MICHAEL SPENCER HERZOG                                       17 May 2009

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

How can we possibly be commanded to love?  That’s what Jesus says in that passage from John’s Gospel: “This is my Commandment -- that you love one another.”  Doesn’t love just happen?  It’s an emotion and pretty much by definition we are not in control of our emotions.  They happen.

When I was a teenager I worked at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Webster Groves, Missouri.  Howard Johnson’s was known for its many flavors of ice cream.  Their trademark was twenty-eight flavors but there really were more.  Then Baskin-Robbins came out with thirty-one flavors.  The Ice Cream Wars were on!  I considered calling this sermon, “Flavors of Love,” but that seemed excessively cute.  I’ve just finished reading a book on preaching.  It advised against cute sermon titles.  So, I won’t call it “Flavors of Love,” but you can think it.  “Flavors of Love”  is a pretty good title, though -- cute or not.

In the Hebrew Scriptures there are indeed many flavors of love presented -- the erotic love of Solomon’s Song of Songs, the strong love between two men told in the story of David and Jonathan, and the loyal and self-sacrificing love of Ruth and Naomi.

I read somewhere that the Eskimos have 400 words for snow.  It turns out that’s not true -- but it’s a good story all the same.  When the New Testament was translated from Greek into English, all of the different and distinctive Greek words for love wound up coming out the same single word, just -- L-O-V-E -- to our eternal confusion.


There are really many sorts of love -- even more than we have words for.  But, let’s try to keep it simple, to start with anyway.  The Greek language has love divided into parts of three:  Eros, Phileo, and Agape.

Eros -- is romantic love, intimate, physical, erotic -- heavy breathing.  And if you think I’m going any further with this you’re mistaken.  You all get the idea, I’m sure.  It is the kind of love you can fall into -- and fall out of as well.

Eros is a self-centered love.  It is a love of passion.  It is an emotional involvement based on what we sometimes call “chemistry” between two people.   This is not the love we are commanded to practice.

The basis of eros is that being loved depends on being attractive in some way to another person. Because of this dependency, eros would be considered a conditional type of love.  There are soaring highs and crashing lows.  It can be a fragile thing -- easily broken -- especially in its early stages before it gains substance.  That substance can come from Phileo.

Phileo  -- is a companionable love. This love speaks of affection, fondness, or liking.  

It is a love that is called out of one’s heart as a response to the pleasure one takes in another person. Phileo is a love that responds to kindness, appreciation, or love returned.  It involves giving as well as receiving. It is strong but when it is greatly strained, it too can collapse in a crisis.
  
Phileo might be considered to be a higher love than eros because it is centered on our happiness rather than my happiness.


Agape --  refers to the parental love of God for humanity and  humanity for God but is extended to include a brotherly love for all humanity. Agape includes elements of both eros and phileo in that it seeks a perfect kind of love that is both a fondness and a passion without the necessity of it being returned.  You shall love -- agape -- the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If eros is conditional love -- agape is unconditional.  Agape is the Love that Paul described in 1 Corinthians 13 -- “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Feeling poetic one time I tried to add to Paul’s list of the attributes of love -- agape love.  I had reached a point in my life -- in my marriage -- where I had learned to rely on love. I added to all those “Love is . . .” statements that love is reliable.  When institutions and acquaintances fail, when art and artifice disappoint -- love is reliable.  I know that sounds a little tame after all those grand statements -- but it is true and it is important.

We say that God is love -- it is this love -- agape -- that we’re talking about.  Paul says, love never dies.  This equal -- respectful -- caring love is the result of believing (and acting as though we believe) that all of us are indeed children of God -- precious children of God.

We could divide things up another way: Eros love is "physical", Phileos love is "mental", and Agape love is "spiritual".  It covers the three fundamental elements of humanity:   BODY -- MIND -- SPIRIT



A few weeks ago we had a couple of experts come in to speak to us after the worship service about restorative justice.  As I was listening to them talk about the shift away from punishment and retribution and toward restoration -- to making things right for the victim -- I realized that this was an example of the agape love we are commanded to practice.  We are not commanded to make a friend of the person who has harmed us and take him home for dinner -- but we are required to see him as a precious child of God and worthy of consideration.  We are called upon to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable.  Where the crime might involve the loss of the life of another person -- the common call is for a life to be taken in retribution.   A life lost can lead to a life redeemed -- certainly a better bargain than two lives lost.

