Katie Derksen
Last week, Andy Brubacher Kaethler talked to us about how sometimes the tools of one generation might not be suitable for the next generation, even to do the same sort of task. This week, I want to talk to you about a tool that never wears out, never becomes the tool of one specific generation over another. It gets used again and again, down through generation after generation. It remains the same, yet how we perceive it being played out or used can change. Sometimes it gets a bit tarnished, or even abused, but at it's centre it remains the same. It is central to all human beings, of all ages, of all places. What is this tool? In a word: love.
I've talked a lot about love over the last couple of years, and sometimes I feel that I sound like a broken record. Today, though, I get to back up all this love-talk. Today we hear a Pharisee ask a question to trick Jesus, and Jesus, as usual, takes the question and turns it into a chance to teach not only the people in that audience, but people down through the ages, including us here today, about what should be truly important in our lives. About what we should really focus on. And that, in a word, is love.
Jesus told this lawyer something that we've all heard a gazillion times since then, and have seen on literature or posters, or sung in songs. He tells the man: "You should 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 neighbour as yourself" (Matthew 22:37-39).
Jesus boils down the 613 laws that were laid out for the Israelites into two: love God, and love your neighbour. These two laws can be seen as the central message of the Gospel, what we should have written down on our hearts. And even these two laws could be boiled down further, into one word. And what's that word? You guessed it, "love."
One Word to Rule Us - Part One
One word to rule our hearts, our lives, and our faiths. One simple, short word. And yet, what's in that word? We see it in many places, we each long for it, or clasp it tightly when we get it, and it's knit so thoroughly into our beings that sometimes we forget to actually look at it. No matter how tight the weave, individual threads are still what make up the cloth: and it's the same with us. No matter who we are, we're still made up of individual concepts, longings, and needs, which combine to make a whole person.
There are many different words that could be said to be a part of the word "love." I'm sure that most of us are familiar with the fact that the Greeks had four different words for love, which C.S. Lewis translated into affection, friendship, eros (being "in love"), and charity, in his book "The Four Loves." Besides these four Greek concepts of love, there are other words, or other concepts, that we could also use to talk about love, and we'll get into those a bit later. Many of the different aspects of love exist in each of us, to some degree or other. Each of us yearns for love, in one or more of its many forms. However, today we heard Greer read for us the words of Jesus as he tells us that the first thing in our lives - not just a primary thing, or something of great importance, but The First Thing in our lives, is to be love for God. Love for God that comes out of our entire being, all our heart, all our mind, all our soul, and, if we read the corresponding passage in Luke (Luke 10:27), all our strength. This is no idle, easy love.
There are lots of things about our faith that don't come easy, and sometimes these things are the most basic things we could do, but they're a struggle nonetheless. We'd certainly like it if these things came naturally, or easily, but sometimes they just plain don't. And sometimes love, especially an active love of God, is one of those things that doesn't come easy. Sure, we all love God, but how do we show that in our daily lives? What things do we do each day that communicate to God how in love with God we are?
We're called to love God with everything that we are: All aspects of our humanity are to share in this love. Love is not left in the realm of the emotions, nor of the physical. Our intellect, our bodies, our very souls are to share in this love, and are to be active in it. This is the greatest commandment that God gave to us, as told to the Israelites by Moses, and stated as being the greatest of all the commandments by Jesus himself.
One Word - Part Two
I know that we've heard before about how we can love God with all that we are, and so I want to move on: We should also spend some time looking at some aspects of the next part of what Jesus said to the lawyer, and I think that this law flows from the love of God that we are called to have. The second greatest commandment is that we love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
As I said, this commandment was told to God's people long before Jesus got on the scene. We heard this law stated in the Leviticus passage that Greer read for us, from a part in the Bible when God is speaking directly to Moses. It comes at the end of a list of "do not" comments, and yet it is stated in the positive. God did not choose to say "do not hate your neighbour," or some other such negatively-stated comment, but God chose to say "you shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18), in the same way that the Golden Rule is stated positively as opposed to negatively. This positive emphasis changes the meaning of what we're told, and effects how we see it. Instead of being able to set a boundary by a (sometimes) more simple "do not," we are left to determine what is all included in the positive statement.
As I read one commentator say, during my research on the Leviticus passage: "Along with Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Leviticus 19:18 is quoted by Jesus as the interpretation of the whole will of God... Love of God and love of neighbour form the central way; the negatives of the Law are... never to be seen alone or apart from a relation to this centre... The negatives are there for the sake of the positive of love, without which they are incomplete" (The Layman's Bible Commentary, volume 4, Balmer H. Kelly, editor. John Knox Press, Richmond, Virginia, p 60).
Our lives are to be dictated by these two positive commands. Our love of God should be such that it extends itself into a love of our neighbours. In a way, the one love springs from the other. If we truly love God, how can we help but love our neighbours? After all, they were also created by the God we love, and are also cared for and watched over by that same God.
Not only did God tell us to love our neighbours, God also gave us some guidelines as to what should go into our neighbourly love. If we look just a little earlier in the Leviticus passage, we can hear God tell Moses and the Israelites a few other things that should enter into their relationship with their neighbours. God says: "You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour... You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin: you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Leviticus 19:15-18).
That's some pretty thought provoking stuff right there. For one thing, we live in a world where our neighbours business is his or her own, and we don't have much to do with it. And here, we're called to judge and rebuke our neighbour, to get right into their lives! True, the people to whom this was originally told lived in a fairly tight-knit community, where the odds of their neighbour being of the same faith and the same clan were very good. But we're all familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus blows the more narrow concept of neighbour out of the water, and tells us that everyone is our neighbour. So, in the light of Jesus, and in the light of this diverse world that we live in, how can we hear these words from Leviticus and see them as having any sort of meaning for us today?
