Love Involves Vulnerability And Risk

LOVE INVOLVES VULNERABILITY AND RISK

Matthew 22:23-40

Intro:

1. Read the Redneck Valentines Day Poem

The Redneck Valentine.

Collards is green,

my dog’s name is Blue

and I’m so lucky

to have a sweet thang like you.

Yore hair is like cornsilk

a-flapping in the breeze.

Softer than Blue’s

and without all them fleas.

You move like the bass,

which excite me in May.

You ain’t got no scales

but I luv you anyway.

Yo’re as satisfy’n as okry

jist a-fry’n in the pan.

Yo’re as fragrant as "snuff"

right out of the can.

You have some’a yore teeth,

for which I am proud;

I hold my head high

when we’re in a crowd.

On special occasions,

when you shave under yore arms,

well, I’m in hawg heaven,

and awed by yore charms.

Still them fellers at work,

they all want to know,

what I did to deserve

such a purdy, young doe.

Like a good roll of duct tape

yo’re there fer yore man,

to patch up life’s troubles

and fix what you can.

Yo’re as cute as a junebug

a-buzzin’ overhead.

You ain’t mean like those far ants

I found in my bed.

Cut from the best cloth

like a plaid flannel shirt,

you spark up my life

more than a fresh load of dirt.

When you hold me real tight

like a padded gunrack,

my life is complete;

Ain’t nuttin’ I lack.

Yore complexion, it’s perfection,

like the best vinyl sidin’.

despite all the years,

yore age, it keeps hidin’.

Me ’n’ you’s like a Moon Pie

with a RC cold drank,

we go together

like a skunk goes with stank.

Some men, they buy chocolate

for Valentine’s Day;

They git it at Wal-Mart,

it’s romantic that way.

Some men git roses

on that special day

from the cooler at Kroger.

"That’s impressive," I say.

Some men buy fine diamonds

from a flea market booth.

"Diamonds are forever,"

they explain, suave and couth.

But for this man, honey,

these won’t do.

Cause yor’e too special,

you sweet thang you.

I got you a gift,

without taste nor odor,

more useful than diamonds...

IT’S A NEW TROLL’N MOTOR!!

Luv, from yor romeo

2. Valentine’s Day is Tuesday and it is time to celebrate and delight in foolish as well as serious ways the very essence of what life is all about and that give us all a deep sense of meaning and value and purpose.

3. Just listen to a very small selection of the titles of songs that have been written on the theme:

• Love Is All We Need - Celine Dion

• Love Can Move Mountains - Celine Dion

• Love Will Always Win - Faith Hill

• Love Will Conquer All - Lionel Richie

• Love Will Find a Way - Christina Aguilera

• Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling – Charles Wesley

• O Perfect Love – Dorothy Gurney

4. And we could go on for days listing titles of secular and religious songs as well as poems that have been written throughout the ages extolling the ecstasy, the wonder and bliss of love as well as the pain, the heartache, the cynicism, the loneliness of those who have never found it, experienced it, or have lost it.

5. In our Gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus refers to the three essential loves that every person needs to fulfill God’s plan for us and to be fulfilled and complete as human beings:

• Love for God

• Love for Ourselves

• Love for our Neighbor

6. Now all forms of love for us are only possible because God has first of all loved us. 1 John 4:19 states, “We love, because He first loved us.”

• God is the source of all love

• He loved us into existence

• We are the visible expression of His loving and creative action

• He created us in His image so that we would love Him, love ourselves, love one another, and love all that He has made with that same self-giving, eagerness to bless and enhance others kind of love.

• When we love God and know ourselves loved by Him, we are able to appropriately love ourselves and consequently love others

• But of course SIN got in the way and warped and twisted love to the point where we turned it inward on ourselves in an exclusive, selfish, self-centered fashion that ultimately becomes like a black hole sucking into itself and able to give nothing.

• The Love of God demonstrated in Christ’s death on the Cross – where He descended to the very core of the universal “black hole” and destroyed it’s power center and then by His resurrection created the way of escape and victory for all who place their trust in Him – now makes possible for us a return to God’s original plan.