MORE THAN A VALENTINE!!!

      I love… love, don’t you? I love falling in love. I love being in love. I love songs and poems about love, and I like to see love, whether it’s in the eyes of two star-struck kids or in the deeply knowing eyes of a an elderly couple. I love to watch kids at play… and even more, the joy that they get from opening presents on Christmas and Birthdays. I also love to study languages and genealogy. I love Iowa… and baseball… and classic country music. I can’t get enough of Willie and Waylon, and I love soft-serve ice cream. There are many things to love, and there are many different kinds of love. As the ancient Greeks knew, there are several different kinds of love, even when we’re talking about our “love” for another person. They called one type, “Philia,” as in Philadelphia, which means “friend-to-friend.” Friend to friend love can be very deep, and then there is “Storge” love, which is a love born of shared experiences. Families are the best example of this, but people who share the same combat experiences, the same self-help groups, or even the same work place... come to love one another, without necessarily being “friends.” The Greeks also noted “eros,” as a type of love, and most of us are acquainted with its power. We’ve also seen, and maybe experienced, self-centered love, where the person has a passionate love-affair with himself or herself… and many women are acquainted with a manipulative, deal-making love… that maintains that, if you really love me, you would do this or that for me' 

      For some of us, a “good bargain” is about as good as love ever gets, but if we’re fortunate, we will experience love in all of its glorious forms. However, since I’ve entitled this message, “Foot-Washing Love,” I will focus on a “serving, steadfast, and sacrificial” love that the Greeks called “Agape.” Agape love sets the lover free from self... because it is focused on the other. It is iron-clad and impervious to the “ups and downs” of a relationship… and even to rejection. Agape love keeps on giving, nurturing, inviting, challenging, and sometimes “pruning” us… so that we will became all that God has intended us to be. It never let’s go. It never gives up… and it is hopefully persistent. Agape love is, of course, God’s love, but if we look closely… we will see signs of it from time to time, right here on earth. If we look hard, we will see it… but we have to look beyond the glitter and the sexy images, we have to ignore all of the voices that urge us to make some sort of a deal, and we have to abandon any notion that it will serve us. It won’t… because it is all about “the other.” Agape love serves God and the Image of God in others. It may applauded by others, and those who practice may be held in some esteem. But it is NOT about applause, or attention. It is about ministry in the  

name and in the manner of the One who washed our feet and carried our cross. 

      Agape love, which I would call "mature" and "vulnerable" love is a privilege... but it is NOT easy. In fact, it's often unappreciated, sometimes disappointing, and threatening to our own sense of self... because it insists on stripping away our hidden motives and pretenses. As Jesus noted, no servant can be greater than his or her master. So, if Agape love required Jesus to get down on his knees and wash his disciples' feet... and if it led him up Cavalry's Hill... well... think about what it might ask of you or me! In his wonderful book, “The Prophet,” the Lebanese philosopher, Gibran, says this about love: When love beckons, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep; and when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you; and when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams… for even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even a he is for your growth, he is for your pruning. Love possesses not…. Nor would be possessed… for love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. (This is right and good) but if you must have desires, let these be your desires… to know the pain of too much tenderness… to be wounded by your own understanding of love; to bleed willingly and joyfully; to wake at dawn… and give thanks for another day of loving… to rest at the noon hour and meditate on love’s ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude… and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart… and a song of praise upon your lips.
      Have you been pierced by his pinions? Has she shattered your dreams? Have you been trimmed and pruned by Agape's ceaseless tugging at your heart? Agape love is mature love. It is a vulnerable love that has suffered for its own vulnerability, It is a serving love that finds worth in the serving alone. It is a love that is endlessly true to itself and forever trustworthy. Agape love is a cross-carrying love, which does what it has to do to restore and (yes) save others, even those who mock and deny it. Like you, I’ve seen love in many of it’s forms, and over the years, I’ve known some of them on a first-name basis. But of Agape love, I didn’t know anything at all… until I surrendered and let Christ have his way with me! I didn’t have a clue about the sustaining and transforming power of real love until I let Jesus “wash my feet,” because being vulnerable ….is the key to empowerment.
      We will never know love until we let love have its way with us. Unless we surrender to Jesus and let him love us, we will never "be his" in any real sense of the word! And unless we love others with the same gloriously awkward and completely vulnerable love that he gave to us… with knees that are sore from bending, with hands that are dirty from serving, and with tears that can scarcely be controlled… we will never, ever know what it means to be fully human. Amen.