Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Heaven with a Pony Tail

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 12:9a

June 13, 1999

The title of this morning’s sermon, "Heaven With a Pony Tail?" is one of several answers which have been given to the question, "what is love?"

The concept of love being "heaven with a pony tail" was produced, as you might have expected, during the late 1950s when items such as pony tails were indeed considered heavenly. The whole first verse of the song went like this:

"What is love? Five feet of heaven with a pony tail,

The cutest pony tail, that sways with a wiggle when she walks."

At another point in the song it is declared:

"What is love but a little angel, who is making me lose my sleep?

And she's always breaking promises that she'd said she'd keep."

Add a few "ooh-wahs" and "doo-wops" to those words and you pretty well have the idea of the song. I tried to get the praise team to sing it but they’re too square.

Love is also the concern of much of the rest of our music. In fact, it is our music industry’s bread and butter.

In one song we were told that love makes the world go round -- a concept that is theologically defensible only if you realize that God is love. Another song informs us that "Love is Surrender." The Beatles chimed in on the discussion with the claim that "Love is all you need."

It’s not just the music from when I used to listen to the radio. At their wedding, Tyme and Kenny danced to Sarah McLaughlin’s "Your love is better than chocolate, better than ice cream." That struck me as a pretty minimal thing to say at your wedding but to each his own.

There is a lot of confusion about love -- and not just in our music. One writer who should have known better even went so far as to instruct the world that "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Now Al and Tipper Gore may have been the inspiration for Love Story — as Al claimed sometime before he invented the Internet -- but I hope Tipper never said such a dumb thing.

I believe that the confusion about love can be summed up under three major headings which are conveniently labeled: "Romantic Rubbish," "Feeling Fallacies" and "Liking Limbo."

The first, "Romantic rubbish" had its origins during the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance period. It developed as a reaction against the harsh sterility of life as commonly lived during the feudal period --.an attempt to lend mystery, color and excitement to a pretty drab social order.

But this romance was not for everyone. It was only for the noble people. It found its expression in the legends of brave knights who went out to vanquish dragons, villains, and assorted nasties for the sake of their ladies. In one area of South Central France called Provence, an entire system grew up around the ideals of knightly love. From the court of love in Provence, singers and story tellers spread throughout Europe bearing the spirit of romance. Provence was, in effect, the Hollywood of its day.

This is interesting history and it is not without meaning for us today. For as the Middle Ages ended and as the middle class began, this romantic ideal was adopted as a feature of middle class life and belief -- where it doesn’t fit very well.

In chivalry, the object of the romantic expression was generally not the wife of the noble knight. It was someone unobtainable -- a stranger, a mystery woman, or someone else’s wife. This is reflected in all of the stories that grew up around the knight Lancelot who left his wife Elaine to champion the cause of Guenevere --.the wife of King Arthur. It also finds expression in the song, "The Impossible Dream," from "Man of LaMancha." In this song, Don Quixote speaks of the ideal of "Loving, pure and chaste from afar."

But in middle class society, the adopted ideal of romantic love was not to be "pure and chaste from afar." It was to be directed at one's husband or wife -- not at a mystery woman or mystery man, or at someone else’s spouse.

The romantic ideal is adequate when the loving is "pure and chaste from afar." But it is not so adequate in close quarters. The trouble is that marriage is not from afar. It is up close and day-to-day. When marriages are manipulated and pressured to meet the unreal expectations of romance then marriages fail.

Now in case you think you stumbled into the wrong place, this isn’t a seminar on marriage. It’s on love. I’m using marriage as an example of what is hopefully love in action and something with which we are all familiar.

In many ways, it is hard for me to say these things about romance because I am a secret romantic. Some of you probably think I’m a very secret romantic. I love stories -- especially stories about the sea and ships -- where the couple overcomes impossible obstacles to be together because love has willed it so. In many ways, I wouldn't mind if life were like a musical where people sang about love and danced around lampposts like Gene Kelly.

But I have talked with enough couples whose marriages are on the rocks to realize that there is great danger in taking romance out of the Harlequin Novels or off the silver screen and making it the measure of the success or failure of a marriage. It is all very well for commercials to show young couples running toward each other across a green meadow. But there are often rocks and gopher holes in the meadows of life.

