Love Means Always Having To Say You're Sorry

A couple years ago I bought a new cell phone. I had to because my previous cell phone was in my pocket when I went tubing down a river. Not a good idea. I told the salesman, “I just want a cell phone. I don’t want a cell phone that takes pictures. I don’t want a cell phone where you can text. I don’t want a cell phone that does the dishes. (Well, maybe that would be OK.) I just want a cell phone and that’s what I’ve had the past couple of years. Then a month or so ago, my wife said, “Let’s get iPhones.” I don’t want an iPhone. Truth be told, I’m a technophobe. I have an irrational fear of technology. I have a computer, but I use it basically as a glorified typewriter. Yes, I get my e-mail and check the internet and stuff, but basically it’s a glorified typewriter. But I said, “OK, let’s get iphones.”

I LOVE MY iPHONE!

It’s got my address book in it. It takes notes. I just talk into it and it types out the notes. Ahhh. I love my iPhone! Actually I don’t love my iPhone, because you’re not supposed to love an inanimate object. You’re supposed to like your phone. You’re supposed to like your car. You’re supposed to like your favorite TV show. So I really, really, really like my iPhone. I really, really, really like my red convertible. I really, really, really like “Modern Family.”

Love is a many-splendored thing; it’s a complicated thing though. It means many different things. Two people in love get married. Their significant other, their partner, their spouse is someone they love. The Greeks called it “eros,” or romantic love. It’s where we get the word “erotic.” That‘s one kind of love. Then there’s a love between friends: two or more people love each other in friendship. The Greeks called it “philia,” which is where we get the word “Philadelphia,” the “city of brotherly love.” That’s another kind of love. And then there’s love for the perfect stranger, or the imperfect stranger – someone we don’t even know, but we care about. Christians would call that “agape,” the love for the poor, the homeless, the hurting. That’s another form of love. Love means many different things.

The first Valentine that I remember buying, I think I was in the second grade. I had a crush on a little girl in my class. I went to the store and found a card. It had a Dutch theme. There was a wooden shoe on the card and it said, “Wooden shoe be my Valentine?” I thought that was hilarious! Unfortunately my sense of humor hasn’t progressed much over the years.

Valentine’s Day, I thought, was a Hallmark holiday, one created just to sell cards. But it’s not. It’s been going on for hundreds of years. Now Sweetest Day, that’s a Hallmark holiday, but Valentine’s Day has been around since Chaucer’s time. But we’re not completely sure who it’s named for. It’s named for St. Valentine, of course, but there were something like 14 St. Valentines. All of them martyred, killed, executed for not giving up their beliefs, so apparently having the name Valentine is not such a good thing. But what did that have to do with Valentine’s Day? What would that have to do with romantic love? I can’t think of anything. But there are a couple of stories, legends, myths surrounding St. Valentine that originated hundreds of years ago.

The first story was that the emperor at that time decreed that no young men should be allowed to marry because he wanted young men to be available to be conscripted into the military. He wanted them to go off to war and not pine for their wives left behind. So he decreed that no young men could marry. St. Valentine held secret weddings. He married young men and young women and was arrested for it and executed. So that’s one possible explanation as to why Valentine’s Day is about romantic love and named after St. Valentine.

The other St. Valentine story is that he was arrested and put in jail for not giving up his beliefs. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the daughter of the jailer. Legend also has it that she was blind and he healed her of her blindness. Then on the night before his execution, February 14, he wrote a love letter, a Hallmark card if you will, to his beloved. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” That’s the other explanation. I wish I could end this the way Paul Harvey always ends his stories, “and now you know the rest of the story,” but now you know a couple of possible stories.

Erich Segal wrote a best-selling novel in the 70’s, a huge best-seller, “Love Story.” It was made into a movie starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. I saw the movie and I read the book. In both of them there’s the famous line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Now at the time I was a teenager. Probably like many teenagers I thought, “Awww. Isn’t that just beautiful – love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But as the years went by I realized: that’s a bunch of hooey. (That’s a theological term.) It seems to me that love means ALWAYS having to say you’re sorry. Maybe that’s just me, but it seems to me I’m always saying, “Sorry, honey, I forgot to buy a gallon of milk.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to do the dishes.” “Sorry, honey, I forgot to mow the lawn.” Love means always having to say you’re sorry. And I think forgiveness, seeking forgiveness and granting forgiveness, are an essential part of love.

