by Rev. Janet Onnie
February 16, 2025
The offertory this morning was the familiar song by The Beatles, “All You Need Is Love.” I have always been slightly uncomfortable with this sentiment. It was the same sort of general discomfort – manifesting itself as annoyance – at the Hallmark sentiments on Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Grandparents Day, and all the other “days”. Too often these Hallmark holidays excuse perfectly awful behavior toward the one being honored the rest of the year.
But I generally exempt Valentine’s Day from my bashing of Hallmark holidays because it has a long history. You former Catholics were taught that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of St. Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270. Others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Lupercalia was a fertility festival, involving flaying with strips of sacrified male goats and dogs and random matching of men and women to encourage pregnancy. Not exactly the same thing as our modern celebration of love via chocolates and flowers.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Chaucer mentioned it, and Sam Weller in Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers bought a valentine for the object of his affection. All those loves are lovely, but there are lots of definitions of love. What are we talking about?
Love is much larger – and harder — than what we mean when we say, I LOVE my new car. Or I LOVED my trip to Europe. Or I LOVE my job. I still like the apostle Paul’s definition in the letter he wrote to the squabbling church of Corinth, probably around 50 AD. In it he describes the reverse of the proud, contemptuous, divisive spirit manifested in the behavior of some of the members of that congregation. Paul wrote, “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 thing, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor 13: 4-7)
So when the Beatles sing: “ There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made,
No one you can save that can’t be saved…It’s easy… all you need is love” I bristle. There’s nothing easy about it. Ask anyone who’s been in any sort of a relationship. And there are times in everyone’s life when love is not enough – to save someone or to save yourself.
Back in 2010 I heard this story from one of my mentors, who gave me permission to recount it this morning. She said, “I have always deeply feared motorcycles for the sake of their riders. I recognize the attraction, the excitement, but one of my brothers was nearly killed when he fell trying to avoid a dog that was chasing him. That was the beginning of my fear, and I didn’t hesitate to tell my children about it, to no avail, as I expected. Both my sons rode, and my daughter was more than occasionally a passenger. Then fourteen years ago, my youngest was giving a ride to a friend’s girlfriend who wanted to see what it was like. He was showing off, going a little too flamboyantly around a curve, and there was sand in the road. She was killed. Although neither the authorities nor his friend held him accountable, he himself took full responsibility for the tragedy, knowing that if he hadn’t been playing the cowboy he could have avoided the accident. He will live with that sense of guilt for the rest of his life.
“I was shocked at my own callousness”, she continued. “I was too grateful that he was still alive to grieve, for the girl or her parents or her two children and fiancé. My horror was for him, for his grief and shame. He told me that he had considered suicide and had decided that that would simply make things worse for everyone else, and that although he would in those circumstances no longer have to think about it, it would not, could not, change the reality or atone for it.
My mentor admitted she “was proud of him.” She went on the say, “I was also more frustrated than I have ever been and hope never to be again. There was absolutely nothing I could do to ease his pain. It didn’t matter how much I loved him, how much I wanted to, I could take none of his grief and shame on my own shoulders. I would have given anything at all to be able to do that, to relieve him even a little of the agony that I knew that he would feel all his life. I could not. It was his own and would remain his own. The inadequacy, the futility of love to bridge this separation was clear.”
I heard this story fifteen years ago. In November last year I got word that her son – this same son – had died. He died as a result of alcoholism or from a drug overdose. Maybe both and does it really matter? He died because he was unable to make the long climb from forgiving himself to loving himself. He was dearly loved and supported by his family and the many friends that showed up at his funeral. But their love was not enough. Not enough to save him. There is not enough love in the world to save someone who cannot begin to forgive themselves.
Nor is there enough love to prevent tragedies large and small. If you engage with life long enough you will encounter a situation where human love is not enough to bring you back to the person you were. Time is parceled into “before” and “after”. Those of you who have experienced the death of a beloved know the truth of this. Of some comfort is knowing that death comes to everything and everyone. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. Your involvement in the natural order of things does not require self-forgiveness, except to the extent you chose to blame yourself for what you did or didn’t do to prolong or hasten the process.
But, death aside, stuff happens. This morning you heard the story of the forgiveness garden. One person injured another. The injured person’s anger was encouraged and sustained by her community. The hateful action of the person who threw the stone was applauded by his community. There was no room for reconciliation, never mind love, from either community. Change only came when the injured girl looked at her reflection and recoiled from her image of anger and bitterness. She didn’t like what she saw. Change came when she recognized the children from the other community were like the children she knew. So, when given the opportunity for revenge, she declined. The moment she dropped her stone, the moment she became vulnerable, everything changed. Love, through forgiveness, became possible.
Stuff happens that neither patience, kindness, humility, flexibility, cheerfulness or truthfulness can deflect. But here’s the thing about love. It “bears all things, believes all things, endures all things, and hopes all things.” Love hopes, even though it is by no means enough to restore the before-it-happened relationships. There is a love which is utterly futile to change things, to help another person, even to bridge our existential loneliness. Yet with its cold edge, love sears meaning into our loneliness though the love we give rather than that which we are given. The love you’ve expended toward the loved one comes back to you through the love of others. The love you’ve expended toward the loved one comes back to you through the love of others. Or in the words of Paul McCartney, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
I have witnessed the truth of this. And I would add that there is also a type of love called grace that comes unbidden and throws off McCartney’s equation. I cannot explain it except to say that it appears to have nothing to do with human action or intention. It appears whether or not I have taken the love I’ve earned or given all the love of which I’m capable. Grace tilts the equation to the love taken from somewhere transcending human community.
It was a beautiful spring day and I was on my way to a meeting in Washington, DC. Briefcase in hand, dressed for success, I passed by a crowd of people who were intent on what was happening in the middle of the circle. What was happening was a man was being kicked by another man. One who was also dressed for success and had highly polished, expensive looking shoes. The kicker’s briefcase lay next to the kickee’s knapsack. The audience was quietly watching the brutal display. I wish I could tell you I stepped in to stop the assault. But I didn’t. I left the scene and went on with my day. And the memory of the guilt and shame of my inaction has stayed with me for over 40 years. The memory remains. But the guilt is gone. “Through many dangers, toils, and snares we have already come. ‘Twas grace that brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home.”
All of us have stories like this. When love is not enough to protect us or save us from whatever tragedy befalls us… When love is not enough to shield us from our shame and guilt … When love is not enough to turn back the clock to the time before whatever happened … When love is not enough, the only recourse we have is to turn to love. Love from another, love from the community, love from some unknown source. Because the power of love is enough to propel us from the before into the future. May it be so always and forever. Amen.