They say there are five different kinds of love languages. What are they? Well —
There are Words of Affirmation: a verbal expression of love, from the simple “I love you” to something more complex, like, “I am sorry, and I want to make it right.” (My honest apology affirms your dignity as one who deserves my respect.)
Then there is Gift-Giving: that thoughtful present you weren’t expecting, wrapped tightly with a sprig of rosemary knotted into the ribbon.
And there are Acts of Service: I fold laundry for you as a quiet way of saying, “You matter to me.”
There is Quality Time: my dad and I have played Words with Friends for years now, on our phones, separated by 1700 miles but pinging each other, back and forth, with Scrabble words. Does this count as Quality Time? I once told him it feels like it’s not much, these games, but he said no, this is a small thing but it is a connection that matters.
And finally there is Physical Touch: I have had a total of three hugs in the last thirteen months.
So we say that there are five Love Languages. They are powerful even when they are scarce.
But love is bigger, and lovelier, and messier, than that. There is an all-knowing heavenly being on the sitcom, “The Good Place.” Her name is Janet. And Janet says that “love is a five-dimensional blob.” That’s probably a more accurate take on love than a neat list of five discrete languages. But there is something to the love-language frame. We can pick it up and use it, then put it down. The love-languages list is particularly useful when it helps us see how someone’s behavior is loving even when they themselves don’t seem all that loving.
As far as Jesus is concerned, he will use any love language he can get his hands on to teach us how to love one another.
Take foot-washing. Foot-washing has it all: it is self-evidently an Act of Service. It is a startling, even unnerving moment of intimate Physical Touch. There are Words of Affirmation around it: Jesus takes pains to explain it to his friends, communicating directly his love for them, and for us. It is Quality Time in the extreme! This is not just a quiet phone ping that says, “Your son just played his turn on Words with Friends.” It is so much more. The foot-washing happens at a leisurely meal, with dusty, grimy fisherfolk reclining like royals on cushions, drinking deeply from the fountain of their Lord’s loving presence. And finally, the foot-washing is, simply and beautifully, a Gift from God.
So: Jesus uses all of the Love Languages.
He also does this, again and again, in the Holy Eucharist we share as the Body of Christ. The fragrant bread broken, touched and grasped, shared and eaten: that is vivid Physical Touch. But we also share the Physical Touch of the kiss, or hug, of Peace, a physical act of reconciliation and repair that prepares us to receive the bread and wine as one Body. And then there are, of course, a ton of words! Our Eucharistic Prayers are Words of Affirmation, creatively and lovingly chosen, to affirm the goodness of God, to acclaim God’s triumph over the powers of sin and death, and to give thanks to God. Next, the Eucharist is an Act of Service for the whole world: nourished by this meal, we go out to be the broken Body for all people, for their life and their health. And the Eucharist is a Gift: God’s gift once again, and God’s gifts, plural, given back to God. Finally, Eucharist checks the Quality Time box: like that first Eucharist, we are sovereigns reclining on cushions, as it were, when God invites us to God’s Table, and tells us that we are friends, not slaves. We take our time at this meal. We sing, we breathe, and in long periods of serene silence, we listen to all creation singing a song of praise to God, who is our Waiter, our Table, and our Food.
So: Jesus uses all of the Love Languages.
But this is a deeply sad, distressingly conflicted, traumatically grievous time. We have not celebrated the Holy Eucharist together as a whole community for more than a year now. Eucharist happens only around the edges, in household Eucharists and Communion brought to those who are home-bound. God’s Table has stood empty and quiet, month after month, as the whole world labors beneath a deadly pandemic.
But even now, even especially now, Jesus uses the languages of love (and not just the five we have identified so far) to connect with us, to change and restore us, and to turn us in love toward one another. Jesus transforms even the absence of Eucharist into a way of expressing and receiving love. After all, we pause from Holy Eucharist expressly for the life and the health of the whole world, including and especially those among us who are most vulnerable to the ravages of this awful virus. And so, our restraint from Holy Eucharist becomes, in its own way, another powerful expression of love.
The problem is, it can be hard to really appreciate how not celebrating Eucharist is a robust expression of love. There is no bread to touch, no neighbor to embrace, no lengthy poems of thanksgiving, just a whole lot of nothing. How can this be love? I get it on an intellectual level: if we refuse to spread disease, we stand firmly on the side of life in community. We literally save lives. I get that. But it’s hard to express love by not doing something.
So maybe, during this troubled time, Jesus is giving us new languages of love. Or at the very least, he is flipping over some of the languages we know. Like this:
Jesus is feeding us with hunger. “You have given us bowls of tears to drink,” cries the psalmist, to God. Instead of luscious bread in a room where we all joyfully “hug it out,” we gather to praise God in scattered households, eating whatever we can glean from what seems like a desert landscape. And yet: God is here. Even here. God in Jesus is the Hungry One. And so our meal of nothing-but-tears transforms us into allies and companions of those who hunger.
Here’s another love language in a Time of No Eucharist: We affirm Jesus, and Jesus affirms us, with wordless silence. Again and again we hear that Jesus withdrew from his friends to go up the mountain to pray. He sometimes rose long before dawn so that he could be alone in prayer. And so our table, God’s Table, has been for the past year a sign of solitude, a kind of foothill beneath the mountain where Jesus himself is the Lonely One. We join our prayers during isolation and lockdown to the prayers of Jesus himself, and by doing so we are transformed into allies and companions of those who are alone.
So great is God, and so deep is God’s love, that even the absence of food is a feast; even the absence of physical touch is an embrace.
Now, none of this is meant to glorify human suffering, or rationalize food insecurity, or explain away the gnawing, awful loneliness that haunts so many people. It is precisely not that! It is only this: God is present even when all these gifts are absent, and so God is powerfully present in the empathy we feel — and the actions we take on that empathy — for those who suffer in these ways, year in and year out, not just in a pandemic year. God in Jesus washes our feet and nourishes us with his own Body and Blood, and God in Jesus teaches us a Way of love that leads us lovingly to feed, clothe, advocate for, and walk alongside our neighbor.
This coming Sunday, fragrant bread will, once again, be broken here. It will be shared. (Still no hugs! But there will be bread.) Christ will be known to us in this broken bread. But even now, gathered virtually around an empty table, even now, Christ is here. The Hungry One, the Lonely One, the Crucified One, the Risen One: even now, Jesus gives us the New Commandment, our great sustenance in times of plenty and times of deep need; and also our nourishment in the wilderness.
“Love one another,” Christ commands us.
And that is food enough.
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Preached on Maundy Thursday, April 1, 2021, at Grace Episcopal Church, Bainbridge Island, Washington.
Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 116:1, 10-17
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35