September 15, 2024

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Mark 8:27-38

The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

The Book of Isaiah is written across the troubles of the people of Judah, before and after the land was conquered. Isaiah the prophet most likely lived and died before the conclusion of that centuries long series of events, but the book was given his name anyway even as its completion was taken up by later writers.

This passage comes toward the end when it is hard to imagine that the people will ever recover from their setbacks. This is a hopeful and defiant message that goes against the seemingly endless bad news of their recent history. Things will get better even if people do not believe that is possible. And even if they have no patience for someone telling them to be patient.

The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.

The writer knows that this an unpopular stance to take. You might think that talk of good news would be a good thing, but not when you are under a dark cloud. Not when your mindset is weighted down with pessimism and cynicism. And war.

Who will contend with me? Let us stand in court together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.

Sometimes you have to take a deep breath, stand up straight, and put your shoulder to the wheel. Move onward and have faith.

This week, we are discussing another movie. This time it is an old classic, Casablanca. I was seeing it for the first time, which might be a surprise to some. It never came up as I was growing up. And the movie originally came out in 1942, which was a bit before my time.

1942. A movie about the Second World War years before the war ended. Years before Nazis became an archetype for evil. And yet there are signals within the movie that strike a chord decades later, signals that the original writers and actors may not have realized would endure. References to concentration camps. References to the Gestapo. The Allies had months after the start of filming invaded Northern Africa, so even the choice of settings was momentous in that timeframe.

What is the movie about? Many things. It is about the war, of course. It is about the invasion of France and its aftermath. Casablanca was in Unoccupied French territory, or Vichy France, which government was seen as accommodating to and even encouraging toward the Nazis.

And the movie is about love. Love in many senses of that word. The love of Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick for Ingrid Bergman’s character Ilsa. This is romantic love. The love of Ingrid for her husband, the Czech dissident Victor Laszlo. This is a more idealistic love, the love for someone’s nobility and character as opposed to more emotional forms of love. The love of country, as shown during the famous scene in the nightclub when German soldiers were singing a nationalist song only to be drowned out by many French voices singing La Marseillaise, the French national anthem dating from the French Revolution.

The main character Rick comes off as a very cynical and selfish man early in the movie. We discover however that he had been involved in two different anti-fascist efforts, once in Ethiopia after the Italians under Mussolini had invaded and then on the Loyalist side against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. This suggests that at some point, Rick had been more idealistic before ending up in Paris in a romantic relationship with Ilsa.

In this flashback, neither Rick nor Ilsa is willing to answer questions about their respective pasts. When Paris was soon to fall to the invading Germans, Rick asks Ilsa to leave with him and for them to get married in Marseille on the way to escaping Europe. Ilsa leaves Rick waiting at the train station and we come to know in the present that he has been grieving her loss ever since. Ilsa, you see, was already married, though she had thought her husband Victor had been killed in a German concentration camp. Instead, we learn that he had survived but needed to be nursed back to health by Ilsa.

The movie concludes with Rick saving Ilsa and Victor from the Nazis by giving them travel papers with which to escape to neutral Portugal. Rick tricked everyone involved, from Ilsa who thought she would stay with Rick, to Victor who tried to save Ilsa alone, to the French Inspector Renault who thought he was going to be able to arrest everyone and make the Nazis happy.

As I was reading commentary about the movie, there was a note that it was legally impossible for Ilsa and Rick to end up together in the story. At that time, movie standards prohibited having a woman leave her husband for another man. It was not permissible to have that version of a happy ending. That has more to do with 1940s perceptions of morality than actual love or even good storytelling. It arises from a certain understanding of marriage as being forever and divorce being morally questionable. Those perceptions have changed, whether we might lament the change.

Again, this movie is about love. Which is handy for me, because in many ways I think that religion is about love. Love stands at the center of Christian thought, or at least it should in my book. And in the actual book, the Bible, if you are paying attention. Because if it is not about love, then it is not about Jesus.

