Catch A Glimpse
October 23, 2005
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" and "You shall love your neighbour as yourself."
Well, I thought, when I read this, at last a Scripture passage that should be easy to preach about. No convoluted language. Everyone knows it. What could be easier?
Well, we all know that pride and over-confidence come before a fall and they surely did this week! There’s nothing easy about this Scripture.
This commandment asks of us that we love with absolutely every fibre of our being. It demands no partial commitment. God demands our ALL! That’s where it becomes so hard – because I know that I often fail to meet God’s expectations in this department.
And I ask myself how I can preach to you about something I don’t always do myself. But then, I realize that almost every Sunday, I speak about things that I struggle with and it is the struggle and the trying that we come closest to the expectation.
We come to a better understanding of Scripture when we consider the context in which it was first written.
In this passage, Jesus has been verbally sparring with the Sadducees. Now it is the turn of the Pharisees – long-time opponents and critics of Jesus.
This is his final confrontation with them.
Argument and debate were cornerstones of Jewish theological reflection and development. There were two ways to win:
or
In this final conversation, Jesus manages to do both.
First, he correctly answers the question regarding the greatest commandment and then, before the Pharisees can come up with something else, he confounds them with a question of his own – one about David’s relationship to the Lord.
It’s one that leaves the Pharisees speechless. They have no retort to make.
We, too, can admit to being confounded by Jesus’ question. But we have no such problem with his answer to the first question – at leaqst on the surfac3e. But jesus changes the traditional answer by combining two responses.
The love of God is the foundation and framework of our life of faith. But a life of faith does not end there. Love of God is inseparably united with love of neighbour and, indeed, the reality of our love for God is expressed in the love we show and give our neighbour.
What a challenge that can be.
If you love God, you must also love your neighbour.
Do you love God? Yes, of course.
Do you love your neighbour? Well …………sometimes.
It’s easy when the neighbour is someone with whom you share a common interest – a farmer down the road who shares your concern for falling meat prices and rising feed costs, or someone who has children the age of your own, or who attends the same church or social group.
Love my neighbour? –no problem!
BUT……
CAN you still love your neighbour?
WILL you still love your neighbour?
There’s an old Peanuts comic strip in which Charlie Brown says to one of the other kids: "I love mankind! Its people I can’t stand."
I think we often find ourselves thinking like Charlie Brown.
Christ asks of us things which appear on the surface to be simple, but which require of us a level of commitment which we must work very hard to achieve.
Sometimes it is easier to love the neighbour on the other side of the world than the one who is nearby. At other times, when disaster strikes and help is needed, we tend to help those with whom we can more easily relate. That has been most clearly evident in the response to the earthquake in Pakistan. The amount of aid pledged has been a fraction of that pledged to the U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina. We might ask ourselves why. Are we on disaster overload or are the Pakistanis just too far away?
Whoever and wherever our neighbour may be, God asks us to love them - love them as we love ourselves – love them because that is a part of our loving God.
There is a story about the fourth evangelist – St. John.
Among the twelve disciples, John alone is said to have lived into old age. He lived in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor – what is now known as Turkey. In his later years not only his body, but his mind, became somewhat enfeebled. The result of this was that John’s ability to think and express himself became ever more limited, until finally he could say only a few words, indeed only a single expression – which he would repeat over and over again.
One may imagine the esteem and reverence accorded this last surviving apostle of our Lord. On the Lord’s Day, he would be carried into the midst of the congregation that had assembled for worship. The people would fall silent to hear his words. Then the old man would open his mouth. This is what the aged apostle would say:
"My children, love one another. My children, love one another. My children, love one another."
Over and over again, just that - "My children, love one another."
It’s not always easy. Sometimes it may seem impossible to love our neighbour as ourselves, but that is God’s vision, God’s dream for the world. Catch a glimpse of what our world could be like if we all loved one another. Catch the dream and keep on trying to achieve it.
Don’t worry about whether you can or cannot love every one. Just do your best, remembering always that if you do your best, and if you do your best, and you do your best, and I do my best, God’s love through us will reach every neighbour, every neighbourhood in this vast and complicated world of ours.
It can happen.
It will happen.
Catch a glimpse of the promise. Dream – and live that dream and it will become a reality.
God’s love will make it so.
Thanks be to God.
Amen