The Love You Take

The Love You Take--May 24, 2018

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'

 And let everyone who hears say, 'Come.'

 And let everyone who is thirsty come.

 Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift." [Revelation 22:17]

It is hard for me to say this, but the Beatles were wrong.

And not just a little bit wrong: spectacularly wrong.

At the very end of the last album they recorded together, John, Paul, George, and Ringo offer up a final showcase of their rock capabilities in a song called "The End," which let the three non-drummers each get their own guitar solos as the drums and the volume build to a dramatic climax, as if to prepare us for something really, really important.  And then, the only words of the song emerge from the distortion of the guitars, like the sun breaking through the fog at down.  You know these guys thought they were thinking what they had to say was really really profound... and what the Beatles offer at the end of "The End" is simply this:

"And in the end, the love you take

 Is equal to the love you make."

All of that build-up for a moral that boils down to, "You only get what you give," (which, for fans of early 2000s Top 40 pop-rock, will sound familiar as the recurring tagline of a song by the New Radicals).  Nothing new under the sun, as they say... especially in pop music.

But let's think about this for a minute.  At the end of a masterpiece of an album... and at the end of their band's existence before they broke up, all the amazing and innovative musical ideas and fusion of styles from "Please Please Me" at the start to the tail end of "Abbey Road," and it all built just to a tired old moral cliché that there are no free gifts in life.  

That's really what the Fab Four's line means, isn't it?  If, in the end, you only get as much love as you have contributed first, well, then the universe is basically a clockwork mechanism, or a cosmic Rube Goldberg contraption where one action inexorably to the next and to the next with the same output every time.  The universe is basically a vending machine--you put in your money, and you get what you pay for.  You input love, and you get an equal amount of love back.  No remainders.  No margins.  No excess.  In the end, you only get as much love as you first put into the system.

And I'll be honest with you here, as much as I appreciate the Beatles--I expected better from them here.  I expect something more radical, really--as inventive as they were with music and style and instrumentation--more revolutionary, honestly, than just rehearsing the same old moral calculus of "You only get out as much as you put in within this life."  

And it reminds me that there was something far more radical going on at the end of the Bible's version of "Abbey Road," the book we call Revelation.  After all the drama, spectacle, and criticism of the Empire that happens throughout the book of Revelation, there is a final crescendo, a lot like the Beatles' track "The End," that builds to the final arrival of God and God's dwelling with humanity in the "new heavens and the new earth."  All the calamities and chaos, all the jarring imagery and natural phenonomena in the first twenty-one chapters, have all been leading to a final conclusion, and we're waiting for with anxious anticipation like when you are first waiting to hear what Paul McCartney will sing when the guitar solos fade out.  And here it is:

The Spirit says, "Come."  And let anyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

That is to say, the grand finale scene of the Bible's grand finale book ends up saying, "And in the end, the Spirit is giving away more than you deserve... for free."  It is exactly the opposite of what the Beatles sing.  Revelation's final conclusion is that at the end of the Christian story, God gives away what we need as a free gift, not a matter of paying out rewards to those who have earned them.  The text does not say, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."  It says nothing of the sort.  In fact, it says that in the end, God's economy is--as it has always been--one of grace.

The qualifications--the only qualifications, mind you--listed for eligibility for the "water of life" that the Spirit offers, are simply this: you have got to be thirsty.  You bring your neediness.  You bring your empty hands.  You bring no credentials, papers, resumes, lists of accomplishments, records of past successes, or anything else.  You just bring you, without any talk about whether the cool drink of water has been earned or deserved.  Those are not our questions to worry about.  We bring our need, and God supplies it... as a gift.

And as John the Seer, writing this whole book down, puts it, all of this gift business comes from the Spirit's own mouth, as it were.  The Spirit is the One who says, "Come!" and then our voices are added to the chorus, too.  The Spirit is the One who makes this gracious invitation "as a gift."   There is no test. There is no bartering--your good deeds in return for a cup of water.  At the last, the only thing you need in order to receive God's good gifts is... your need.  No pretending or posturing.  No puffing ourselves up to look more self-sufficient.  In the end, the ones who get free water from God's Spirit to give them life... are the ones who bring nothing but their empty-handed neediness.  Grace upon grace upon grace, beginning to end.

And in the end, the love you take, John the Seer (not Lennon) says, is infinitely more than whatever contributions we have made first in life.  Even at the last in the new creation, the only terms for getting God's water of life are God's terms of grace.  No deal-making. No bargaining.  No buying.  There is only the gift, given and received beyond our earning, our deserving or our "making."  That is how the Spirit of the living God runs the show.

O God of Life, help us to stop fussing about our earning--or anybody else's for that matter--and simply to hear your invitation to receive your good gifts as gifts.  Thank you for grace, now and always.