When I read Paul’s words to the Romans in the passage we read a few moments ago I couldn’t help but think of Tina Turner.  Now I don’t have Tina’s legs, and I don’t have Tina’s voice, and I certainly don’t have Tina’s hair.  To have you try and imagine Tina Turner while I sang a bit of one of her songs would cause your imaginations to have to work overtime and smoke might come out your ears so I won’t make you endure my rendition of her song.  But as I read this passage I couldn’t help but hear in the back of my mind her haunting, aching, yearning, sorrowful voice pleading “What’s love got to do with it?  What’s love but a sweet old fashioned notion?”  Paul’s answer would be “for Christians love is everything, it has everything to do with it because it has everything to do with everything.  Paul is making the argument that for the Christian it’s all about love. 

            Now I think it is safe to say that Tina and Paul are talking about two different things when they use the word love.  My guess is that Tina is talking about attraction, about that sweet, gushy sort of feeling that is expressed in Hallmark Valentine’s day cards, or quite possibly even something a little more physical.  What Paul is talking about is something very different.  The love of which Paul writes has little if anything to do with physical attraction, and it has very little to do with whether or not we like someone. The word Paul uses here is agape, a different kind of love.  This is the kind of love Christ showed the world in laying down his life so that others could be saved from their sins.  Agape love is not an emotion or a spontaneous upwelling of good feelings it is rather a commitment to putting the needs of the other ahead of your own, it is a self giving self sacrificing way of behaving toward others.  Such an operational definition of the word “love” saves us from sentimentalizing it.  I think it is safe to say this is the definition Paul had in mind and that is a good thing because Lord knows people are not always lovable. Paul is not directing Christ’s followers to feel warm and cozy about people. He is instructing us to put God’s love into action by wanting to do and actually doing our redeemed best for others — doing right by them.

At first glance it might appear that Paul is laying down a boatload of moral and religious obligations, rules for us to follow.  But a closer look reveals what Paul is really doing is showing us how to live out God’s law which is a law of love.  What Paul says looks an awful lot like the last 6 of the 10 commandments which are really about loving your neighbor as yourself.  It is not Paul’s intent to force people to follow a lot of rules but for them to fulfill God’s law all of which to use Jesus’ own words hinges on loving God and loving others.  Paul is simply sighting specific ways in which we can love our neighbor.  It is freeing to know he is not burdening us with a bunch of rules but his list looks pretty good when you consider there are many more ways to love your neighbor. 

Take for instance the example of Hannah Hawkins who has opened her home to the children of her Anacostia neighborhood in Washington, D.C., offering food, tutoring, encouragement, discipline, and love. In 1985 she named her program the Children of Mine. She cares for 75 to 100 children every day.  “What’s surprising is the utter ferocity of her love,” says a Washington Post reporter. On the phone, Hawkins just blasts it out - the gritty reality of living saintliness, a robust interior mindscape of caring. Listen: “Hello, I’m glad to be in the land of the living today!  “Until you apply yourself, you can’t get anything done. We tend to become comfortable in our roles in the world. I can’t do that! If anybody told me years ago I’d be doing what I’m doing, I’d call him a liar. But sometimes you’re thrust into situations, and I knew I had to do something. I had to make a change - and change starts within you!”

What Hannah and Paul point out is that love is about action.  It requires something of us.  Often love requires more of us than we first expected.  To be a follower of Christ means undoubtedly that we have to do something, that we will have to reach out, to extend ourselves, in care and concern for others.  That is what it is to be in community to be in relationship.  Until you apply yourself, until you surrender your own ambitions, your own pride, your own desires, your own life the way the one who surrendered his for you, you will not know what it means to truly love. 

           My guess is none of this comes naturally for us.  It forces us to connect with people on a level that is often not comfortable for us.  One of the ironies of our high-tech, communications world is it can actually prevent us from communicating with each other. Listen to psychotherapist James Hillman: “I can watch 34 channels of TV; I can get on the fax and communicate with people anywhere; I can be everywhere at once; I can fly across the country. I’ve got call waiting, so I can take two calls at once. I live everywhere and nowhere. But I don’t know who lives next door to me. Who’s in the next flat? Who’s in 14-B?  “I don’t know who they are, but, boy, I’m on the phone, car phone, toilet phone, plane phone … I have faxes coming in day and night, I can plug into all the world’s stock prices, commodity exchanges, I am everywhere, man - but I don’t know who’s in 14-B.” (James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - And the World’s Getting Worse)

Being a follower of Christ not only requires that we know who is in 14-B or whatever dwelling is next to ours, but it requires that we keep in touch with not only them but the folks on the other side of them, and the folks on the other side of the world because all of them are a part of the family of God and therefore we are bound by God to love them as God has loved us; holding nothing back.  We are required to not only know them but know their needs so that we may respond in love. 

           William Ashbrook and Harold Powers recount a story that took place in the early1920s, about the famous composer Puccini who set out to write what was to become his final opera. All but the final duet and the finale were completed when he was diagnosed with cancer and were never completed before he died in November of 1924.  The opera was completed by Puccini devotee Franco Alfano using Puccini’s notes, and in 1926 the premiere performance took place at La Scala Opera House, the foremost opera house in Italy (Milan). Puccini’s long-time friend Arturo Toscanini directed the unfinished opera. When Toscanini got to the place in the score where Puccini had left off, Toscanini stopped the orchestra, his face wet with tears, and spoke these words to the audience: “The opera is ending here because at this point, the Maestro died.” In memory of Puccini, the audience broke into one of the most moving ovations in La Scala’s history.However subsequent performances of Turandot, all featured the ending composed by Puccini’s disciple Franco Alfano.  Puccini’s unfinished work could never be completed in a way that matched the genius of the master composer. But without friends to finish his composition, it also could never have been performed for audiences around the world to enjoy.  What kind of a friend does Jesus have in us? Will we help continue his work?

Friends as Christ’s followers we are called to continue the Mater’s work.  Lord knows we will not do it perfectly, but may we perform it admirably, and earnestly.  We are to and can actually live by the transforming power of God’s love through our Lord Jesus Christ.  May we perform our calling in such a way that others come to know and appreciate what God has done for them, remembering always that love, God’s love, Christ’s agape love for the world has everything to do with it. Amen.