“FOR THE LOVE OF GOD”
A sermon preached by:
The Rev. Joshua D. Walters on
Sunday, October 23, 2011
19 Sunday after Pentecost
+Matthew 22:34-46
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, `You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Reading the Gospel lesson this week prompted me to consider: what are the things that I love? Well, I love reading, I love taco salad, I love God, I love this faith community, I love beer, I love coffee, I love New York City, I love my family, I love cocktails and canapés, I love BBQ, I love apple pie, I love my wife, I love hiking, I love music, I love my don, I love flowers, I love my children, I love being a minister, I love chili with all the fixin’s, I love my friends, I love to laugh and to make others laugh as well, I love my Subaru station wagon, I love…. How often do you say those sorts of things? What is love and what does it mean to us? What do you love? Is your listing of like, loves and passions, mish-mash like mine?
When we are so surrounded by constant professions of that one four-letter word, love, what sort of premium do we place on the love that distinguishes the feelings which we have for our HIGHEST loves from the more mundane loves, or rather appreciations? It is a tricky thing for those of us for whom English is our primary language. So again, what do you love? Also, whom do you love?
In the time of Jesus there were many “love” words that were compiled and all get mixed into this one word. This list includes: “Eros” for passionate sexual love; there is “philios” for family, friendship, or love of community. But what love in the Christian context is “agape” self-sacrificing love. It is the type of love that gives up one’s life for a friend, the type of love that gives everything for the sake of the community, the type of love shown to us in the life of Jesus. It is not, as I’ve said before, the pink fluffy love of Valentine’s Day; honeymoons; family reunions; or getting together with your buddies from college. But that is only part of the lesson, where we are constantly learning how to balance and sort-out our various loves.
The other matter that Jesus is addressing in our Gospel lesson is the totality with which our Faith in Jesus Christ is an all-encompassing faith; whereby, Love of God means loving our neighbor, loving our neighbor meansloving ourselves; loving ourselves means loving the God who created us. When you think about it, to be fullyalive in God we must maintain a level of concern for all that surrounds us—within, without and above. Even though Jesus says that these are the two Greatest Commandments--i.e. loving God and loving our Neighbor--there is also an implied third love: yourself.
The resulting image of what true faith in Jesus Christ truly looks like is of a Venn diagram of faith; where in we create that unifying image of a holistic Love, it requires a faithful balance of a higher power, right relationship within our communities, and a right relationship within. We can't love God and hate our neighbors; we can't love our neighbors and hate ourselves; we can’t love God and hate ourselves.
Loving God, for the most part, tends to be the easy part of this three-sided equation. The challenging part is how do we love our neighbors as much as we love God? How do we love the people we find it hardest to love; After all, sometimes our neighbors can also be our enemies. That is the great call of God. To intentionally exercise care and concern—to go out or our way—to see that the needs of our neighbors are cared for—even to the point of gall-swallowing skepticism of helping those whom we cannot stand to care for.
During my younger years, unlike most of my peers, I never wandered far from the church; but I certainly did a lot of questioning and searching. I questioned the ritual. I questioned sermons. I questioned the politics. I questioned the relevance of the text that seemed to conflict with our modern understanding. But then, one Sunday morning it clicked. I always went to the later, 11:15am, service primarily because it meant I could sleep-in and still not have to be awake before 10am. That service was a traditional Rite I service with the whole bit: prayer for humble access, prayer for all sorts and conditions, Thees and Thous, and sweeping up crumbs under the Lords Table--but there was also the weekly recitation of this Gospel lesson, at least the amended version of Jesus' Summary of the Law. And all of a sudden--for all my questioning and struggles, the timelessness of this ancient text was revealed in the total summary of Loving God and Loving my Neighbor as myself; on these two laws hang ALL the Laws and the Prophets. Quite honestly it was stupefying. EVERYTHING that we have been taught, all scripture, all Dogma, all the Catechism which I had memorized as a child--ALL of it distilled down to Loving God and Loving our neighbors as ourselves.
So what do we do with this knowledge? What do we do with this awareness of this Great Sacrificial Love that surpasses all understanding? which loved us so much. We help the poor. We comfort the sick. Love, from that which He’s already given us. We share it. We give it away. We sacrifice and give back pieces of that loveWe give back a piece of the token of God’s
I was once told that we give to God until it hurts, or at least until we recognize that sacrifice. It's the type and model perfected by saints, martyrs, regular folks in the pews, and typified by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. While we love so many things in our life, bear in mind the Greater Loves of God. Show that love. Share it.
Give it away!
AMEN
 |  |