If that is the case, we need a working definition for love. The dictionary definition is an intense feeling of deep affection for or dedication to another. When we think about love, then, there are at least two important aspects we should consider: the type of feelings or dedication and the target for those feelings and dedication. How do we love and who do we love?

This was a philosophical question for the Ancient Greeks, who also thought that love was crucially important. The Greeks had categories of love to distinguish among the possible types. And for the price of admission this morning, you get to hear about them.

The first type of love was known as eros. This is romantic or intimate love. This is the love of physical attraction and raging hormones. That sort of love does not rank highly for either the Ancient Greeks or early Christians, at least philosophically and theologically.

Then there is the love between friends, known as philia. This is sometimes called brotherly love, which is odd because actual love between brothers would be called storge, the love between blood relations and family. Love between friends is rated a bit higher on the scales, because physical attraction is fleeting and family love is to be expected, at least in many cultures. Your mileage may vary.

One interesting category of love is philautia, meaning self-love, a regard for one’s own personal happiness. Historically in Christian circles, self-love verges on being a sin. You should love selflessly; you should place the needs of others over your own. Self-denial or abnegation is more consistent with traditional notions of Christian love, as suggested in the Gospel reading. And yet, that image of Christian love has been used over the centuries by the more cynically minded, inducing faithful religious folks to give of themselves so that others might personally profit from such faith. The message of being a fool for God can be corrupted into someone being a fool in general. Love should not be the basis upon which someone takes advantage of us.

The next type of love is xenia, love that takes the form of hospitality. Greeks would have had a strong tradition of taking care of travelers and even strangers. You see this strongly reflected in the Bible in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures. Like Abraham welcoming the three strangers into his tent who turned out to be messengers from God, from which we get the expression “for you may be entertaining angels without knowing it.” And Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

I suspect Jesus was drawing upon that deeply held sense of hospitality for a larger sense of love, one without boundaries or sharply defined expectations. The ultimate form of love for Greeks and Christians was and is known as agape, unconditional love for God, for neighbors, for the children of God, and even for one’s enemies.

Thomas Aquinas described this as willing the good of another. I might rephrase that slightly as willing the wellbeing of another, but that is quibbling over semantics for the modern listener. The Biblical formulation remains the most salient version for me, as from the Gospel of Luke: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

When Christian writers downplay the notion of self-love, I have often thought of this verse. If you are unwilling or uninterested in loving yourself, how then would you understand a command to love your neighbor as yourself? Jesus was assuming that we would be to some degree selfish. And therefore, this description of neighborly love should be treated as an absolute minimum. We should be ready to love others more if we happen to be stingy with how much we concern ourselves with ourselves.

Back to Casablanca. Rick and Ilsa loved each other. This was romantic love, as framed by the rather chaste standards of the 1940s moral movie codes. Rick wanted to marry Ilsa, so it was a more deep and sincere love beyond simple physical attraction. Until the last moment of their relationship in Paris, Ilsa thought the same way. That is until the moment she found out her husband Victor had survived the Nazis efforts to kill him.

What should we make of the marriage between Ilsa and Victor? Ilsa described her love for Victor in terms of his work as a freedom fighter, as a dissident leader. She loved his work, she loved his morality, she might even have loved his character. She never spoke of Victor in a romantic sense, but she was devoted to him. This does not fall neatly into our philosophical categories of love.

Maybe it is love of an ideal. Love of a hero perhaps. Love of truth, justice, and the American way, or more aptly the Czech way. This love of concepts and ideals is a strong theme in the movie Casablanca. We see it in the character Victor Laszlo who inspires people to resist German authoritarianism. We see it the proud singing of the French refugees in the nightclub. We have some inkling of it in the description of Rick’s earlier effort to oppose the spread of fascism in Ethiopia and Spain.

