The Power of Love

You Don't Have to Like It to Love It"
Jean M. Rowe, Tryon, February 13, 2011

Readings:
In the Gospel of Mark, it is written:
And one of the scribes came up and heard the chief priests and scribes and Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said to Jesus, "You are right teacher; you have truly said that God is one, and there is no other; and to love God with all your strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
--Mark 12:28-33

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love...
--1 John 4:7-8

Frederich Buechner says: "Christianity teaches that loving is more a matter of will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling...On the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end, even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone. Thus in Jesus' terms, we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.
"But it's funny," says Buechner, "sometimes liking follows on heels of loving. It is hard to work for somebody's well-being very long without coming in the end to rather like him or her too."

The Sermon

All over the Unitarian Universalist world today, speakers are addressing the topic "Standing on the Side of Love." There are banners and t shirts, and even a song. It is a rallying cry for gay rights, particularly marriage equality, and also for immigration justice. Let us not stand on the side of fear and repression, but on the side of the power of love.
It's called SSL, for short, and even shorter, they are calling it "sizzle." I kind of like that. Sizzle. Burn. Hearts on fire for justice.
The second source of our UU principles states it clearly. The living tradition we share draws from many sources...the second source is "Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love." The fourth source also calls us to live by the power of love...it states that another of our sources is "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves."
The original Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association, as approved when the Unitarian and Universalists consolidated in 1961 read simply: " To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love to God and love to man." Love to God and love to man.
Jesus taught love, not fear, not hate. Gandhi picked up the theme, using love as a strategy in nonviolent confrontation for Indian rights in Africa. Martin Luther King, Jr, picked it up from Jesus and Gandhi, leading his fellow black men and women out of segregation and persecution towards freedom and full personhood. Now, this week, Egyptians, savvy with technology and hungering for economic justice and freedom, prayed in the streets and stood firm in the face of a repressive regime. They are stood on the side of love and won. Let us salute them for their courage and non violence.
It is said that every preacher has one or two sermons. One or two themes that inform their lives and breathe through their sermons, even if the main topic is something else. I think I've always been talking about the power of love. As a child I absorbed love in the family I was lucky to be born to. As a teen I sought love, over and over.
In college, I began studying the meaning of love through philosophy and literature. I tried to analyze just what love is. How do you quantify and define something so emotional, so intangible? Of course I learned about Filios. Eros. Agape. The ancient Greeks spoke of three kinds of love. Familial. I loved my father even though he stood for some things I didn't like. I love my brother even though as a teenager I thought he was kind of a nerd. I stand by my family and friends. I love them because they are intimately connected to my life.
Filios. I've been reading a story about the famous 19th century Beecher family. Henry Ward Beecher was a well known liberal preacher in Brooklyn. His sisters included Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragette and colleague of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. When Rev. Henry had an affair and was accused by his lover's husband, Isabella insisted he come clean and tell the truth. Her sister Harriet, appalled that Isabella favored truth over love, shunned her and successfully persuaded their family and friends to shun her, as well. "If you love him, you will support him," said Harriet. "And if you don't support him, we will have nothing more to do with you." And so the great Beecher family, the 19th century equivalent of the Kennedys or the Bushes, had no more to do with Isabella. It's a common story to be sure. Isabella had violated the rule of Filios. Stand by your man-- your brother--your family-- no matter what.
But Filios can be a trickster. Brothers betray brothers. Parents betray or neglect children. Or worse, abuse them emotionally or physically or both. Grandchildren take advantage of their kindly grandmother. What then? Does filios require forgiveness? How far must one go in forgiving?
We once had a therapist friend who coached a men's group. His parents had been lousy in the parenting department, and he was open and clear that he had very little to do with them. Yes, he would visit on holidays for a meal. But he did it with clear boundaries. He stayed only a short time. He removed himself from the room if hurtful words arose. In other words, he took care of his own emotional needs while honoring his parents by visiting --for short periods.
We knew a couple whose daughter was going through a rough patch following her divorce. They helped her, bought a car for her to use to get to work. But she moved in with an unemployed drug addict, supporting him and using the car her parents were paying for. Fed up, the parents went out at 5 oclock in the morning and took the car. Filios demanded they help but not be party to a relationship that didn't nurture their daughter's wellbeing. Their reclaiming the car served to wake up their daughter. Filios -- the power of that parental love-- demanded a healthier life for their daughter. Filios is found in tough love.
Then there are the shining, beautiful examples of Filios: a kidney shared, a bone marrow transplant, children caring for elderly parents, grandparents who raise their grandchildren when they might otherwise be retired from heavy responsibility, parents who sacrifice for children with special needs, with temper tantrums, and long term care. This is the power of love. Filios is foundational; without it infants cannot survive into sturdy children and strong adults. This love makes people thrive and human life possible.

