|
Midweek Faith Lift
You are the Face of Love
February 21, 2024
Rev. Heather Withers
You are the face of God;
I hold you in my heart;
You are a part of me;
You are the face of God.
You are the face of Love;
I hold you in my heart;
You are my family;
You are the face of Love.
- Karen Drucker
This past Saturday Don and I experienced the face of love firsthand. We were eating at a favorite café in Story City, when a couple in their mid-20's came in with their young son. We smiled and waved gently to him - he smiled back and waved, and the parents beamed.
Truly it was the face of love for all of us. We may never see this family again but they have left love prints on our hearts that we will remember.
Love has many faces
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke often of love and lived it in his daily life. A few months before his assassination, he gave a moving Christmas Sermon on Peace, in which he spoke eloquently about the Face of Love. He pointed out that in the Greek New Testament there are three words for “love” - Eros, Philos, and Agape.
He described Eros as a “sort of aesthetic, romantic love and the yearning of the soul for the realm of the divine. Some of the most beautiful love in the world has been expressed this way.
Philos is a second word for love - a kind of intimate love between personal friends. It’s the kind of love you have for those people that you get along with well. You love them and you are loved. I have known my friend Janet in England for over eighty years. Even though we are separated by distance, our hearts are always connected.
A third name for love is Agape, which is more than friendship or romantic love. It’s the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill to all people - an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say it is the love of God operating in the human heart. Jesus exemplifies agape love in action.
Dr. King added that he was happy that Jesus didn’t say “Like your enemies,” because he said he can’t like people who would bomb your home, exploit you, trample on you with injustices.
“We can’t ever give up. We must work passionately, and unrelentingly, for first class citizenship. “We must never let up in our determination to remove every vestige of segregation and discrimination from our nation, but we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege to love.”
The face of love can be ‘tough’ if required.
The kinship of all life
Much of the time our focus has been on human beings, and we have overlooked the important contributions of other loving beings - animals, plants, trees, etc. all of which are faces of love in our world.
Hopefully, as we move away from the attitude of dominion human beings have had toward many aspects of creation, we will foster an attitude of interdependence with all life.
We have come up to here
Among some traveling Native peoples, when they have not yet reached a planned destination, affirm, “We have come up to here!”
We, as a society, have made many advances in multiple areas. It is encouraging that we want to do more and move further ahead. It’s also part of the face of love to stop, assess the progress, and give thanks.
The face of the future
Giving thanks for you, all the progress we have made, and looking forward to where the Face of Love will lead us next.
Namaste.
|
|