And we see that sense of love for country reborn when Rick saves Ilsa and Victor and abandons his life in Casablanca to join the resistance movement in the hills of Morocco. Even the corrupt and cynical Inspector Renault joins Rick in that journey, though we might define his late breaking conversion as being simply a form of opportunism. That is where the movie ends.

But is that how it should have ended? Let us assume that there were no movie code restrictions preventing Rick and Ilsa from walking off into the sunset. Should Rick and Ilsa have ended up together in our best of all movie endings? Rick lied to her and manipulated the situation in order to save Ilsa, who wanted to stay in Northern Africa in harm’s way with Rick. Victor would have been safe in Portugal and the loving couple would have been together, even if there were worrisome storm clouds on the historical horizon.

Was that the better result, romantic love triumphing over more abstract love? Or is marital stability and certainty more important than the romantic happiness of one of its participants? What do you think? I do not have an answer for you, which might seem like a cop out.

To be honest with you, I do not know the answer because that answer truly lies with the people involved. Victor Laszlo would have been safe, but he wanted Ilsa to be safe and was willing to risk his own life to bring that about. Ilsa would have been less safe, but she wanted Victor to be safe and fighting the good fight somewhere, allowing her and Rick to be together. And Rick wanted Ilsa to be safe, and perhaps incidentally Victor as well. But he was denying himself what he truly loved, having Ilsa in his life.

If love can be defined as willing the wellbeing of another person, each of these people was doing that. And each of them was also willing to sacrifice something for someone else. Victor being with Ilsa. Ilsa being safely out of harm’s way. And Rick having the love of his life and his well-healed lifestyle in Morocco, though Casablanca seemed to be more where he ended up than where he wanted to be. There is something to be said for each of these alternatives. And yet, shouldn’t the commandment to love from Jesus make things more clear, more predictable, more certain?

Honestly, no.

Loving others is neither predictable nor certain. That is true with romantic love and that is true for the broader notions of love. And that is because love may be simple, but it is not always easy.

In the famous passage by Paul, we are told that, Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Lovely words with a stirring message. But here is the problem: that is the nature of love, not the nature of the people we love. Because sometimes the people we love, or should love, are impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable, or resentful. They enjoy wrongdoing or committing wrongdoings. They doubt and they despair, they complain and they bellyache. And you are still supposed to love them. Again, simple advice is by no means easy.

We are supposed to love neighbors and enemies. We are supposed to love those who are loveable and those who are anything but. We are supposed to love those who are admirable and those who are pains in the neck. We are supposed to love those who deserve it and we are supposed to love those who do not deserve it.

Because that is what Jesus asks of us. And it is not easy to follow Jesus. We sometimes try to cut corners to make it easier, to narrow the scope of love by some self-imposed definitions. Neighbors really means neighbors, the people we like and who are like us.  But that tighter definition has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with someone selling you a watered-down version of Jesus. What did Jesus say?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. You shall love your enemies. You shall love those who do not wish for your wellbeing. And that is a hard message to follow. But it is the message, nonetheless.

Sometimes, like in Isaiah, you have to take a deep breath, stand up straight, and put your shoulder to the wheel. Move onward and have faith. And the most faithful act anyone can make in this life is to love others. For it is by no means a guaranty that we will be loved in return. So, you love others as a leap of faith in your actions and in the hope for a better future.

I hope that in your personal lives, there are people that you love. Family and friends. Children and grandchildren. Partners and spouses. Animal companions. Our beloveds whoever they might be, by chance or by choice. Those who we will their wellbeing. Those who we want to be healthy and happy, safe and sound.

And I hope and pray that we will remember everyone else. The people we meet in this life regardless of how much we like them. Because you do not have to like someone to wish for their wellbeing, to work toward their wellbeing.

And like the end of the movie, I cannot tell you exactly how that will turn out or what it should look like with any predictability. I can help at times. I maybe can offer a little advice. But that is really a question – a question about love – that you have to answer yourselves. A question about love for you to ask of yourselves and to ask of God.

Amen.