The second area, the "feeling fallacy" is related to romance in many ways. It declares that love is first and foremost a feeling over which we have little or no control. It is expressed by people who break up their marriages because they "fall out of love," or who enter into a marriage with the promise to live together and be faithful to each other "as long as we both shall love" -- the idea being that love is a feeling over which there can be little or no control and that when this feeling goes, the marriage has no more validity.' "To live a lie would be a sin, so release me and let me love again."

The trouble with feelings is that they are dependant on a lot of factors beside the relationship itself -- the situation at work, a lack of security and purpose or direction, physical and emotional health. Feelings may come and go depending on a number of circumstances. They cannot be always relied on as valid indicators of the health of a relationship.

Whenever I counsel with a couple who come to talk with me about preparation for marriage, I ask them a number of questions. The first question I ask is: "Jim why do you want to marry Jane (or whatever their names might be) and don't tell me its because you love her. " The reason for this is that our society considers romantic love as the only valid basis for marriage so its declaration is expected and doesn't really say anything.

Another question I ask is: "What is love?"

The reason I ask this question is because the definition of love is very important. If a couple is entering marriage depending on some vague good feeling or the traditional symptoms of fluttering stomach, pounding heart and sweaty hands to carry them through a lifetime of adjustment, communication, disagreement and occasional crisis, then they are in trouble. The sweaty hands, fluttering stomach and pounding heart might just be a case of the flu -- not love. If they haven't really taken a close look at the kind of person their future marriage partner is -- his or her beliefs, commitments, habits, relationships, and priorities — then I will practically guarantee them that I will see their names in the divorce petitions section of the local newspaper before very many years go by. The romantic, swept-off-the-feet kind of love may be blind but eyes get opened pretty fast.

Now all this is not to deny that the feelings that are often associated with love are not enjoyable. They are enjoyable when they are there but they can also come and go for a lot of reasons. Their momentary absence does not indicate that love is not present. When they come to stay, they come as a result of love -- not as a prerequisite to love.

The third area of confusion I have entitled the "Liking Limbo" -- mostly for the sake of keeping alive the alliteration found in the first two titles. This belief confuses liking with loving -- seeing liking as a lesser degree of love. You know the kind of thing I mean. The boy asks the girl: "Do you love me?" She doesn't yet want to commit herself in case she gets a better offer. . But she also doesn't want to chase him away in case she doesn’t get a better offer. So she replies: "Well I don't really know, but I like you a lot." He takes that as a hopeful sign of love to come and stays in the relationship.

But to love someone in the self-giving Christian sense which is what concerns us here, does not require that we first like them. As I read the Bible, I do not get the impression that Jesus liked the priests and the Pharisees. He called them whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful but which are full of corruption. When Jesus was on the cross and the priests and the Pharisees were mocking Him, I don't believe that Jesus looked at them and thought, "What a great group of guys." And yet, He loved them enough to be up there on the cross in their place -- and in ours as well.

There is no relationship between liking and loving except that liking makes loving easier -- just as loving makes liking easier. So, when I counsel with a couple about marriage, I am very concerned that they express a liking and respect for each other -- because liking implies a unity of belief and purpose and an enjoyment of each other's company.

What then? If love is not a romantic ideal, a good feeling, or a more intense degree of liking, what is it?

What it is, is first and foremost an act of the will -- a decision. We can decide to love or not to love in any given situation. Love is a decision that shows up in concrete behavior.

In the gospels, Jesus gives us four distinct commands to love. He says: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." He says: "Love one another as I have loved you." He says: "Love your neighbor as yourself." And He says: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." As we look at Romans 12:9-16, we will look at what genuine love looks like in specific situations. Paul never defines love either here or in the great chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13. Instead he describes how love acts — love does this and doesn’t do this.

If love is a feeling over which we have no control, then we could not be rationally commanded to love anyone or anything. If we had the feelings we would love and if we didn't have them we wouldn't. But Jesus treated love as a subject for commandment -- something we can choose to do or choose not to do -- an act of the will. That is why Paul can even command in Ephesians, "Husbands, love your wives."

