This sermon was delivered to Holy Trinity in Ayr,
Ayrshire, Scotland on the 29th October 2017
(a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries).
Leviticus 19.1-2, 15-18 Psalms 1 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8 Matthew 22.34-46
Psalm 19:14: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.
1. Introduction
This morning I want to talk to you about one of the most important but sometimes the most complex topic in the bible and that is the subject of love … loving God and loving others to be exact. … It is commonly known as the Great Commandment, where we attempt to love God and everyone else with all our hearts, all the time. … That is it, that’s all we are asked to do, nothing difficult there … yet, I wonder how long it will take for everyone in this congregation to break that commandment. … It will certainly or probably be before the end of this service.
I hope therefore this morning that I may be able to help a bit with this commandment, but notice I said, “I hope” … and I also said “a bit”, because it is a very difficult, if not impossible commandment to keep, as it summarises all the commandments, the ten great Commandments plus the 613 or so of the minor commandments … plus the teachings of Jesus all condensed into loving god and loving others with all our hearts. … I am not saying that we don’t try our best … oh yes we certainly try, but it is just so difficult to do, and do consistently. … Love God, ok, we like that one … but loving our neighbours … all of our neighbours, that is where the problems arise. … I think we will look at loving God first.
2. Loving God
In this passage, the Pharisees were trying to trick Jesus by asking their question in verse 36, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"… but Jesus was ready for them … because the Pharisees wanted Jesus to say that one commandment was greater than the all the rest, that way they could focus on keeping that one commandment, while playing lip service to the rest. Do you see what they were up to?
Jesus did, and so he answered them in verse 37 to “love the Lord thy God with all thy hearts, and with all thy souls, and with all thy minds”… and they did not like that answer. … You see they were obsessed with the outward appearance of keeping the commandments, and they were good at it, whereas this response focused on keeping the commandments within their hearts, without the demonstration. … Yes the Pharisees liked to demonstrate to their followers how holy they were, and at great lengths too, but their hearts, they were false, and Jesus could clearly see this, and this is what he was trying to get across to the Pharisee’s that their hearts were not pure, they were rotten to the core, even though their outward actions were seen to be holy and pure, and we all know how easily that can be done. … Yes Jesus certainly turned the tables on them by saying in verse 40 … “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments". ...
And you could even take this one step further and reduce it down to just one word … “love”, because Jesus is basically saying that if we truly love God, then we will love our neighbours and if we love our neighbours, then we will love God … they are both very closely linked, but in each case they radiate “love”. … 1st John 4:7 tells us to “love one another: for love is of God” … and because “God is love” and we as children of God, must radiate that love to others. … And we certainly don’t get the impression that the Pharisee’s were radiating love to their people … no we get the feeling they were seeking love from their people the love, the very life-force from the very people were commissioned to build up. … They were horrible people, but so transparent to Jesus, and so he wanted to expose them, and turn their wrong thinking or teaching around, and start to radiating love.
Our question this morning is how do we do that on a regular and consistent basis, because it is not easy, and it goes against how the world operates? … Well that is what Christianity is all about; it is about a process of turning us mere morals, sinful human beings into God like creatures … creatures who radiate his love, and who are ready to meet with him in heaven one day. … And such a process as we know does not happen instantly … and it certainly does not happen without pain … but it happens. … And yes we will never reach that perfection that God wants, but we are radically transformed into better Godlike beings … and this is the point where should shudder, at what we were like before we knew the Lord.
And so, being a Christian requires a beginning, and a growth towards maturity; … as we are slowly transformed from being self-centred to being God centred, from seeking love to radiating love … and that is a radical change for many people, but that process begins by accepting Jesus as our lord, loving him and then letting the Holy Spirit do his work within us, whether we are aware of it or not.
3 Loving others
And once we start loving the Lord, we are then tuned into the other great commandment in verse 39 which is to “love thy neighbour as thyself”, and do we? …
Let us look at this in more detail: yes we love our families … well most of them ... well some of them, most of the time; and yes we love our friends … that is why they are called friends. … We also have acquaintances and colleagues too, whom by their definitions we don’t truly love as much, but we force ourselves to get on with them, … and then there are all those other people on this earth whom we have never met, millions and millions of them; … and it is easy to love them. Why, because we have never met them?
But that still leave a lot of people whom we struggle to love; … I mean the people Gods tells us to love, no he commands us to love … the ones we don’t like … and we all have problems with them. … You see, (and this is normal and naturally), but our love is conditional for those who love us … or we love those who can help us in return … or those who have influence or power that someday they may be able to help us, and I will give you an example of that last one … … I read the other week of a girl who had broken up with her fiancé, and then she had second thoughts. Here is the letter she letter wrote to him.
My Dearest James,
No words could ever express the great unhappiness I’ve felt since breaking off our engagement. Please say you will take me back. No one could ever take your place in my heart, so please forgive me. I love you with all my heart, I love you, I love you!
Yours Forever, Marie
P.S. Congratulations on winning the lottery.
Do you see what I am getting at; do we truly love as we should … or as it suits us? … Do we see people as God sees them, as people created in his image? … Do we see our fellow human being as someone to be loved; and a challenge to overcome? … What I am saying here is that to love everyone it is extremely difficult on so many levels … in a way that God desires.
