Most of you may not remember Art Linkletter on television but he always had a section on his show titled “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” There is something so very honest and innocent about their views on the world’s toughest subjects. Following Linkletter’s example, a group of professionals gathered and asked a group of four- to eight-year-olds “What does love mean?” Here are some of their answers.

“When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toe nails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.”  Rebecca – age 8.

“Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.” Karl – age 5.

“Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” Terri – age 4.

“Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” Bobby – age 7.

“If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate.” Nikka – age 6.

“My Mommy loves me more than anybody. You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.” Clare – age 6.

“Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.” Chris – age 7.

“I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.” Lauren – age 4.

“You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.” Jessica – age 8.

Here’s one of the best from another source.

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia judged a contest to discover the most caring child. This is what he said about the winner. “The winner was a four-year-old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry.’”

Many of us have a definition of love. That is: love, the noun. But in the gospel reading today Jesus gave a command to do the action verb love. We are to love one another. Why? I believe there are two reasons. The first is that it is what people outside of the church, outside of Christianity, will see.

The second is because inside the church we are a family and what binds us together is our love for one another. That is how it is supposed to work. Not every group of believers, Christians, or church goers experiences that.

There was a news story that circulated years ago about two dwindling congregations that decided to merge. They did but there was a major problem. One group said the Lord’s Prayer with the word debts. The other said it with the word trespasses. I guess the battle waged and raged over a year’s time when the two decided to split. The newspaper described the division as “One congregation went back to its debts and the other went back to its trespasses.”

The truth is that in congregations loving each other isn’t always the case. Sometimes we fail at following Christ’s command to love another. And some congregations just do it. There is one group that exists along the Mississippi River. It isn’t large and it isn’t small. It is a good size where everyone gets to know one another. Their teaching is excellent and their services are filled with worship but the thing they do best is love another.

Every Sunday the group gathers for lunch after the morning service. It is a time of personal announcements, birthday acknowledgments, and recognition of kids that did something good or great. It is filled with love and lots of food. One might call it a love feast in some aspects. The kids play together afterward, the way kids play. Teenage girls walk and giggle and talk the way kids do. But one thing is present and it makes people smile. It is the love of the people for each other.

They are a loving and giving church. If someone is in a financial bind, this church steps up. One woman retired early from a job at a university and took a part-time position as a Christian school librarian. The school forgot to tell her that they would not be paying her throughout the summer. The church stepped up and filled in the financial gap, simply because they loved her.

The pastor’s wife’s father had retired from the ministry and moved to be near his grandchildren. He literally brought nothing with him but clothes and books. One week later, he moved into an apartment completely furnished through the gifts of a church that didn’t know him but loved his daughter. They believe that love is a verb.

There is a small church in New York state, I mean a small church. Each year they provide Thanksgiving dinner for a few hundred people. They even deliver to anyone in the town that wants it. Volunteers come from every church in town to help out. This is the verb love. It is the act of loving one another.

Why would Jesus tell the disciples on his last night with them that they needed to love another? Why did the apostle Paul say in First Corinthians the “greatest of these is love?” When difficult times come we sometimes need someone to help us cry. When good times come we need to celebrate with people who actually care about our joy.

In his excellent book, The Mark of a Christian, Francis Schaeffer writes, “All men bear the image of God. They have value, not because they are redeemed, but because they are God’s creation in God’s image. Modern man, who has rejected this, has no clue as to who he is, and because of this he can find no real value for himself or for other men. Hence, he downgrades the value of other men and produces the horrible thing we face today — a sick culture in which men treat men as inhuman, as machines. As Christians, however, we know the value of men. All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost.”

Love is a verb. We are to love one another but that doesn’t mean that we are to ignore loving even non-believers. That church in New York state that did the Thanksgiving dinner for the town didn’t ask to see the baptismal certificate of the people attending. In fact, the posters said that it was a dinner “for people who just want to be with people.” It was done because they knew the value of mankind. If mankind was worth Christ dying for then they are worth our nonjudgmental love.

We are now in our sixth Sunday after Easter. One of the greatest lessons that can extract from our various readings and our Lenten walk with Jesus toward the cross and his resurrection is that there is no greater love than a man lay down his life for his brother. Look back at where we started on Ash Wednesday and where we are today in our spiritual lives. You have come a long way but now it is time to put your faith into action. Begin that action by focusing on an action verb. We are to love one another. Are you ready to love one another? The great love journey begins now.

Amen.