Church of the Incarnation

I've seen the movie a thousand times, and I remember staying up all night one night to finish the book, and even though I know it by heart, I still love the story of Gone with the Wind. And as we look at Christ's command, "love one another as I have loved you," it just makes sense to turn to that paragon of pure, true love... Scarlet O'Hara. Not exactly, huh? Well, let's look at her loves anyway.

Scarlet arrives at the big barbeque at Twelve Oaks plantation and she's immediately surrounded by men each begging for a dance and trying to win her attention. She coyly plays them off one another, keeping one eye always on Ashley Wilkes, hoping to see a sign of jealousy. Ashley, remember, is engaged to Scarlet's cousin Melanie, but Scarlet desperately wants him for her own. When her declaration of love to Ashley leaves him unchanged in his intentions, Scarlet becomes desperate. Word comes that the war has started, and all the young men saddle up their horses to go enlist. Charles Hamilton impetuously asks Scarlet to marry him, and, looking at Ashley for his reaction, Scarlet says "yes." Of course, her love for Charles is based solely on what she hopes to gain from him - Ashley's attention, Ashley's love. She gives no thought at all to what she might offer poor naïve Charles.

Scarlet's second husband is Frank Kennedy, her sister's beau, a prosperous store owner in post-war Atlanta. Scarlet finds him attractive when she can't pay the taxes on Tara, her family's plantation. Once married, Frank gladly gives Scarlet the tax money and Tara is saved. Once again, Scarlet shows what Aristotle and Aquinas call concupiscentia, love of desire, love that's based on what one hopes to gain from the object of one's love.

We all know that Scarlet's final marriage is to the dashing bad-boy Rhett Butler, a man who genuinely sees her for who she is and loves her all the same. But Scarlet isn't able to love him in the same way. Her love for him is still based on her own fulfillment, as she longs for closeness and passion.

I think most of our loving relationships are like Scarlet's marriages, loves of desire. We love the other because of what he or she has to offer us, because on our own we're unfulfilled in some way, and we're looking to the other to fill us. Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you." Obviously Jesus doesn't look to us to fulfill his needs - that would be ludicrous! So this is clearly not the sort of love Jesus is urging us to have for one another.

Let's look again to Miss Scarlet. She loves her cousin Melanie, the frail and sickly wife of Scarlet's beloved Ashley. Melanie never has an unkind word for anyone and spends her time tending wounded soldiers. She is gentle and giving and loves everyone. Scarlet considers herself far superior to Melanie in beauty, in intelligence, and in her ability to get what she wants. Scarlet feels sorry for Melanie. Scarlet's love for her cousin is what Aristotle and Aquinas would call benevolentia, the love that one has for the needy, love that expects to give to the beloved, assuming the beloved has nothing to give in return. This is the love a more powerful or capable person graciously bestows upon a needy person. Scarlet stays in Atlanta to help Melanie give birth not because of what Melanie can do for Scarlet but because Scarlet feels Melanie needs her.

Both these types of love - Scarlet's "taking" love for men and her "giving" love for Melanie - are what the theologian Martin Buber calls "I - it" love. In both cases, the beloved becomes an object - either an object of desire or an object of need. But there's no give-and-take, neither is changed by these kinds of love.

Culture is full of images of God's love that fit into one of these two types. I've heard preachers say that God created us to worship him. The implication is that God needs our worship either to stroke his ego or to give him encouragement. But that can't be right - God is omnipotent, complete in himself. God doesn't need anything from us.

Others describe God as a clockmaker, who created the world, set it ticking, and then sat back to watch it go. God's love for us, then, is benevolence, the love a clockmaker would have for his handiwork, which needs occasional oiling and tending. This makes a little more sense to me, since God is so much more powerful and capable than we are. But then I hear of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, of his torture and crucifixion. That's more than mere benevolence.

We aren't objects to God, objects either of desire or of benevolence. God's love for us is personal, intimate, what Martin Buber calls an "I-Thou" relationship. It's a mutual relationship in which there's real give and take. God is sovereign and all-powerful, yet God's sovereignty embraces the claims and complaints of God's people. We really matter to God. We are changed by our relationship with God, and God is changed by his relationship with us.

Is Scarlet - or any of us, for that matter - capable of this kind of love, a love that is so open to the other that we let ourselves be completely vulnerable and risk being changed? Yes. I think this is the love Scarlet has for Tara, her family's plantation. Scarlet loves the land openly and freely. She toils and sweats over the land, letting it build calluses on her delicate hands. She kills a carpetbagger who tries to take the land for taxes. She gives everything she has to the land she loves. But she also allows the land to love her back. Whenever things are rough, she wants to run into the comforting arms of her beloved Tara. As the fires are raging through Atlanta and Melanie's new baby screams, all Scarlet can think about is the love of Tara. And at the end of the movie, when Scarlet seems to have lost everything, she remembers Tara and finds the strength to face another day.

This is God's love for us, love that is so open and uninhibited that it changes both us and God. Love that brings us to worship and brings God to the cross. "Love one another as I have loved you." Without fear or hesitation, with openness and humility, ready and willing to be changed by the encounter. Without regard for what the other can do for us and without looking down on the needs of the other. As equals. Love one another so fiercely that when we're down on our knees in the doorway watching our whole life disappear into the fog, and we ask ourselves, "what is there that matters?" we'll think of one another and gain strength to go on. Love one another so completely that nothing can shake our love, that when everything around us is going up in smoke and nothing will ever be the same, our love for one another will never be gone with the wind.

Amen.