You Shall Love

You Shall Love

Matthew 22:36-40

Here’s an interesting question:  did Jesus think he was starting a new religion or did he think he was reforming Judaism?  The answer is more complicated than you may think.  John the Baptist adapted purification rites that would normally have taken place in the temple and been presided over by priests.  He gave us baptism by a wild eyed, locust eater in the River Jordan.  Jesus continued that tradition, healing people and teaching people and preaching to people (a rabbi’s work), all the while almost never setting foot in a temple or synagogue (except to nearly get thrown off a cliff after preaching in one or showing up in the temple to kick over the money changer’s tables.)

All of that might look like something new is starting.  Honestly, though, if we were more steeped in Judaism, it would likely look much more like something old is being restored or recovered.    Remember, Judaism existed for centuries before a temple was built.  Our ancestors in faith lived together for centuries without a king.  Before God was relegated to designated sacred spaces only, God went wherever the people went.  The Ark of the Covenant reminded them of this truth.  Before the faith became institutionalized, all ground was sacred ground.  God could turn up anywhere.

All of this comes up for me when I officiate at a baptism or a wedding—two of my favorite things to do.  Here is a wonderful new baby, full of life and promise, and here are the loving family members who feel whole when they look into that baby’s eyes. I get to feel the peace that they feel when I hold that baby for just a moment and look into those eyes.  Or, in a wedding, I stand and look into the eyes of a couple who have found one another and discovered one of the greatest gifts of this life:  someone to love who loves them back.  Again, there is peace and wholeness and gratitude in the room, for a moment.  I get to be a part of that joy.  In either case, what a great job!

The moments that usually surround a baptism or a wedding are encounters with people, who, in their own words, find a way to say to me, “You know, I’m not a ‘religious’ person, but…” Then, they say how much they are looking forward to the baptism and what a gift this child has been.  Or, after the fact, they say, “You know, I’m not a religious person but…you made this more meaningful or less painful than I thought it was going to be!”  (Do you remember when George W. Bush talked about “the soft bigotry  of low expectations?”  “Less painful” is a really low bar!)

What I always want to say to those people (and sometimes do say) is that what matters to me is something deeper than what passes for “churchy” or “religious” stuff.  What matters to me is the deeply human and very best part of us that can be caught off guard and pause and stare silently in the face of the sacred in our midst.  Of course that “sacred” moment might involve a stained glass window or a particular hymn every now and then, particularly if I actually spend time in places where such things are given a chance.  However, more often than not, it happens not in a church but in connection to another person or in connection to the amazing world around us.  God can be present anywhere, in the midst of anything.  The question is whether will we be paying enough attention to notice it.  Will we look carefully enough to see God’s face in the face of a child? Will we notice God’s presence in a sunset or in the flight of an eagle or in the unbelievable presence of wildflowers? Will we recognize that God is at work when people forgive one another, when we comfort one another, when we feed the hungry and visit the lonely and the sick?

Hear what I am saying…if you want to find God in this sometimes seemingly God-forsaken world, go to places where compassion is made flesh, where old things are suddenly being made new and given a new life, where love is being brought to life.  By all means, come to church, too.  Good things—God filled things—do happen here—sometimes as much in spite of our efforts as because of them.  Don’t make the mistake though of limiting God’s options or putting God in a box.  

So, I end up saying to the “non-religious” folks, “If your heart beats faster when you see that child or that loving couple making their commitment to one another or in any other moment of depth and wholeness in life, then we are in this search and in this life together.”  You can be a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian or a Buddhist or name any other tradition.  When we point together at whatever has moved us and we stand shoulder-shoulder and slack-jawed, our tradition and the language we use to describe what we are seeing matters far less than the fact that we are all seeing it and feeling it together.  It doesn’t matter what tribe we come from.  What matters is our shared ability to notice in that moment that there is something more, something more profound, something more awesome, something more powerful at work in this life than we ever imagined.  Together, we are moved.  Together, we are inspired—to be grateful, to be humbled, to be a little more loving so that we can participate in that something more, ourselves.

