Sermon for Sunday, October 26, 2014

I just got back from a three week meditation retreat,

            and Hunt is entrusting me with the sermon this morning!

Who knows what I am likely to say!

It is true that originally when I first started meditating

            that I would come back and be something of a “space cadet,”

                                    to use an old phrase.

And I’m sure the congregation would wonder

            if I would be so heavenly minded

            that I would be no earthly good.

That may be some folks’ idea about meditation.

So let’s see what happens this time,

and you tell me

            if I am too abstract and removed from human experience,

or if what I say “has legs”

            to use another expression.

In the gospel reading for today the Pharisees are putting a question to Jesus.

            They are frequently putting questions to Jesus in the gospels.

In reading the context it becomes clear that they feel threatened by Jesus.

This may seem odd

            because the Pharisees were good, moral, religious people.

These were the ones who could be counted on for a generous pledge.

            They were people you could trust your children with.

            They were looked up to as exemplary,

                                                good examples for the whole community.

Why should they feel threatened by Jesus?

In thoughtful reading of the gospels it becomes clear that Jesus, in their eyes,

            is a bad example for the community.

He has a whole different way of looking at morality, for instance,

                        than the Pharisees,

            and he broke the commandments on several occasions.

Sure, there always seemed to be a good reason to do that,

            but that seemed rather cavalier

                                                to those who had always played by the rules.

So in this case the Pharisees wanted to test this heretic

            in order to have some ground for asserting that their authority

                        derived from their religious observance and the Law

            was not so easily cast aside by this problematic, iconoclastic Jesus.

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

You know, anyone taking the time to reflect on the commandments

            could probably come up with the answer Jesus gave.

Deut. 6:4 ¶ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.

            The Shema – the Jewish Creed, the Heart of the Jewish Faith

Deut. 6:5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your might.

This, the great commandment is essentially a positive restating

of the first of the Ten Commandments,

“You shall have no other gods besides me.”

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart/mind/will,

and with all your soul/nephesh/breath/life force/self,

and with all your might/strength, with the full measure of your devotion.

You shall love God with your whole being.

And then Jesus gives them an extra credit addition:

            coupled with this first commandment

                        is the commandment from Leviticus 19:18

(conveniently provided for us in the last verse from our OT reading today)

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,

             but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

These words, the Summary of the Law, are so familiar to us.

For long-time Episcopalians you will remember that
     those words were spoken at every Eucharist
          right after the opening Collect for Purity.

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:

    Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart…” (etc.)

This is a very important text, important for both Jews and Christians,

and, I might add,

an important text for what is at the heart of mainstream Islam.

So let’s take a few minutes to look seriously

at the two greatest commandments on which hang

ALL the Law

and ALL the teachings of the Prophets.

You shall love God with your whole being.

Ah, yes, you may say, that is a very good intention to have,

to love God with your whole being,

but when I am honest with myself, I have to say

that I love God with a whole lot less than my entire being.

One does not want to appear to be a religious fanatic or zealot after all.

There’s love for God there, but it’s not necessarily fiery hot.

Well, so much for being able to keep the first and greatest commandment!

            So much for keeping any of the commandments then.

Is that the way we tend to think about this commandment?

that it’s an ideal we want to try to aspire to,

loving God with a bit more of ourselves than we did before?

Let me turn this around.

How is it that God loves us?

            Isn’t it with all God’s heart, with all God’s being, with all God’s might?

Is not this what Jesus showed us,

revealed to us about the nature of God,

revealed to us through how he lived and ministered and died

and went through death to a Resurrection Life

that was totally for our benefit?

Can you see how it could be

that this first and greatest commandment

is actually a description of God’s relationship with us,

a relationship of love that is utterly complete

in self-giving, self-revealing, and self-surrender?

May I suggest to you that we are not being asked to do

what God doesn’t do in us.

But hear, O Israel,

the LORD our God, the Lord is One.  The LORD is One.

There is only One.

No, this is not saying that there is only one God, but that there is only ONE.

We indicate this One Being by the noun God,

but we also need to remember

that this is not a separate being from ourselves.

Rather all creation exits within the Heart of God, so to speak.

There is no way we can be apart from God,

dwelling as we do in the created order,

that is utterly held in the bosom of God.

We are asleep to this most of the time.

That is why for centuries, millennia we have been told

that the classic and ultimate goal of all spiritual practice

is to realize union with God.

It is not to attain union with God,

as something to be achieved,

but to realize the fact of union, the unity of all being,

to experience this at the heart of our being,

far beyond intellectual understanding.

So to read the Shema,

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,

and with all your soul,

and with all your might”

is to read a description of God’s relationship with us

and to read a description of spiritual fulfillment.

There is only One,

there is God loving us,

and we in the heart of God,

and an expression of faith

that we too can awaken to full surrender in love to God.

Love God and love your neighbor.

To love God is to love your neighbor.

There is only One.

I used the word surrender.

We may not particularly shine to that word,

but it is a good word for us to use.

One definition of the word faith,

a definition which I think is very practical, is this:

faith is surrender in trust.

Does that not describe what it is to have faith in something or someone?

            To surrender in trust.

That means letting go of ourselves into trust.

To love God in this full and complete way

is to be a living sacrifice to God and neighbor.

To love in this way is to move beyond self-possession and self-concern.

I said that this text of the two greatest commandments

is very important for both Jews and Christians,

and, also for what is at the heart of Islam.

The two fundamental principles of Islam are

surrender to God and generosity with others.

If we were to live our lives this way,

that is, without self-concern

and in this full generosity of self-giving for others,

what an incredible difference that would be.

The power of love would dismantle all the positioning for seizing power,

            all the slaughter of war,

all the violence done in the name of religious beliefs,

all the greed that leads to huge economic inequality,

all the exploitation of others and of the planet,

all the labeling of another as an enemy.

Because love is the energetic expression of the truth of the Shema:

There is only One,

there is God loving us,

and we in the heart of God.

Now on the practical level, to love your neighbor as yourself

is not saying to love your neighbor in the same way that you love yourself.

Some of us are not very loving with ourselves.

And some of us are too self-indulging with ourselves.

And some of us abdicate when it comes to living up to the love that confronts             what in another is violating love.

Treating others as we treat ourselves is not the same as loving.

To love your neighbor as yourself

is to see your neighbor as though you were looking at yourself,

as though looking at an extension of yourself.

So self-examination time.

How are the primary relationships in your lives?

How are relationships in the work place?

here in this faith community?

Are there relationships that need reconciliation?

Of course there are.

To love more closely as to fulfill these two greatest of commandments

let us surrender in faith and trust to the One who is Love.