Love and Hurt...Joan Jett, Philip Yancey and The Book of Hebrews...

On Twitter I follow Gram Parsons, I really enjoy his music and the depth that is in his lyrics is very profound. No doubt the depth comes from the pain he had experienced in his life, a life that ended with a heroin overdose. The Tweet made reference to a version of the song “Love Hurts” that Gram had sung with Emmy Lou Harris. As I listened to the lyrics I was struck by the song in a philosophical and theological way which may seem a bit strange. However, if we look deep enough nothing is really strange but the strangeness turns to a depth of being that fosters life and complexity and spirituality.

I love juxtapositions and that is why I have chosen the Joan Jett version of the song “Love Hurts” as Joan Jett, Philip Yancey and the book of Hebrews seems on first glance to have very little to do with each other. Like most things there are connections and deep relatedness to almost everything and we simply have to go and look, or become aware, or wake up to the reality that is all around us.

The song was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant - here are some of the lyrics from the song “Love Hurts”:

Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, love hurts…

When I hear these words sung and when I read them and think about them what comes to my mind is the Cross and Calvary, “Love Hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks…” and also the scenes from the Gospels in which Jesus weeps at the grave of Lazarus and when he cries over Jerusalem. Jesus weeps, is scared, wounded and marked for us out of love.

Later in the song there are these words:
I know it isn't true, know it isn't true
Love is just a lie, made to make you blue
Love hurts, love hurts…

These lyrics remind me of Good Friday and all that must have been going on in the hearts of the followers of Jesus. The doubt, the questioning, and the tremendous hurt that must have been in the hearts of particularly Mary, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene and John – the only three to be at the Cross and had just watched Jesus die. How many of us have similar doubts and hurts and really at this point in our lives believe that love is a lie and love is hurt.

This leads me now to Philip Yancey and the book of Hebrews and the remarkable relevance and significance of the heart of God - that can and does really feel what I am going through in a most intimate way because he, in Jesus Christ has experienced life on earth as a human like me.Philip Yancey writes, “The author Hebrews reports that Jesus became a ‘sympathetic’ advocate for us. There is only one way to learn sympathy, as signified by the Greek roots of the word, syn pathos, ‘to feel or suffer with.’ Because of the Incarnation Hebrews implies, God hears our prayers in a new way, having lived here and having prayed as a weak and vulnerable human being.” The text that has had such meaning for me and that I have contemplated over many times is so linked to this conversation and it is, “Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8 TNIV).

I really appreciate what Yancey writes about this passage, “Indeed, the suffering endured on earth served as a kind of ‘learning experience’ for God. Such words sound faintly heretical, but I am merely following Hebrews: ‘Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.’ Elsewhere, that book tells us that the author of our salvation was ‘made perfect’ through suffering.

Commentaries often avoid these phrases, for they are difficult to reconcile with traditional notions of an unchanging God. To me they demonstrate certain ‘changes’ that had to take place within the Godhead before we could be reconciled.” I am sympathetic to looking at the text in this way because I do believe that something dramatic and significant happened to Jesus as God/Man in the hypostatic union by what he experienced on earth and that experience in some way also affected the Trinity. The bottom line in all this is that, “Only by becoming a human being could the Son of God truly say with understanding, ‘They do not know what they are doing.’ He had lived among us. Now he understood.”

Love hurts, love scars, love wounds and marks
Any heart not tough nor strong enough
To take a lot of pain, take a lot of pain
Love is like a cloud holds a lot of rain
Love hurts, love hurts…