The Simplicity of Love - sermon for St. Valentine's Day 2016 at UUCP, Moscow, ID

"Love is the simplest of virtues, the act of caring for the beloved.
Love is also among the most difficult of practices, seeking the freedom of the beloved."


Today I want us to think together about the meaning of love in all its power.

Because today is St. Valentine's Day, it seems like exactly the right time to think and talk about love!

Because the theme for this month is simplicity,
  I want to work on the idea of love in all its beauty and in all its simplicity.

We sometimes make things complex by our reflections on it,
    but many of the simplest things in life are also the most difficult!

I hope that we can begin to see both how simple love really is at its heart,
    even though as we experience it, the word love has many very different meanings.

At its root and at its most basic, love means caring.

No matter what else we may need or want to say on the subject,
    if we care about something, we give our attention to it.

Giving attention can be thought of as the most basic form of love.

Nothing could be much simpler than that,
   and yet there are many ways in which we give our attention.

Listening to another person can be the simplest and yet sometimes the most important way of expressing love.

There are many ways of trying to understand love,
   but as we experience it,
      every kind of love is related in some sense to caring.

There are many other implications, and a variety of different meanings attached,
    but love at its heart refers to the care and attention we give to a person, place or thing
          in our lives.

According to a great book by C.S. Lewis, there are four different kinds of love
   that I want to mention at least in passing this morning.

Appropriately enough, the book is titled,
   _The Four Loves_.

First, I want to list the four kinds of love
   along with the Greek words that represent them
      and a very brief description of each.

Storge means affection, what we are accustomed to.

This is the love of being comfortable with people.

We like having them around because we are used to their presence.

Philia is the love of friendship.

We often refer to this kind of love as liking people.

We share common interests, values and opinions,
     and so we like them.

We do things together based on our shared interests,
    and friendship grows.

Obviously, affection and friendship go together quite easily.

One can lead to the other, and there is rarely a contradiction.

Friendship is a kind of love that can be very easy to cope with.

Emotions are strong without being overwhelming.

Enjoyment of another person's presence is almost always a part of friendship.

Affection and friendship can grow together to encompass yet other kinds of love,
   especially when there is physical attraction.

Eros is romantic love,
   the kind of love we most often associate with Valentine's Day.

When we speak of "falling in love"
   we are most often speaking of Eros.

The emotions surrounding romantic love can be very intense
      to the point of being uncomfortable at first.

Unfortunately, sometimes the emotions never really settle down
   so that romantic love can be a source of great turmoil and drama in people's lives.

So much literature is based on romantic love
     that we often think of it first
        when we hear or use the word love itself.

Agape is the most universal kind of love.

It is the love of caring for or about another person.

It may or may not be accompanied by emotion.

Agape is the kind of love that appears in the commandments of the ancient rabbis, including Jesus:

To summarize the whole law of God,
      the rabbis said,
            You shall love the Lord your God with your whole being

                       -and-

            You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Obviously, affection cannot be commanded.

Neither can friendship.

Romantic love certainly is not subject to commands and regulations;
    otherwise there would be very few great stories about it!

Caring, on the other hand, can indeed be commanded.

St. Paul wrote about the love of caring, agape,
     in some of the most beautiful words he ever wrote,

1 Corinthians 13:4-7:

"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."
(NRSV)

In speaking of love here,
     St. Paul used the Greek word, "agape."

When we think of altruistic love,
   we are thinking of agape.

When we think of self-sacrificing love,
   we are thinking of agae.

All of the other kinds of love are at their best when they are coupled with agape.

People we are accustomed to are best served by our feelings if we care about them.

Our friendships are a force for good in all our lives
       when friends care for each other and help each other.

Most of all, our lovers, our spouses, all with whom we share romantic love,
      are lifted up by our love when we show that we care about them.

Caring is not just a feeling; it is action.

The Beatles wrote a beautiful song saying that "Love is all you need."