If we were perfect, if we weren’t human beings, if we were angels, say, and we never made any mistakes, we never made an error, we never made what some people call “sins,” then we wouldn’t need to seek forgiveness or grant forgiveness. But we’re “a little lower than the angels.” We’re not perfect. We’re still evolving. So sometimes we need to seek forgiveness. Sometimes we need to grant forgiveness. It seems to me the essence of forgiveness is love. You wouldn’t seek forgiveness, it seems to me, from someone unless on some level you loved them. You wouldn’t grant forgiveness, I don’t think, unless on some level you loved the person seeking forgiveness. So I think forgiveness is an essential part of love.

The Dalai Lama has a definition of religion that I really like. He says, “My religion is very simple; my religion is kindness.” I like that. I wish every faith tradition, every religion, had kindness at its core. By kindness I think the Dalai Lama means compassion, love for everyone, even for people we don’t know.

It’s easy to understand, I think, the love two people have for each other. They become partners, significant others, or spouses because they’ve agreed to share their lives together, to journey through life together, to share their stories, to become as one. That’s a kind of love we can easily understand. Then there’s the love that people have for their friends, either one or more persons. They’re people that support one another, that share their experiences and share their joys and concerns. That’s a love that we can understand. But why would somebody love a complete stranger? Why would somebody’s heart go out to somebody else who maybe is in need, who may need a place to live, who needs clothes on their back or food in their belly. Why would they do that? I think that many people, thankfully, do do that. But there are some who don’t. Their love isn’t that expansive; it’s more exclusive. They say to themselves, “Why should I help this person I don’t even know?” They figure they get nothing out of it and so they don’t help. Their heart doesn’t go out to somebody else. They say to themselves, “ I take care of me and mine. This person I don’t even know should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, even if they don’t have any boots.” I think it’s inexplicable, although maybe it’s explained by different theologies.

Every religion that I know of posits a God, or a Yahweh, or an Allah, or a Source or a Spirit that is love. “God is love.” What does that mean? I think to some people God is loving of everybody. God loves all of God’s children (if God exists). Other people say, “No, God isn’t expansive; God is exclusive. God only loves certain people – me and a few others. God doesn’t love “them,” God loves “us.”

If God exists, I can’t fathom a God like that, because I know that even before my daughter was born, I loved her. I didn’t sit around and wait for her to love me. And I’m certain that most parents, hopefully all parents, are the same way. When your child is born you just naturally love your child. You don’t sit back and say, “Hmm, you’re 2 or 3 years old now. What are your feelings toward me? Because, you know, it’s all about me.” If the child says, “Oh Daddy, oh mommy, I love you.” Then they would say, “Well, okay , then, I’ll love you.” That would be crazy wouldn’t it? Creepy! Ugh! That would be conditional love.

Unconditional love says, “I love my child just because.” I think we can agree that unconditional love is a higher form of love than conditional love. So I don’t understand how people can say that God , if God exists, can have a lower form of love for God’s children than I have for my daughter. How can that be? If God exists, I have to believe that God is more inclusive than exclusive.

Henny Youngman was an old vaudeville comedian. He told jokes about his wife. He had the famous line, “Take my wife – please!” Henny Youngman said once, “The last fight was my fault. My wife asked, “What’s on the TV?” I said, “Dust.” Henny Youngman made a living telling jokes about his wife, but the funny thing is, he loved his wife, he was devoted to his wife, he adored his wife. I sometimes talk about Henny Youngman when I perform a wedding. Not often, though, because most young people go, “Henny who? What’s a Henny?”

Also, when I perform a wedding, I usually quote a piece of literature that describes love. “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. Love never ends.” I think that’s a perfect message.

One day I was meeting with a couple and I was going to do their wedding. I said that I say that passage when I do a wedding and the bride said, “Oh, I love that passage! That’s what I want at my wedding.” Interestingly enough, it was written by an apparent lifelong bachelor, the Apostle Paul, but in spite of that it’s a beautiful passage describing love.

I like to do weddings. A lot of ministers don’t like doing weddings. They think that they’re a necessary evil. People just want you to get to “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” I don’t use that kind of language. I say, “You may now kiss your beloved.” I like doing weddings because at weddings you get to see love up close and personal, whether it’s young love or people who are older and in love – seventy somethings and eighty somethings – I like doing weddings. Oftentimes, I’ll quote a song in the sermonette I do, I talk about love and the different kinds of love, I talk about the story of the couple that’s getting married, and I’ll quote a song, as I often do in sermons. Often I’ll quote a Beatles song: All You Need Is Love: “All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

That’s probably one of the simplest songs ever written, but it’s also one of the most poignant songs ever written. If only we lived it – all you need is love. But we try other things: all you need is lust, all you need is envy, all you need is revenge, all you need is hate, but the Beatles were right. If our every move, our every action were motivated by love, what a wonderful world it would be. How wonderful humankind would be, if we were just motivated by love, because really, when you get down to it: all you need is love. On Valentine’s Day and on every day of the year.