To simplify things, let's say that we can go about this loving and judging of our neighbours in two ways: One: We can say that our neighbour's life is totally our business, and that we have every Godly right to be in that life, and to be administering rebukes and criticisms. We focus mainly on that aspect of love. Or, two: We love our neighbours simply because they exist, and because God created them and put them in our lives for some reason. Out of this love, we are genuinely concerned for them, and for the many different aspects of their lives. Because of that, we may sometimes be called to remind people of things they seem to have forgotten, or to question the path they're walking down, supporting and encouraging them the entire time. Most likely, we would expect the same from them. This almost changes the word "judge" to the idea of "holding another accountable," changing the spirit in which things are done. I think that most people would agree that the second way of following God's words to Moses sounds more reasonable, and more in the spirit of a loving, gracious God, and I cannot imagine that God intended God's people to communicate the rebuking aspect of love more than the other, more positive aspects of love.
We are called to exist in the world out of the fact that God is the Lord of the earth and of our lives, and that God has called us all to love each other. We hear Jesus say in Matthew that first, we should love God. Our love of God, though, is followed promptly by a call to love our neighbour. And Jesus goes beyond thinking of our neighbour as being simply the person who lives next to us, or even on the same block. He extends the definition of neighbour to include the people we pass on the street, and people around the world.
If we were to follow the command to love our neighbours as ourselves to this degree, could you imagine what the world could look like? That's a whole lotta love going around!!
Another key to the judgement or accountability that we are called to in this passage is justice. We are called to judge things justly, and to do our best not to show favour one way or the other. It's not always easy to do things in a just manner - sometimes our emotions or our biases creep in, or down right take over, and we land up acting or judging negatively. However, here we run into the first, and greatest commandment again. First, before absolutely anything else, we need to love God with all that we are. That should steer our actions, and our judgements.
Examples of Loving
Aside from these two passages that talk about loving our neighbours and loving God, we also heard a part of a letter today, a letter written to some new Christians in a place called Thessalonica. In it, we see an example of some people who loved God first, and out of that love, loved their neighbours. True, Paul, Silvanus and Timothy chose to go out and find those neighbours, but they loved them nonetheless.
Paul and his fellow ministers came to Thessalonica from Philippi, where they had been treated roughly. Despite that they carried on, secure in their love of God, and in the calling they felt from God. Paul even uses the word "courageous" to describe their presence in Thessalonica. The part of the letter that we heard today seems to be a defence or an explanation of the actions of Paul and his friends: it seems that they may have been slandered by some people as having left Thessalonica in a rush, leaving the newly-converted Christians on their own, after having possibly acted out of self interest while being there. Paul explains his actions, and reminds the Thessalonians of the love and kinship he and his friends feel towards them.
At one point, Paul states that "... so deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become dear to us" (1 Thessalonians 2:8), and in the verses before, he states some of the ways in which they showed their love and consideration for them. They did not seek to flatter, or to gain money or material goods, or to seek praise. They were gentle, and spoke the truth. They state more than once that they were there on God's behalf, out of the calling that they felt God had placed on their lives, and not there for selfish gain.
Paul and his fellow ministers were ambassadors of God, wherever they went. They treated those they met with love, a love that was warm and caring, and with a love that sometimes also included rebukes and reminders to follow God's path, not a path laid out by other sinners. We, too, are called to be ambassadors of God, to live our lives out of love for God, and love for all those that we meet.
Someone recently directed my attention to a book called "The Practice of the Presence of God," a book by and about a monk named Brother Lawrence. Apparently, Brother Lawrence lived a life that got the attention of anyone that met him. He seemed happy and content, whatever he was doing. He resisted having a book written about him for quite some time, but eventually decided that he could share his "secret," since it would help others. And what was the thing that made this man stand out? He chose that all of his actions would be done as a sign of his love for God. Even doing chores around the monastery that he didn't like, he still found a way to be happy, knowing that he did it out of love for his God. He called it "practising the presence of God in one single act that does not end" - whatever he was doing, it had the common thread of loving, praising and adoring God.
This way of life doesn't come easy to most of us. We need to train ourselves into it, to work hard at it. However, if we could do it, could you imagine what the world would look like? If just one man living his life this way had such a profound impact on those who knew him and have read about him, could you imagine what kind of impact ten, twenty, or even a hundred people living like this could have? We could change the world!
Today, we've looked at some aspects of the two greatest commandments that God ever laid for us: that we first love God with all that we are, and that secondly, we love our neighbours as we would love ourselves. Tying these two commandments together is one word: love. And yet, it is no simple word. In the word "love" are also contained the concepts of vulnerability, courage, challenge, trust, justice, peace, selflessness, respect of self and of others, the ability to receive from those we love, and more! Love is often the theme in movies, novels, advice columns and dating books, non-fiction, theology books, advertising schemes, our daily conversations and so much more. We are surrounded by it, and if we are not experiencing it, we yearn for it with all that we are. As Christians, though, we are called to a higher love, to yearn with all that we are to better direct our love to God, as Brother Lawrence and Paul both did.
Paul's love for God compelled him into action, and demanded that he love others. He even went out of his way to find people to love!! We may not all be called to go around the world and find people to love, but there are many people in our midst who could use loving, and caring for. Open your eyes and hearts to those that surround you, those that you pass on the street. Who will you encounter today, or tomorrow, or the day after, that you are called to show love towards? How can you actively love God with all that you are? This is my prayer for all of us, that we may learn to live out these two great commandments, with each breath, and in each moment. Amen.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.