The Real Dr. Love

Hosea 3:1-5
Luke 5:27-39
With apologies to the rock band Kiss, I think our readings from Hosea and Luke teach us something about love that the band’s song (and current Dr. Pepper commercial jingle) “Calling Dr. Love” can’t even begin to touch. In Luke Jesus calls a tax collector named Levi to become a disciple (Luke 5:27-28). Levi then holds a banquet in Jesus’ honor to which other tax collectors and “sinners” were invited (v. 31). When the Pharisees raise concern over the type of people with whom Jesus associates Jesus replies, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (v. 32). Jesus is not excluding the Pharisees from his circle, they are essentially excluding themselves by failing to recognize the love of God in Jesus’ actions. And what about Hosea? At God’s direction he had already married the prostitute Gomer. Now he must buy her back, out of adultery and prostitution, and with love and discipline demonstrate his devotion to her. This, of course, is symbolic of God’s love and devotion for a wayward people, Israel, who have gone after idols and other gods and who now, with judgment based in love, will be “bought back” by God.

Of course, Kiss is not the only group or individual to misrepresent love. We see it movies and on TV all the time. Romantic love seems to equate exclusively with sex. Love for our enemies, for those in need, even for our neighbor seems like a quaint notion reserved for “religious types.” But Jesus, and Hosea before him, makes very clear that love for others should be neither quaint nor drenched in hedonism. God’s love is the kind of love that seeks out tax collectors and sinners and says “Follow me. Leave your sinfulness behind and I will show you a better way of life, one worth sharing with others, one with purpose and meaning, one that safeguards dignity and values the other as a child of God.”

While most people of faith have little trouble dismissing songs like “Dr. Love” as indicative of nothing but sex, we still must guard against going too far in the other direction such as limiting those with whom we associate, as if God’s love is only for the pure of heart and the blameless. In such circumstances we forget that we, too, are prone to sin and in need God’s healing love. Thanks be to God that in Jesus Christ we find a physician whose love overwhelms us all.

Prayer: Lord, help us to accept your healing love and to share it with others so that the circle of faith may grow and your light be shared with all people. Amen.