MARRIAGE Service: Love's Three Levels

Marriage of Seth and Jewel Barnard
(1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8a)
St. Patrick Church
August 7, 2010

Love’s Three Levels
By Nicholas P. Amato


Fiddler on the Roof

In the famous Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, the father of a Jewish family living in Russia was certainly not the first man ever to ask a woman, “Do you love me?”

Nor was Golde, his wife, the first ever to respond, “Do I love you? For all these years, I’ve cleaned your house, cooked your meals, and washed your clothes. Do I love you?”

You’ll recall it’s not the response Tevye is looking for, “No, no Golde, I mean do you LOVE me?”

Golde replies with still more of the “laundry list.” “For all these years, I’ve walked with you, talked with you, starved with you, slept with you. Do I love you? If that’s not love, what is?”

We’ve all been there when we really want to know higher levels to this question of being loved.


Love Has Its Levels

That question of higher levels has a fitting place here at the marriage of Seth and Jewel and the reading from Paul's Letter to the Corinthians, which they’ve chosen, helps us address it.

Let’s look at this deeper love Tevye and Paul are raising.

I’d suggest there are three levels of love, and that the first prepares you for the second, and the second prepares you for the third.


Foundational Level

The first level of love is FOUNDATIONAL LOVE. It’s the kind of love Golde talks about with Tevye.

Simply put, the first level of love consists in mutual sharing and fidelity. The mutual sharing and fidelity is the very bedrock of love. Without it, there can be no genuine love.

It’s St. Paul’s “Love is patient, love is kind, not envious, it does not boast.”

And it’s only from working at these tasks of patience and kindness that we get drawn into love expressions that are truly higher.


Joy-Filled Level

The second, or higher level of love could be called JOY-FILLED LOVE.

Here, the lover is not content with mutual sharing and mutual fidelity. At this level the lover wants to do more. The lover searches for ways to surprise and to please the beloved.

This is what we mean by it being JOY-FILLED. It is never satisfied with the bare minimum. It always wants to do more.

St. Paul touches this level in his words, “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.” The truth of the relationship has grown and it needs higher expressions of love to satisfy.

As a spouse no longer rejoices in what is wrong with the other spouse, as two people embrace each other’s shortcomings, as a couple is able in the face of it all to rejoice in the fact that God has joined them together, something begins to happen in the relationship.


Folly of Love Level

The highest level of loving begins. It might be called the FOLLY OF LOVE. It is the most perfect form love there is.

At this level the lover can now do what other people truly consider madness. At this level the lover does what ordinary people cannot understand.

It is important to know that this step into the heights of love cannot be taken without a profound sense of having first been loved by God. For Christians it is an understanding of having been lost and having been found in Christ Jesus.

Without a saving experience of this kind, there is no motivation, no energy, no resource you can depend on for loving at this level of folly for this is the level where I will give up all, including life itself, for another.

That is why the word FOLLY sums it up so well. It is why those who haven’t had the experience can have no understanding of it.

It is the mind of Paul, of a Jesus, all individuals who been there. And Paul’s words are addressed to this highest level of love, “There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.

My friends, those words only make sense to one who’s been lost and now is found.


Conclusion

Seth and Jewel, most of us, most of the time, love at the first level and we work at being patient and kind.

And most of us have moments in our lives when we love at the second level, rejoicing in the truth of our relationships with a spouse.

We go out of our way to please or to surprise those we love.

The challenge for you Seth and Jewel, on this day of blessing, is to value and live your love at the third level, feeling no limits to love’s forbearance, its trust, its power to endure.

Doing so you will love in a way that makes non-loving people think you are mad. Yet it’s only this kind of love that is capable of transforming, not only each other, but also ourselves, as well as the world in which we live.