Homily for Retirement Suites by the Lake - July 7, 2007
--This is a message for an ecumenical service at my parent’s retirement community--
"An expert in the law, tested (Jesus) with this question:"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 22:35-40
Do you ever have people come up to you and tell a really, really long story or give a really, really lengthy explanation about something?
Those who know me know that if I’m given too much detail my eyes start to glaze over and I’ll often ask: “So ...could you just summarize for me?” Then they give me the short version which is the only way they’re likely to get a response from me. Is that a ’guy thing’ or what? Anyway, I know I’m not the only one who prefers the short version.
In our reading today someone approaches Jesus and they decide to test him with a really good question. They take out a huge Bible (Prop: Huge Bible) and they ask Jesus “Of everything in here, which is the absolute most important thing”.
Whenever you have to pare down a whole ton of possibilities into just one or two preferences, what you end up doing is talking about what you really think matters in life.
So Jesus is staring at this Bible (still hold Bible) that’s big enough to choke a moose and he’s asked to state the most important thing written in its pages. A daunting challenge, eh? “Which of the 27,570 verses in the OT is the most important. You have 10 seconds to answer”. You can imagines some game show host asking that kind of question.
Without skipping a beat Jesus replies: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” That’s found in Deuteronomy chapter six. He continues: “This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’”.
So Jesus summarizes all of the OT, all 27, 570 verses by saying that the most important thing we’ll find in the Bible the command to love.
Now that can be a bit surprising if we’ve been used to thinking about this book as a book of rules. A book of do’s and don’ts. There are of course “do’s and don’ts” in the Bible. The ten commandments for example.
But when it comes right down to it, Jesus says that relationships matter the most. Love...matters the most. So much so that Jesus says: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
That’s like saying “What this Book is trying to teach us about life...is that the most important thing is to love...To love your Maker and to love the other people beside yourself that your Maker made”.
Now, how can that be? How can Jesus say that love is what it’s all about? Don’t we need to hear, for instance, that it’s wrong to kill? That it’s wrong to oppress the poor? That stealing and lying and charging excessive interest is wrong?
Yes, we do need to hear that, but if we really, truly get what Jesus means when he says that life is about love, that we only need to love God and each other. If we get that and live that, then of course, we’re not going to do anything that is not loving to anyone else. That’s actually the best definition of the word “Love” that I know of. Behaving in loving ways to another. To love someone is to treat them in a loving way.
There’s a great line from a recent movie called The Last Kiss. The main character has cheated on his fiancé and he goes back to her only to encounter her father.
The main character tells the father what a big stupid mistake he made by cheating and that he really truly only loved his fiancé. The father, who is a gentle, sympathetic man, says this: “What you feel only matters to you, what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters– the only thing that counts”.
Often we think of love as an emotion...and of course it is...but love needs to be expressed in real terms in order to make any kind of difference in order to actually BE love.
Love that’s unexpressed is just sentiment. If it stays as just an emotion without finding expression, it doesn’t really accomplish much.
“What you feel only matters to you, what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters” That’s remarkably similar in my mind to what Jesus is saying in the passage we’re discussing today.
"’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’
And so a good question to ask ourselves, perhaps is, “how am I doing at loving others?” For those of us who have faith in God, we can ask ourselves: “How am I doing at expressing my love for God?
Am I stopping to observe the beauty of His creation. Am I treating what He has made well? Am I talking to Him? Am I letting Him in on my thoughts, my pain, my doubts, my fears? Am I walking with Him?
You know, the first picture we have in the Bible about God and people is one where God is walking with someone in a garden. My parents Eleanor and Lewis love to walk together in the Rosetta-Maclean garden. What a beautiful place.
Walking in a garden...that’s what lovers do, what people who really treasure each other do. We breathe in the air, enjoy the colours and the new life together, we talk and laugh and sometimes cry. That’s a picture of intimacy and caring and trust.
And of course the invitation God gives us all the time is to come home and walk with him in the garden. Are we up to that today?
And we might also ask: “How am I doing at loving others?” A good question. All of us have people that we care for and care about. The closer we are to those people the greater the opportunities for real joy in the relationship.
It’s also true that we can hurt the ones we’re closest too, but the challenge I think is to really be aware of the people who are near us. Give them our time. Listen intently. Laugh with those who laugh. Weep with those who are weeping. Stick with people who are going through tough times.
Offer encouraging words to others. One word or a pleasing smile is often enough to raise up a saddened and wounded soul. Taking an interest in what others are doing or saying is a powerful form of encouragement.
Perhaps risk a little by enlarging the circle of our friendships.
That’s what Jesus is talking about when He says: “Love your neighbour as yourself”. The first challenge here of course is to love ourselves. Treat ourselves well. For many this is very difficult. Lucille Ball said” Love yourself first and then everything falls into line”. There’s a lot of truth in that.
When Jesus says here to love our neighbour as ourselves, He’s challenging us to reach out beyond ourselves. You’ve heard of Tommy Douglas? In 2004 he was voted the Greatest Canadian of All Time in a CBC poll.
He was a Baptist minister who became premier of Saskatchewan and was the first to create a program to offer free hospital care to all citizens.
He viewed universal health care as one of the most immediate implications of the teaching of Jesus of loving one’s neighbor. Because of this one fellow who took Jesus’ words to heart, you and I enjoy free healthcare.
Love acts...Love behaves lovingly. And somehow...and here’s a great mystery...all of God’s intentions for humanity are wrapped up in love. Loving God. Loving one another.
This treasure of knowledge and insight (hold up Bible) has one main point. To teach us, or to remind us...of the value of...of just how much it really means, to love God to love our neighbour.
Let’s pray. God, thank you that Jesus simplified this big book. Thank you that we are created to love. And thank you that you remind us of this great purpose. Teach us what it means to love You and to honour You by loving one another. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