All of this leads us into our text.  The Pharisees see that Jesus has just stumped the Sadducees, the other religious experts.  So, one of the Pharisees steps up to take a swing at tripping Jesus up.  He asks Jesus a question:  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  Now, you should know that the word translated as teacher, here, is the word “rabbi.”  Simply by calling him a rabbi, the Pharisee is pointing out that Jesus isn’t one.   However, take things a step further and consider the question:  “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?”  This is akin to asking a parent which of their children they love the most.  The choice is impossible because you love each in their own way and they all matter.  If you pick one, it would certainly seem that you are rejecting the others, which in the case of the law, would be a license for the Pharisees to go on the attack against Jesus.

Instead of saying that “Having no other gods”is more important than “Honoring your mother and father, (“What you don’t think people should love their mothers and their fathers, Jesus?”), Jesus says this:  “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.”  Here’s the thing, though, that we may not know.  Jesus didn’t make these words up.  This is straight out of the very heart of Judaism, from the sixth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.  At this point, Jesus is not outlining a new tradition.  He is recovering one that he feels has been lost.  He’s quoting scripture.

What would it mean to love God? It would mean knowing that God is the source of this amazing world—not in the sense that the creation story is a video tape of the world’s birth but in the sense that there is something, rather than nothing, and that the something that “is” can be unspeakably beautiful.  It would mean knowing that the same God who is the source of all that is also happens to know you and love you anyway.  What a miracle!  It would mean knowing that life is better when I try to keep God’s presence at the center of my universe rather than thinking that I, myself, am the center of the universe.  We love God when we are humble, when we are grateful and when we walk in this world as if the whole blooming universe is one big cathedral.

The is a voice that is woven through the Hebrew Scriptures, sometimes heard in Deuteronomy, sometimes heard in the Book of Job or in the poetry of the Psalms or in the cries of the prophets who keep urging us to just love God!  That voice in the conversation about God is all-too-often drowned out by the voices who want to talk about the temple or the rules or the latest king.  I think a huge part of Jesus’ project was to remind people of that earlier voice, to speak again in that voice, to say to the people in his world and to say to us, “Just love God…Just love God…Just love God—this what matters most.”

Except… Jesus doesn’t stop there.  He says, “And a second is like it:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  (At this point, I’m pretty sure that the Pharisee was ready to cry foul:  “Hold it, Jesus, I asked for one law and now you’ve given us two!”)  In fact, I think that Jesus is speaking about two sides of the same coin—two inseparable, essential aspects of a lived faith:  a love of God and a love of human beings.  Jesus’ message is that either love without the other is simply not enough.

Now, this still may not tell us whether Jesus was starting something new or recovering something very old.  The truth is that loving God and loving other human beings had been a part of the conversation about faith from the beginning.  In particular, the prophets of old, just like the best of the prophets up to our day, shined brightest when they pointed out the inconsistencies and outright hypocrisy of professing faith in God and then demeaning human beings.  You don’t get to cheat people in the marketplace and count yourself on “Team God.”  You don’t get to mistreat the widows or the poor or the sick and think you’re God’s gift to human beings.  Of course, the prophets were often battling the religious authorities on such points because the down and out were thought by those in power to be on the outs precisely because God was punishing them.  It was the prophet’s task to point out that the poor might be poor because the rich made them that way or that the sick might just need a spoon full of compassion more than another dose of shame and judgment.

What I would challenge us all to consider is that as much as anything, Jesus is taking ancient truths here and expanding the boundaries to which those truths apply.  We are to love God wherever we are going and whatever we are doing.  In my Calvinist tradition, the word was that whatever we are doing, we should do it to the glory of God.  If you are preaching, do it in a way which glorifies God, not yourself.  If you are sweeping, sweep in a way (carefully and thoroughly and peacefully) that glorifies God.  Allow God’s loving presence and your desire to love God back to transform your whole way of being in this world.  

And…allow God’s loving presence and your desire to love God back to shape how you treat other human beings.  Just as God’s loving presence might have been thought to be limited to designated holy places, our love for our fellow human beings can easily be limited to the people we like or the people who are like us.  Jesus says that we should be broader than that, that we should be better than that, that we should be more inclusive than that.  Don’t limit God’s presence and don’t limit who is worth loving.  The challenge is to love your neighbor and the secret is…whoever is standing in front of you is your neighbor. Love that person!

God is everywhere.  Every person is a child of God.  Live like you believe that with all your heart and soul and mind.  Love differently.  Live differently.  Therein lies the revolution…