Loving our neighbour as ourselves means that we do for them whatever we would do for ourselves: … in that when we have a need, we attempt to meet that need; … and so when others have a need we should be attempting to help them with their needs. … And this is so easy for me to say, but the practicalities of this are so difficult. … And how do we help others as we should, when so many times we struggle to help ourselves. …
You see, it is not that we don’t want to do it; it is where we start doing it. Loving all others is extremely difficult … it is a problem that we don’t like to talk about, not even to ourselves, yet we kind of let on to others that we do, because it look very bad if we were to tell them the truth. … But the truth is that no one on this earth, no one who is living a normal active life, no one who is in full grasp of their faculties, can truthfully say, “I love all my neighbours as myself”. … I mean look at news on the TV on any evening; can you honestly say at the end of that program that you can love every single person that was seen on that program, including the news readers? … Yet that is what the bible is telling us to do? Do you see how I impossible it is? … And yet we put on the façade that we, as Christian do love others, all others.
I am not saying we are a bunch of hypocrites, I am saying it is an impossible task, and that we are judged by society, (and God too), on how we treat others … all the time. … Now, I have a story that may help, please bear with me on this one; as this is a difficult message to convey.
The other week there, I was making my sandwiches for work, and I always like tomatoes in them, and as I was cutting the tomatoes with a sharp knife, I lost concentration for a second, the knife slipped and I cut my finger and I yelled in pain. … Straight away, I put my finger in my mouth, you know what I mean, and then looked at the cut. … I was surprised to see however, there no blood, and without my glasses, I could see no real cut either, yet I could feel it. … However, I ignored it and carried on, and forgot all about it.
A couple of hours later, this pain returned, and it was sore, I really had cut my finger, and every time I moved my finger this pain kept coming back and I flinched and scowled every single time. Eventually I was forced to put a sticking plaster on it which helped. … Three minutes after putting the plaster on, I remembered I still had to do the dishes, and it was my last plaster … what do you do? … I did the dishes and lost the plaster, and winced in ever movement for the rest of the night at that finger.
What has this got to do with loving others, well, that night I was reading a book, where I read that we unconsciously emit good or bad vibrations to others, vibrations that other people sense, and as a teacher, I was well aware of this but I suddenly I related this to my finger, … because every time I disturbed it, I received a very sharp pain, I screwed up my face, and sent bad vibes to that finger. … Now this book was saying that this was only a simple accident, we have all done it, there was no shame in it, the finger itself did not ask to be cut, yet when the finger screamed out in pain, all I could do was send bad thoughts straight to the finger; I even though I love my finger.
Now this book, (which I have forgotten which one it was), suggested that I should, sent out thoughts of love to that finger when it cried in pain, instead of all the bad things I had been saying. … … That was a completely different way of looking at it, and so I thought, Oh! why not. … I tried, and persevered even though it was not as easy as I had though. It was also changing the habit of a lifetime, radiating love rather than irritation to a pain.
Well what happened, well, I soon forgot about it, and it was only the other day when driving to work that I noticed the cut, and went, “Oh, I remember that”, but I don’t remember much after that, because the pain had gone; yet later while struggling to write this sermon, it all came back to me and I thought, how can I tell others to radiate love, when I cannot radiate love to my own cut finger.
Do you see what I am getting at here, if we cannot love others as we should, we should at the very least be trying to radiate love to others, even to those who have been giving us problems and a hard time, because God will be in that love, and we can let him deal with them through that love. … Basically, if there is no love, there is no God, because “god is love”. … Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44-45 to “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; … That ye may be the children of your Father … for if ye love them which love you, what reward have you? … These verses are very strong, and they go against everything we have been brought up to believe, yet we are being told by Jesus himself to forget all of that, and radiate love towards those whom we do not like. … We are to love and emanated love to everyone, and not the bad feeling which we so often do.
However, let me be very clear about this … I am not saying we put up with the nonsense from these people, I am not saying we accept their behaviour and bad deeds, I am not saying we make them our friends … I am certainly not saying that we toddy to them, but I am saying that we should be radiating love towards them, and not the bad feelings or even hatred as we sometimes do. … Where there is no love, there is no God to fight our corner … and we are excluding God, by not giving him a chance, because we are too busy dealing with people ourselves.
What I am saying is, has sending out such daggers in the past worked? Could we as Christians try a different approach with the knowledge that God is in our love, send out love instead spite, and then let God deal with that person. … What have we got to lose? You may already be doing this, in which case, you can share how powerful it is.
Radiating love is not easy, at first, but it gets easier, and we want to get to the stage where it is normal. Until we do, we are working against scripture … however what I have been speak to you this morning is in accordance with scripture, it is in accordance with the words of Jesus even though for some, it doesn’t make sense … but neither does much of the teaching of Jesus, at first, until we try it.
I will finish now with the words of Jesus in John 13:34-35 "A new command I give you: Love one another, as I have loved you. … So you must love one another and by this, all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." What is missing from this verse is the why, and I pray that I have helped to answered that question this morning.
Please believe me that by adopting this attitude towards others totally transform your life, it is that powerful, you can see God at work within you. Amen, and may you be blessed by this sermon.
Let us pray.
Father we thank you for Jesus, we thank you he died for us all those years ago because he love you, and he loved us; and by his death, you can radiate your love onto us, even though we don’t deserve it.
Father, give us the ability to understand that you want us to draw your love from you, so that we can pass that love onto others, so that they can be blessed or dealt with by you.
Father, let us draw that love from you … love to build us up … and love so pass on. Let the Holy Spirit speak to our hearts, and allow us to pass your love on to those whom we find difficult, and give you a chance to deal with them in your way.
Father we ask in the mighty name of Jesus, Amen.