If we speak of any kind of love except agape,
    that statement is not true at all.

Affection is comfortable, but it does not accomplish much.

Friendship is meaningful, but it does not meet all of a person's needs.

Romantic love is beautiful and exciting, but it does not pay the rent!

(as Sonny and Cher sang in their song, "I've got you, babe!")

Agape is the only kind of love that results in actions that meet people's needs.

It is the only kind of love, true caring for the well being of others,
        that really can be understood as the foundation for a whole life.

Because agape is self-sacrificing love,
   it is especially important as we think of it
        to remember that no one can meet all of anyone else's needs.

No one person has the resources to meet all the needs of other people.

To put it simply, we need each other.

A caring person is easily exploited if there is no one to care for her or him!

If we try to pour out our resources, emotionally, physically or personally,
       in order to meet other people's needs
                 without considering our own needs,
                     we will end up drained and unable to help anyone, even ourselves.

Again, we need each other!

The helper also sometimes need help.

The givers also sometimes need someone to give to them.

If we think in terms of the commandment of love that comes from the ancient rabbis,
        we are called upon to love our neighbors AS ourselves,
             not instead of ourselves.

Our resources are finite.

It is only as we band together that our compassion, our caring
       begins to be effective in meeting the needs of others
                and also our own needs.

Now, this is the point at which we come to the simplicity of love
       which I hope we can get a glimpse of today.

Caring about another person
   means simply wanting the best for the other person.

We cannot define the best for them,
      no matter how much we might like to!

To try to tell someone else,
     "I know what is best for you, and I'm going to give it to you!"
           is not a loving word,
               unless it is addressed to a very young child
                    and then only in the context of a loving relationship of a parent to the child.

There is where we find a paradigm for the simplicity of love:

True caring love means wanting the best for another person,
         and only the other person knows what is best for himself or herself.

In other words, wanting what is best always means wanting to enhance the other person's freedom.

Without freedom for the beloved,
   what we think of as love can easily degenerate into a kind of selfishness.

Without focusing on freedom,
    we lose sight of what love is really all about.

It works on many different levels, too.

A parent wants to teach her or his child to be free.

Sometimes restraint is necessary for freedom to continue to be possible.

A very basic example is a child moving around in a crowd with the family.

The child's tendency to wander off and look for new and interesting things
       can easily result in getting lost.

A lost child suddenly has very little freedom at all, at least at some point.

So a loving parent will limit the child's freedom in order to enhance it!

Something similar works in all our relationships.

If we act lovingly toward others,
    in ways that show care for their well being,
        we enhance their freedom as well as our own.

Again, for a very basic example,
   we are actually showing love for others when we obey traffic signs and laws.

If we fail to stop at a stop light,
     we will impede the freedom of movement for everyone,
         including and maybe especially for ourselves.

Even if we survive the kind of unpleasant enounter that might result from ignoring traffic law,
      we may well find our freedom curtailed by the necessary enforcement of the law.

On the other hand,
    one courteous driver can improve the safety - and so ultimately the freedom -
          of everyone trying to get around our town.

The act of caring makes a tremendous difference in everybody's freedom!

So love means working toward the freedom of the people we love.

It really is as simple as that.

Altruism means seeking the freedom of others even when it costs us something.

This principle obviously has profound implications in our social and political lives, too.

Without going into the concept in too much detail,
   suffice it to say that the principles of love in action in a society
       call on all of us to make the effort
          and pay the price
             of caring for the most vulnerable people around us.

That they have needs is enough to make them worthy of our care.

We cannot meet everyone's needs all the time,
     but if we all do our part
          we can go a very long way
              toward making our world a better place.

We cannot provide perfect freedom for everyone,
     but if we pay attention to each other's need for more possibilities to choose,
       we can all show love in very practical and meaningful ways
           every day.

The simplicity of love
      means working to set each other free.

Blessed Be!

Amen, Ameen, Omeyn, So mote it be!