In the same way, if liking were necessary before love could exist, Jesus would not have commanded us to love our enemies. An enemy is by definition someone we do not like. Love recognizes that a person might be an enemy but decides to act in the best way possible toward that person despite that fact that we dislike him. If we like someone, he is no longer our enemy. But we can love whether someone is our enemy or not. Christian love is not an emotional swap meet where we love those who love us or who are good looking or who deserve our love in some way.

In Romans 12:9, Paul says that true love is not hypocritical. The hypokrites was the play actor. In the Greek theater, players would carry tragic, comedic, or melodramatic masks to signal the role they were playing. Paul is saying that we aren’t to wear a mask. Our love is to be the real thing. We are to engage others with the real "us". Fake love is intolerable in the church. It is a violation of all the Lord came to do.

But how does Romans 12:9 square with what I am saying that love is something we do even if our emotions tells us to do something else. Isn’t that the same thing as play acting. Not at all. It is obedience to Christ — in expectation that he will begin to shape our feelings in accordance with our deeds. And that will happen. As C. S. Lewis observed, "It is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think you way into a new way of acting."

For me, it was a very freeing thing to realize that I didn't have to start with warm feelings toward someone before I could love him. I had always heard that it was hypocritical to act in a way I did not feel but then I realized that to act well toward a person -- even in spite of the way I might feel -- is not hypocrisy -- it is love in action in obedience to Jesus' command. If we wait until we have warm feelings toward our enemies, our neighbors, or the needy people of the world before we act in love, then we'll be waiting our entire lives.

Love is not something we stumble into by accident like an open manhole. It is something we decide to go out and do.

All right then -- what kind of love is this that we are talking about?

First, it is a tough love. It stays active in a situation no matter how many times it is rejected or taken advantage of. It has the strength to turn the other cheek when every instinct says attack. It has wisdom. It gives a person what he needs -- even when that is not what he wants. As we will see next Sunday, this love is not enabling of evil. But in any case, this love acts toward every person in the best possible way in every situation.

This love is unconditional. Returning once again to the example of marriage, There is a word in the marriage service which illustrates the unconditional nature

of this love. The key word is covenant. In the marriage vows, each person says: "I take you be my lawfully, wedded husband or wife and I do promise and covenant — there's that word -- before God and these witnesses, to be your loving and faithful husband or wife in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live." This is not the love of the world. It is not, "I will love you if you love me and meet all my needs." It is "I will love you, period." This is the love of God.

The nature of a covenant is that it does not depend on another person's actions. It is not a contract in which each person promises to be loving and faithful as long

as the other person is loving and faithful. A covenant says: "I am going to be loving and faithful no matter how you behave. My love and my behavior do not depend on your response. It is something I have committed myself to do and be." This kind of love depends not on the worthiness of the recipient but on the commitment of the giver.

I see some of you here acting with this kind of love in your marriages and I admire you. Because This kind of unconditional love is very difficult. It requires a self-denial and a willingness to serve without being served in return that in many ways goes against our natures. This is why Jesus stressed it so much and why the third aspect of this self giving love is crucial.

The kind of love we are talking about is from God. While we have the ability to choose to love, we cannot love with the toughness, wisdom, and freedom which are essential apart from the power of God. In Galatians 5:22, the Apostle Paul lists love as the first of the fruits of the Spirit. It is through the presence of God in our lives that we are free to choose the way of love.

True love, as we have already seen in Romans, comes from the Holy Spirit. Back is Romans 5, Paul said: "The love of God is shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit which is given unto you." True love is demonstrated by learning from the Word of God how you should behave in a certain situation, and then, depending on the Spirit of God to give you the strength to. do it, moving out and doing that very thing. That is the way you love -- by acting in obedience to what the Word tells you by the power of the Holy Spirit within.

Listen to the words of John: "Beloved, let us love each other. For love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Everyone who does not love does not know God for God is love. Beloved, let us love each other."

Love is not heaven with a pony tail. But it is an action which is within our grasps -- something we are able to do.

What God want you to do this week and every week is love. Decide to love that lovely person. Love that person you fought with all the way here. Love that person you don’t know at all. Decide to act loving which is simply doing the best possible thing for each person is each situation.

If we truly commit ourselves to this, then Jesus says that there can be no doubt about who we are or why we’re here.