The Greatest Commandment - Love with whole self
The Rev. Dr. Seth Thomas
Reorientation • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Matthew 22:34-40
The New Revised Standard Version The Greatest Commandment
The Greatest Commandment
(Mk 12:28–34; Lk 10:25–28)
34 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 commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 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 greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Last week, we encountered Jesus and the Pharisees as they discussed the role of allegiance to Caesar vs. faithfulness to God. Like a reporter for the gossip column or two politicians sparring in a debate, the Pharisees are digging up dirt and trying to get Jesus to trip up.
When we live in the way of God’s freedom, it runs against the grain of common wisdom and popular norms. While the spirit of the time may push us to become entrenched in our ways, the Spirit of God invites us to tear down walls that divide. While the spirit of the age pushes us to claim our superiority and achieve certainty, the Spirit of God calls us to unity with one another, drawing closer into relationship with neighbor, self, and the Holy One.
The questions of the Pharisees get at the heart of what it means to be committed and fully given to God in all our ways. Last week, it was money. This week, it’s our whole selves.
Alright, let’s take a few minutes to talk or journal about this. Turn and talk with your neighbor or, if you’re at home or feeling introverted, take a moment to doodle or write about this: How do you love with your heart? How do you love with your soul? How do you love with your mind?
Talk to your neighbor — what are ways you understand loving with your heart, your soul, your mind?
Turn, and let’s take 5 minutes to discuss this and come up with some ideas.
What kinds of things did we come up?
How do we love with our hearts?
How do we love with our souls?
How do we love with our minds?
Ok. Now, let’s turn again and consider…who is our neighbor?
If we are to love our neighbor as our self, who is your neighbor?
Lastly, and we might overlook this, how do we love ourselves? If we are to love our neighbor as we love ourself, then it presupposes that we have to understand what it means to love ourselves.
So, share with your partner or group…what does it mean to love yourself?
Many of you know that Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers, is one of my heroes. I think, in a big way, that he has had such influence on me because he taught, through his simple way, how to love well. And specifically, he taught me how to love myself. To remember that we each are special and lovely, just as we are.
Mister Rogers was echoing the things he learned from Jesus — that our neighbors are worthy of love just as they are. The lesson is profoundly simple: Love with your whole self. Love God. Love Neighbor. Love Self. Do this, and everything else comes into alignment. Neglect this, even one category, and we fall out of balance.
This bears repeating: Jesus’ answer to the expert in the law, about the greatest commandment, is remarkably simple: Love with your whole self.
Any questions? Do we all have this locked in?
Then why is it so difficult to live it out practically?
We find that the reason it is so difficult is that we struggle to accept the nature of who our neighbor is, who the one we are called to love is. In the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus is asked this question by the expert in the law, he answers similarly — love God, love neighbor. And then the questioner asks a follow up question — who is my neighbor?
This, of course, leads Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. A story about people from different cultural and social groups, transcending the boundaries of their day, to offer care and healing to the one who is in great need.
We, too, are asking this question, aren’t we: who is my neighbor? If we are to love God and neighbor, we have to recognize our neighbor AND see the face of God in them. But we are wont to be picky about who our neighbors are. We are selective with how we choose to see God’s face and who we see it in.
Think really practically for a moment about loving our neighbors.
Who is your neighbor?
This week, I’ve found that as I’ve reflected on this text, I’m drawn to wondering at these neighborly relationships. In some ways, it’s very easy to love our neighbors — they’re the people we choose to be near, the people in our close proximity. We’ve learned to love them for who they are and perhaps don’t think much of it.
10 years ago this week, Stacy and I moved into our home on Alabama Hill. In that decade, we’ve gotten to know our neighbors and, generally, I can say we love them in a neighborly sense. They’re good people and we’re comfortable with our kind, polite relationships we share.
But, as important as those polite friendships can be, this lesson from Jesus is challenging us to enter much more difficult relationships with love.
I think of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Across the news, we hear arguments for which side is right or justified in their actions. We hear denouncements of one group’s action, while the other side is not held to the same standard.
But if we were on the ground there, in the middle of it all, and were challenged with this question of what is the greatest commandment — would we be able to live into it? For the Palestinian, the literal neighbor is the Israeli and vice versa. Whatever you think about the historical political issues at play here, with the division of land and occupation of territories, the plain fact remains — these people are neighbors and the call is to turn to one another in love, a love that transcends politics and history, ethnicity and territory.
Think of one, bruised and battered along the roadside. When Jesus says love your neighbor, it surely cannot mean loving the one who stands on the other side of such a conflict, can it?
Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Love God. With your heart, your soul, your mind. With all of yourself. Love the mystery of the Divine with us. Love the power of the Spirit, as it shows up to us in our daily routines. Love with heart, passion, energy. Love with depth of spirit, knowledge, insight, learning, and hope. Love with abandon the Creator who loves you the same.
Love your neighbor. Love the ones who are like you and those who are so very different. Love the one who you encounter in the checkout aisle, with the screaming kid. Love the person who cuts you off on the road. Love the fellow in the pew next to you, not because he is perfect, but because he is a child of God and despite his flaws, God calls him beloved all the same.
And love yourself. Out of loving ourselves, we build a capacity to love others. And out of loving others, we learn to offer ourselves more grace and love as well.
Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself.
Everything else hangs on this. All the law, all the revelations of the prophets, all the ethics and philosophies that humanity can imagine — it all hinges upon love. Without love, as the Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian church, everything is meaningless noise, a clanging gong or cymbal. But with love, everything is possible. The healing of the world is possible. Connection and reconciliation are possible. With love.
May we be a people who actively pursue this whole, involved, complete love, with Christ as our guide.
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