Ah, love. Today, the eve of Valentine's day, all over the western world, we celebrate love, especially in its romantic form-- Eros.
People grow up yearning to love and be loved by a special someone. It is the stuff of movies and stories, it makes the world go round and round. For some, romance fades and does not ripen into deep love. But for those in whom the power of love flows strong over time, romance persists, that is, the sense of "oh boy, am I attracted to you," but it is less fireworks and more depth. Less Wow! And more Aaaahh!
In time love deepens and strengthens and becomes not just an urgent attraction but more of trust, faith, deep regard, affection, and respect. Trust, faith, deep regard, affection, respect, and acceptance. Mature love means accepting your beloved just as she is, respecting her even though you may disagree with her choices, trusting her judgment and instincts even when your judgment differs. Mature love says "you are not perfect, nor am I, and I choose you over and over because I love you." Once you achieve this kind of loving, it becomes clear that love between two people, after the first blush of romance, cannot be separated from filios or agape. It is three kinds of love all united as one.
Frederick Buechner, a wise old Presbyterian minister, once wrote of love that "the first stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love. The middle stage is to believe that there are many kinds of love and that the Greeks had a different word for each of them. The last stage is to believe that there is only one kind of love."
But before I get back to one kind of love, I want to speak of what the Greeks called Agape. It is sometimes defined as disinterested love or universal love , because it is extended to those beyond family and friends and your mate or spouse or partner. It is love gone "out there." It is the force of compassion and justice and ultimate regard. It is behind the first principle of Unitarian Universalism, "promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person." It is the love spoken of in this campaign, "Standing on the side of love."
There are not so many kinds of love. There is really only one kind: it is compassionate and merciful. It forgives easily and forgets quickly. It is a way of living, an attitude about oneself and others. It is open. It is less about judgment and more about acceptance. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton put it, "Love is a certain special way of being alive." It is very simply, a merciful caring of oneself and all beings.
It is embodied in the Hindu greeting, "Namaste," or, "The holy in me salutes the holy in you."
It has nothing to do with the ego trying to control its way in the world. It is a way of living and being in the world. It is a way of seeing the core worth and dignity of others. It is not so much about being in love with someone; it is more like being in love with life itself.
This force, this power knows no limits. Love does not say, "you can only love this kind of person or animal, or activity." Love, like the spirit, goes where it will. And sometimes it means loving someone of the same gender. I believe that love is an equal opportunity force. Like a river, it flows everywhere through all kinds of relationships. Valentine's Day will never be the same for me after Neshoba UU, the church I served in Memphis for 13 years, hosted a public celebration of equality in marriage, broadly covered in newspapers and television a few months before I retired. I consider it a privilege to be licensed to marry men and women, but I believe strongly that right must be extended to all couples. It is one of the important justice issues of our time. Without public, legal permission for same gender marriage, ordinary loving couples in most states do not have ordinary legal rights. They are doomed to live extraordinary lives. For them, nothing is ordinary.
You know, there is always something unusual, difficult, and complicated about loving and living with the one you chose to love and make a life with. Marriage is difficult in the best of circumstances. But when marriage is made out to be against the will of God, immoral, and repugnant by huge numbers of so-called religious people, those particular precarious marriages are even more difficult. A good marriage takes two strong and healthy people supported by a climate of acceptance and good will.
I fail to understand why somebody else's love threatens anybody else's love.
My colleague Marlin Lavanhar in Tulsa knows this. He writes: As a minister I never know when a call might come. I received a call in February 2010 from a leader of the gay community of Uganda, "Come to Africa. ... I need your help." It said, "I know my land is far away and I know our troubles must seem quite removed, but is it not true that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere?' Is it not true that 'we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny? Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.' Isn't that true?" It said, "I'm about to take the boldest step of my life to be treated as fully human and as someone who is beloved by God. I'm afraid, but I'm committed. Will you please walk with me and stand beside me?"
With my wife's approval, last February, I kissed our two children goodbye and went to speak at the Standing on the Side of Love conference in Kampala that was organized in secret by my colleague Rev. Mark Kiyimba, the leader of the Unitarian Universalist church of Uganda, to counter the oppressive anti-gay bill that was making its way through the Ugandan parliament.... There are people, born and unborn, who are counting on us to stand up for human rights. May the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Uganda, and everwhere, feel the blessing of our prayers and of our tangible support as they struggle against deadly hate and homophobia everyday. May they know that they are indeed beloved and children of God." Thank you, Marlin, for standing on the side of love.
Next month I'll be speaking about another issue that is in the forefront of Standing on the Side of Love: immigration justice.
This week we had a phone call from our daughter's significant other, Bernay. He is a Mexican who has been working in Mississippi for more than 13 years, since he was 16 years old. He pays taxes. He works hard. He supports our daughter. But this phone call was filled with worry. Haley Barbour, the new governor of Mississippi is setting up police roadblocks. He is ordering employers to fire illegals. He says, "Daddy and Jean-Jean, I am so afraid I will be caught and deported. " And so are we. Immigration justice cannot come soon enough for us.
St. Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians:
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 at wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 1st
Right now we are bearing all things, as we worry about Bernay.
The attitude of "Namaste," of mercy, of love that stems from a universal source and flows through all of us, is very hard, and it is very simple at the same time.
It is the source of self-esteem and the esteem, mercy and forgiveness one holds towards others. It honors the worth and dignity of everyone.
There's only one love and it comes from the same source, flowing through each one of us like a river. When we can get our egos and our judgments and our intellects out of the way, when we let go of control, we can be a part of the stream of loving, we can be instruments of caring and compassion and mercy: we can act as if we are lovers and we are loved; and we can be just and merciful with everybody else. We don't have to like them or even spend time with them, so much as we accept them as part of the wide, wonderful gift of being alive. Let go into love, and may love live in and through you, and in the people of Egypt, and Uganda, and the Governor of Mississippi and all those who oppress others. Amen.