I have done a lot of reading preparing for this subject and one of the things I read was a sermon by a very famous preacher whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten.  This preacher’s church was in a part of town where poor people lived in substandard houses if they were lucky or under bridges if they weren’t.  It was common for the preacher to be hit up for money by the people in the neighborhood.  They knew who he was and what he was -- a professional man of God.   He told the story of being approached by a panhandler, one he’d seen before and one to whom he’d given twenty dollars before.  The famous preacher was in a hurry and feeling annoyed at the panhandler.  He checked his pocket and found that he only had a five and a ten on him. He rather brusquely handed the fifteen dollars to the panhandler and said, “This is all I have.”  The panhandler said nothing -- took the money and walked off.  Then he turned and said to the famous preacher, “I suppose you’d like me to say thank you.”  “Well, yes,” the famous preacher said.  “Some gratitude would be in order.”  “Well,” the panhandler said -- “I’m not going to thank you.  You didn’t give me that money because you wanted to.  You’re a Christian and you gave it to me because you have to.  Your Jesus told you to.”  And the panhandler pointed at the sky. 
The famous preacher had a lot to think about after that.

There is little to cheer about at getting older -- except the hope that we’ve traded youth and vigor for some shreds of wisdom.  I have a milestone birthday coming up in a few weeks and now and then I do feel I have gained a few bits of wisdom.  Here’s what I have learned about love in xx years:

The human capacity to love is limitless -- infinite, I think.  Time is not.  It’s when love and time come into conflict that trouble ensues.  In some still undiscovered dimension time will be relative and able to stretch to meet our needs but we haven’t worked that out in our current reality.  I don’t know what to do about love and time in conflict.  I’m not that wise yet.

As a father and grandfather I affirm that there are many “flavors of love.” My love for my sons and grandsons is a prideful love -- a good kind of pride, but for my grand-daughters the love I feel is so fiercely intense it constantly surprises me.  I could challenge a mother grizzly’s protective concern for her cub.  I do believe that if that grandfatherly love energy could be captured and fed into the power grid our dependence on foreign oil would be erased over night.  

This loving business can be -- inconvenient.  I’m talking phileo here.  Friends whom it would be more convenient to love intellectually have a way of intruding and “demanding” to be loved back.  Do you remember the movie “Brokeback Mountain?”  The message for me was -- you can’t help who you love.  Sometimes it’s inconvenient or dangerous -- painful.  You can’t help who you love -- and contrariwise you can’t help who you don’t love.  BUT it doesn’t matter -- you can -- you must (we are commanded) to agape love each other.


This seems like an awful lot of build-up to the punch line -- but, here you are.  How can we be commanded to love?  We can choose to love.  We start by seeing every human being as a precious child of God -- just like us.  And as we search for the child in that person -- the child his mother loved -- the child God loves -- we begin to make the connection that allows us to love in that one-sided unconditional agape way that Jesus had in mind when he told those of us who choose to call ourselves Christians to love one another.  There is a common spark of humanity in us all, something warm and ultimately lovable.  Sometimes hidden -- deeply hidden -- but there, placed there by our common creator God.

Elie Wiesel, a wise and compassionate man, says. “The opposite of love is not hate -- it is indifference.”

Love is a virtue -- it is perhaps, THE virtue.

Indifference is a sin -- it is THE sin.  How awful it is not to recognize the common humanity in each other.  To look at our brothers and sisters and not see them.  

The quote from Saint Francis de Sales in the Words to Meditate Upon this morning gives some practical advice.  “We learn to love by loving.”  Practice -- just like any other acquired skill.  Practice.  Maybe we can find training wheels for loving.  Maybe that is what churches do.

Love one another.  You can do it.  You must do it.  Praise God, and AMEN!