Love and Politics

Love usually seems so soft and sentimental; even saccharine. We usually attribute the worst of behavior to politics. Love as risking ourselves or surrendering something of ourselves for another seems so far away from the politics of April, 2020.

And foreign aid has always seemed a cold kind of caring, usually with international political ends attached. Wars to those of us in the U.S. seem far away, except to the few, usually from lower social and economic brackets, who have lost someone in one of those wars. Even then, mostly we conclude that the war must have been right and good for our loved one to have died in it.

So I am shocked to read an obscure little sermon given by Paul Tillich at a prayer meeting at Riverside Church in New York City, in 1940. (Translated and shared by Tim Mize of the Paul Tillich discussion group on Facebook) Tillich speaks of how the European war – in which the U.S. was not yet participating – following a Great Depression, made everyone more conscious of death. (It was probably the case that not “everyone” was so moved.) He says this reminds us how death “not only affects our personal lives, it also affects our securities, our institutions, our tradition, our future, our preferred values and our faith.”

He speaks of refugees as “symbols of human existence, as symbols of our finiteness and transitoriness. But also consider them as symbols of love, which is stronger than death. You have already done this by receiving them into your country and giving them every possible help. You have rendered them this service as an expression of love and hope.” He pointedly adds that “It is love that defeats death, not help without love. Where help is given without love, it only creates more hardship.” Help would be mere charity, something extra given so that the giver will feel less sadness and guilt.

Tillich’s words made me see that offerings like One Great Hour of Sharing, begun in 1948 as an ecumenical response to the refugee, hunger, and rebuilding needs in Europe, and great foreign policy programs like the Marshall Plan at the same time were not entirely of practical motivation with hopes of return, but powerful expressions of love for peoples of all nationalities, races, and religions, allies and former enemies. I know that I preached this, but I think I understand it more deeply now. Government programs and private giving are expressions of love, or they are not.

I promote love and other high values as the sign and presence of what we call God. (If God is love, then love is God!) Love seems so much smaller and further from us today. This should bother religious believers, for it means that God is far from us today.

I think of our immigration policies, driven not by concern or love, or a desire to rescue others from death, but by fears of difference, unknowns, and loss of security and privileges. Likewise our foreign policies towards Central and South America, China, and now even Europe, are driven by a strange need to separate ourselves from others rather than uniting with them. Love and God are far from us.

We have politicians who speak of love, who can speak lovingly, who can lead us in directions of love. Oddly, we don’t want to listen to them or elect them. If we do not begin listening for love and responding to it, then death will rule us like darkness on a moonless night.

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Here is the ending of Paul Tillich’s sermon:

Love is stronger than death, even in our days when death has gained a power over humanity as never before: death in the form of war, death in the form of mass suggestion, death in the form of persecution and abuse, death in the form of personal despair, hunger and loss of life. The people with whom you form a church before God in this hour carry in their souls and often also in their bodies traces of death, which they will never completely lose. Receive them into your community as a symbol of death, which is a constant element of all life. 

Receive them as people whose fate should remind you of something, which in self-satisfied affluence is often forgotten: that the end is always present, that we must learn to endure the majestic but terrible image of death. And death not only affects our personal lives, it also affects our securities, our institutions, our tradition, our future, our preferred values and our faith. 

Among these refugees are some who have had to suffer death in this way many times. They were driven from country to country, from nation to nation, from language to language. Think of them as symbols of human existence, as symbols of our finiteness and transitoriness. But also consider them as symbols of love, which is stronger than death. You have already done this by receiving them into your country and giving them every possible help. You have rendered them this service as an expression of love and hope. They thank you for it and -- whether you believe it or not, I know it -- they thank you for more than the actual help, however necessary it also was. It is love that defeats death, not help without love. Where help is given without love, it only creates more hardship.

The world is under the rule of death. To receive these refugees, to receive them in the name and power of love, is to raise a sign of that which is stronger than death. It means that separation and isolation, which inevitably lead to death, are defeated. It testifies to a new beginning in the ashes of a burning world. It testifies to the rare victory over death that is possible in our time. It testifies that love is stronger than death.