at those who are-- at least in part-- responsible for love waxing cold; people in the public and private sector; lawmakers and breakers, and, most terrible, religious opportunists. And that doesn't even cover outright criminals guilty of abuse, assault, theft and murder. No wonder I can't feel the love tonight, I say to myself. All these people are doing all this iniquity! 

Had I not stopped in the middle of this post to have lunch with a friend, I may have started naming some people I'm particularly mad at--people I hold most responsible for toxic relations in so many contexts. My friend and I had barely sat down to the table when I began my lament: "Iniquity is abounding," I blurted, "and the love of many is waxing cold!" As I recounted the latest troubling events I had read about or had seen on TV, my more sane friend quietly suggested that now might be a good time to look in a different direction. "Remind yourself," said my friend, "that someone else who was bothered by iniquity saw also that the the earth is filled with God's glory."(2) The suggestion effectively diluted my vitriol, and as the waiter served us water and took our lunch orders I felt my pointer finger begin to fold.

Since then I've had to admit to myself that, though with all my heart I believe finger-pointing only inflames iniquity and changes nothing, my general response to disturbance is to accuse. Accusing and blaming, of course, is a childish response to problems.

On the way home from lunch I suddenly remembered the conclusion to the disturbing song my young friends sang night after night during their summer tour and it turns out that Jesus agrees with my friend: "When these things begin to come to pass," he says, "look up!" As hard as it might be to do in these times, looking up positions me to better meet the preceding apocalyptic as well as present horrors with hope.

The birth pangs signaling the end of the world are nothing new. Nation rising against nation is scary but historic. So are calamitous events of nature which have even this past year blasted themselves across the planet in record number. Given these realities and the abounding iniquity I've worried about, I have to wonder what to expect when there's no love present to meet the disasters that come on the world wave after wave.

When we accuse, we're most often looking down on someone else. To see something different than what's dished up to us every single day, we need a different orientation or grounding. Today I'm thinking that the best venue for looking up is from a kneeling position--our only way, perhaps, of resisting abounding iniquity and the optimal position from which to keep love warm.

If we are in need of alternatives to accusation, I'd suggest a fresh reading of John 8 where Jesus addresses a guilty woman and her self righteous accusers. Given the iniquity in which the woman was caught (3), Jesus accuses no one--not the woman, not the elders, and not even the missing man. His posture for most of this story? Bent.

Today I'm considering the following text as a backdrop to what I listen to and read--particularly this evening as I watch the news:

When he was reviled, he did not revile in return;
When he suffered, he did not threaten
but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

Let's put away our pointers, bend (or kneel) a little, and warm our love.

____________

1.See Preparing for the Apocalypse (at age 10) for a recounting of apocalyptic terror.

2. Isaiah 6:3

3. "having been caught in adultery" does not mean anyone accusing her witnessed the sin. This would require the witness of two or three people and the text doesn't show that any of the scribes or pharisees who brought her forward witnessed the act. Also, while cited the law as "such a woman be stoned," the law actually calls for both participants to be put to death. While that law might be fulfilled using stones, you can't put "both of them" to death when only one of them is present.