Perhaps you’ve heard of The Five Love Languages, a pop psychology phenomenon began by pastor and counselor Gary Chapman in 1992. While there hasn’t been empirical testing of love languages, millions and millions of these books and seminars have been sold, because people have found understanding love languages to be helpful in their relationships.
The basic idea behind love languages is that each person has a preferred love language, or a way in which they instinctively understand that they are loved. Some people understand that they are loved through words of affirmation, some understand they are loved through receiving gifts. Others need quality time with undivided attention, and still others need physical touch to feel assured that they are loved. Lastly, some people understand love through acts of service, which is when someone goes out of their way to do something for them.
The trouble comes in when two people in a relationship speak different love languages. When this happens, miscommunications are bound to occur. One person in a couple who communicates love through the giving and receiving gifts is stymied when their words of affirmation person comes home with a beautifully written note on Valentine’s Day instead of two dozen long stem roses. Or a daughter who is a quality time person might feel unseen by her acts of service father as he is lovingly washing her car instead of talking over a cup of coffee. So the thinking behind love languages is that if you can figure out what love language your person speaks, you can show affection in a way that’s meaningful to your person and improve your relationship.
But showing love in a way that the person you love prefers to be loved is tricky. It takes time and insight to recognize the way in which you communicate love, and then even trickier, you have to think about someone else, study their behavior in a deep and meaningful way, and then alter your behavior so that they can better know that they are loved. This is no easy task. But pop psychology aside, when we understand how the people in our life feel seen and appreciated, and then we go about loving them in that way, we love them better.
After listening to the readings for today, it occurs to me that God might also have a preferred love language. Not that we shouldn’t praise God with words of affirmation when we worship God. Or that God doesn’t want to spend quality time with us, which God definitely does. Physical touch is a bit trickier, but I interpret that as being fully connected and present to God, which God also wants, and please, please keep giving gifts to God. All of those love languages are important. But I think there’s a good chance that God’s primary love language might be acts of service.
In our reading from Isaiah, God’s people have been returned to their homeland after being in exile for two generations. They have returned to a city that’s not much more than a pile of rubble, and they must rebuild the walls, the streets, their homes, the temple. But among them has grown a class divide, and some of God’s people are either exploiting their brothers and sisters, or ignoring their destitution. Or, you know, probably a mixture of both, because those two things tend to go hand in hand. And yet those who are oppressing the others persist in fasting and rituals that they believe will bring them God’s favor. Put another way: this group of folks are trying to speak words of affirmation to God without works of service.
And God says, “Are you kidding me? Weren’t you listening? You’ve got it all wrong. I don’t want your words. I don’t want your histrionic displays of love for me. I want you to love me. And the way you love me is by loving each other. Not in words, but in action. Share your bread. Open your homes. Clothe the naked. And more than anything else: stop degrading your siblings! Undo the bonds of injustice that keep my children bound in the chains of economic degradation. You dare to oppress your workers, you underpay them so as to starve them, you beat them down, and at the same time you declare a fast because you think that will make me happy. That’s not what I want, why do you think that’s what I want?”
If this were an argument between two partners, this is the point where God would stop, and burst into tears, and say, “You don’t know me at all. You don’t know who I am, you don’t know what’s important to me, and you clearly don’t love me. If you loved me, you would show me.”
God’s primary love language is acts of service. The law teaches care for others, to leave no one in your community behind, to love each other through acts of service; The prophets proclaim how to love God from the street corners. And Jesus comes and says that Jesus is not here to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. And what is that law? Jesus teaches that the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” and the second one is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But of course the two are inextricably linked. Because loving your neighbor is God’s love language.
We have the opportunity, every day that we wake up, to speak God’s love language to those who we meet, and those whom we will never meet but who are impacted by our choices. Our lives, as people who are called to be in a relationship with God, are a series of choices, small and large, to demonstrate how we love God by loving others. Maybe we don’t need another sweatshop tchotchky from Target. Maybe we stop by our neighbor’s house to check in with them. Maybe we make our civic choices based on God’s ideals of justice. Maybe we pick the one place where we know we can make a difference, and devote our life to loving others. Maybe then God will feel seen, and heard, and loved.