MATTHEW 22:34-46

[34] But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

[35] And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

[36] “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”

[37] And 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.

[38] This is the great and first commandment.

[39] And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

[40] On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

[41] Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question,

[42] saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” [43] He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

[44] “‘The Lord said to my Lord,

            “Sit at my right hand,

            until I put your enemies under your feet”’?

[45] If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

[46] And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

While on the surface these verses seem very straightforward, there is much going on beneath them.  When talking about a word like “Love” it is very easy to put things into ethical ideals and label them right or wrong instead of focusing on the feelings and even the responsibility of the word.  I am going to take a few minutes and look at what Jesus is saying to us, and our responsibility of what Jesus is telling us.

While trying to trick Jesus a lawyer asked him to tell us what that the greatest commandment is.  As we just heard we are told that we shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and with all your mind.  These are words that most of us have heard many times in our lives, or variations of them.  Does anyone remember the quote from 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13?  “But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Or John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, He gave his only begotten son.”  And the list goes on and on.

But, what does it mean to really love God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind?  I think this is the ideal that we should all try to reach.  Lets look at these three aspect of how we are to love God.

I will start with the seemingly easiest part to understand, loving God with all your mind.  I feel that this is the easiest to, pardon the pun, wrap our minds around.  Most of the time we know when we are thinking about God.  I don’t think this means that we are always in a loving frame of mind, and while that is part of it, I think it is also when we are angry at God. All these times, when we are praising God, questioning, angry, upset, thankful, happy, and any other time you are conversing with God, to me what is underneath all of these emotions is love.  If we didn’t truly love God, we wouldn’t take the time to let God know any of our feelings.

This is what I feel means to love God with all you mind.  You can do it consciously, or not; out loud, or not; alone or with a group of people.  The point is that by letting God be part of your thinking all the time is showing your love for God.  I sometimes equate this to our praying that is thought out and purposeful, which happens a lot on Sunday services and Holidays, in our daily prayer time, or whenever we are going to God with a specific reason.

Loving God with all your heart is a little harder to put into words.  What does it mean to love God with your heart?  Well to me it is when I see something that lifts me up and I am thankful.  As you might have figured out from me I love animals and nature.  My heart swells when I glimpse wild animals.  I love the sound of children laughing.  To me loving God with your all your heart isn’t just loving God but having a heart of thanksgiving for all we have been given.  I equate this with the prayers that we sometime offer without preparation, like when we spontaneously thank God for something in the moment.

Loving God with all your soul is even harder to define.  To me this is the unknown love that we have for God.  It can be during that point where you have cried all the tears you have, and find that moment of calm afterword.  It can be the feeling of peace that you have standing in a rainstorm, or looking at the freshness of a new snowfall.  I would equate this with prayers that some people might not see as prayers.  To me this includes praying through singing or listening to music, praying through dance or swaying to the music, praying through stillness, or praying in your own special way, whatever it is.

What this all means is that Jesus is telling us that God wants us to love him with our entire being.  Whether you agree with my interpretations or not, what is important is that we take the time to acknowledge how we do love God in our daily lives.  Take stock in your habits, choices, and wants.  See if God is a part of everything you do, or if there is room for you to ask God to be there.  I believe this is the heart of these verses; this is the ideal that we as Christians should strive for.

If you ask most any Christian they will tell you that one of the biggest parts of being a Christian is our love.  One of my favorite hymns proclaims that “They will know we are Christians by our love”.  I have just talked about loving God, but the next commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.

I want to tell you two quick stories, one showing some of the worst and one some of the best that neighbors have to offer.  The first is a story of a man who collapsed in front of a bar.  There was surveillance video that saw this.  The video also captured over fifty people who walked by him, some stepping over him, and even one couple taking his picture.  Many of the people were laughing at the seemingly drunk man; coming to that wrong conclusion because he had collapsed in front of the bar.  No one stopped to see if he was ok, or at least call someone to help.  The man, who wasn’t drunk, but sick, ended up dying and the paramedics felt that if one of these people who had walked by called for help, they might have gotten to him in time.

This is an extreme example, but how many times do you see a car broken down on the side of the highway and just drive by?  I know it isn’t wise in this day and age to stop, especially if you are alone, but do you call the police to let them know that someone is in trouble?  Maybe just that act will help someone more than you will ever know.

I don’t know how many of you heard the story of the bombing in Egypt on January first of this year.  While Christians were celebrating the first mass of the year, a car bomb went off, killing 23 of them and wounding 96 others.  What wasn’t among most of the media was that among the almost 100 people wounded were many Muslims that were there to try and protect the Christian worshipers. 

There were bomb threats on that particular church for over a month and the Muslims who worshiped a couple of blocks away would, after their morning prayers, walk down to the Christian church.  In what I would call an amazing show of love for their neighbors, the Muslims would hold hands and form a human chain around the church, hoping to stop any violence toward the Christians and allow them to worship God.  Many of the Muslims there suffered bodily harm in showing love for their neighbors.

While they are really different stories and there are many lessons we can get from them, I think the biggest question is “Who are our neighbors?”  It is real easy to love those who are like us, even when we don’t always agree.  Who is your neighbor?  Is it the people beside you where you sit in church?  Is it the people who live near you?  Is it the people in your country?  Could it maybe be people whom you will never meet? 

As people we are real quick to put other into categories:  white, black or brown, rich or poor, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, Christian or Jewish, or Muslim.  How quick are we to put people into the category of neighbor?  This is what I believe is the heart of Jesus telling us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  I believe that Jesus is telling us that we are to love everyone we meet as we love ourselves.

This raises another problem, what if we don’t really love ourselves?  I think this is where some of the problems that we often face come from.  People who don’t really love themselves have always looked for ways to make themselves feel better by belittling others.  Others have turned violence to show how strong they are. People have self-esteem problems.  Many people don’t like who they are, or at least they don’t like parts of who they are, never mind love themselves.  The list goes on and on and on. 

We need to know that we are here because God loves us.  If we can hold onto that, we should be able to know how special we are and be able to love ourselves.  Think about that, no matter what we have done in our lives, God loves us.  There is only one of each of us.  There is only one you, and you, and you.  That makes you special and worthy of love, even from yourself.

We are told by God, through Jesus Christ, that we need to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves because love is the greatest of the commandments.   These are all great and wonderful on this level alone, but here is the greatness that I find here.  God isn’t asking us to do something that we are not capable of.  It isn’t something that we haven’t experienced.  God has given us the blueprint.  God has loved us each fully first.  God has shown us that love is great and all powerful.  All we have to do is to imitate what we have seen.

It is up to us to decide what we do from here.  Do we leave here and continue to love God as we have, no matter what level that is, or do we find ways to love God more?  Do we hide our love for God, or do we proclaim it in all we do?  Do we offer the hand of neighborly love to all who need it, or just when it is convent for us?  Will people know we are Christians by our love, or is that just a song we sing? 

These are hard questions with even harder answers, but I believe if we can follow the Greatest Commandment of love, we will be better people.  We will be able to help others find their greatness, and the whole world will become a better place. 

Please join me in prayer,

Dear great, loving, holy God, we come to you as people who love you.  We ask your help in learning to love better.  We know that love will overcome all kinds of inequities in the world if we just let love shine; that love will heal all kinds of hurt, and that love will unite us all as neighbors.  We thank you for your love of us as we strive to be the people that you know we can be.  In the name of Jesus Christ, who you gave to us out of your love for us, we pray, Amen.

Lawrence Walker, Student Minister

October 23, 2011