As the villagers of Pudukudi Melur showed in their moment of radical hospitality, true freedom is not about protecting one’s rights or maintaining boundaries; it is about breaking them open in love.
Priests, in order to become mayors, had to be viewed as lovers. So, the mayor-priest is a ‘lover’ in multiple senses. He has to embody God’s love. He has to perform paternal love. He has to signal to society that he is also, very likely – albeit in secret – to be a good sexual lover as well.
Love disrupts both the ruin and misery we inflict upon others as well as our preoccupation with ourselves, for these are interdependent, synergistically working together for the degradation of all.
Jesus transfers the miracle of recognition from his disciples recognizing him across an overflowing fish net, to the world’s hungry recognizing Jesus in his disciples in a food bank line or across a soup counter.
As we ask what it means to love in the face of such loss, Hannah appears with her tears, words, and song to teach us lessons about loss and love. Hannah reminds us to think twice (or thrice) before speaking too soon.
You discuss a God that both invites us to love our enemies, already incredibly challenging, and a God that also seems to allow, endorse, or sometimes invite violence against the oppressor in certain scriptural texts. Both are hard theological pills to swallow.
Contemplating a radical response to contemporary politics of (sexual) desire
Love should be the interpreting principle in every situation and to every person. Love for God is not expressed by hatred towards a neighbour based on any text.
We look for revelations on the mountain tops—among the most powerful and famous. God’s politics of reversal, on display throughout Luke, call us to re-center this search in the valleys and level places, in the face of the child and the plea of a father.
When Love is the first motion in our lives, we are defined by how we respond, not only in the grand gestures, but also in the unremarkable expressions of everyday life.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13 invites us to listen to the voices that are subjugated by systems of sexism, racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and the like. When love is forbidden, streets will be crowded, when love is forbidden, widows will be broken, when love is forbidden, resilience is inevitable.