There used to be a terrific program on PBS called the Religion and Ethics Weekly. They covered everything from Pentecostals to the Pope. I’ve seen programs on Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Islam. One time they reported on a rise in Hindu fundamentalism. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have, and so I don’t know how widespread it was, or even whether they were talking about Hindus in the U.S. as well as in India. The ones I heard talking had to be in India, I’m sure... They were talking about the ancient practice of suttee - that is, the custom of having a woman join her husband voluntarily on his funeral pyre after his death. The practice was outlawed by the British government sometime in the 19th century. And, of course, we Christians hear about this sort of thing with utter horror. And we think to ourselves what a good thing the British did in outlawing it, and how grateful the women must have been.
But not so fast. On this particular program the reporter was interviewing a woman - actually several women - who approved of suttee. One woman said, “Our husbands are our Lords. They are like gods to us. I have no life without my husband. It is unthinkable to marry a second time, and why should one wish to go on living?”
At around the time I watched this particular segment, Sallie Barbara Dixon mourned her husband of 57 years, who died that week at 86 of a ruptured aneurism. Walter, one of the finest men I have ever known, was my god-children’s grandfather, my friend Caryl’s father. He was a career naval officer and was buried at Arlington with full military honors. I drove down that day to take care of the children while Caryl looked out for her mom. If this were India 200 years ago, or India today as these women wanted, they’d be saying good bye to Miss Sallie as well. I don’t even want to visualize mentally what that part of the ceremony might look like. But I suspect that in the last few days she has been wishing that she had gone first. She was lost without him for many years after, as he would have been without her.
We all know people like Miss Sallie - men and women alike - who have lived their entire married lives in such unity that they are utterly bereft without their spouses. We know that such grief can be deep and enduring. But I cannot imagine a world-view which says that the proper thing - the right thing - the loving thing - is for widows to be burned alive. And yet these women believed that suttee was right and good.
You probably find it hard to believe. I did, too. But then I started thinking about how immersed we are in Judeo-Christian presuppositions - even if our society is no longer sustained by the faith that generated them. It’s been 2000 years since the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob began spreading his commandments into the Gentile the world. And we’ve forgotten - if we ever knew - how revolutionary it was to value every human life alike as “image of God.”
Most sermons on this famous passage on “The Greatest Commandment” focus on how genuine love for God must necessarily be lived out in loving your neighbor. And that is important. But in our society, where people think that just “being a good person” is enough for salvation, we’ve completely lost sight of the fact that loving your neighbor has to be grounded in love for God.
It all begins with God.
In the beginning ... God. Creation begins with God. Who God is, and how God has created us and the world, is the foundation on which everything else rests. And so of course morality also begins with God. It’s just as much part of the created order as the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. It is because we are made in God’s image that murder is forbidden. It is because God freed Israel from slavery in Egypt that we are to give the weak and oppressed the same respect as the rich and powerful. And I think most people understand that. That is why “compassion” has such a powerful hold on our political imaginations, why it has been so easy for us as a country to fall into the “entitlement” trap... We feel that it is morally right for society to care for the poor, and of course it is. But think: Is society the government? Or is it us, you and me?
Anyway, without God’s law to ground us, all the good feelings and wishful thinking in the world cannot create justice. Communism, in fact, had such a powerful hold on people’s political imaginations precisely because people wanted to create a just society. They saw the rich getting richer by exploiting and mistreating the poor, and believed that if only the state would require everyone to share equally in both the work and the rewards, then everyone could reach their full potential and paradise would be just around the corner. But it didn’t work, because the truth about human nature wasn’t figured into the equation.
You’ve heard me say it before, and you’ll hear me say it again: compassion that is not grounded in truth is merely laziness or sentimentality.
Discipline is hard work - whether we’re talking about disciplining your children or disciplining yourself.
I heard a great lecture a couple of weeks ago on post-modernism, the very thing that no doubt gets your heart pumping in the mornings, just like mine. Anyway the speaker identified the first 1500 or so years of Christendom as “the age of faith,” the next 400-500 the “age of reason”, and the time we are presently in as the “age of emotion.” You can hear it everywhere you go ... “follow your heart,” “do what you feel is right,” “I know it because I feel it,” etc. And it’s taken hold in our religious life, as well.
Among the fastest growing churches in our country and around the world are the Pentecostals. And I can see the attraction. Pentecostals really get into worship. When they say, “Let us pray,” they do, out loud...and sometimes accompanied by piano, guitar, and drums as well. During the sermons, you hear responses from the whole room: “Amen...Hallelujah... Preach it, Brother!” In fact, they get their hearts into loving God more than a little bit better than we Presbyterians. After all, they don’t call us the Frozen Chosen for nothing. The first part of the commandment is, “Love the Lord your God with all your HEART”... and we could do a better job of it. No question about it.
The next part says, “...with all your SOUL.” The Greek word is psyche, from which we get our words like psychology. It’s sort of what we think of as personality. It really means “Love the Lord your God with whatever makes you YOU. The message here is one of authenticity. There is no such thing as cookie cutter discipleship. One size does NOT fit all. Love the Lord your God with all YOUR soul, not someone else’s.
Then, the “MIND.” Here is where we Presbyterians used to shine. We have as systematic a theology as anyone could ask for. Pastors, at least, are more than willing to spend hour upon hour in conversation about it. Just show up at the next brown bag discussion and see! Ever since Calvin, we’ve been very cerebral in our approach to faith. We’ve never taught that anyone should take their head off when coming to church. God’s grace in the gospel may be beyond rational, but even with our limited resources, we will use all our brain power to make sure everyone understands as much as possible. Presbyterians have always been people of the Word, loving the Lord our God passionately with our MINDS. But we’re losing that emphasis, in this end of the 20th century, as we become more and more infected by the fuzzy emotionalism and lack of critical thinking that pervades the culture around us. And yet it is that very commitment to intellectual integrity that give Presbyterians a unique advantage in this age - because it is in loving God with our minds that we become able to love our neighbors as God would have us do.
Now, let’s go back and remember the context that Jesus was speaking to. He was engaging in a very tense debate with people who thought that keeping the law was the be-all and end-all of their religious observance. Now, the Pharisees, who were trying to trap Jesus into saying something shocking or blasphemous, would have been nodding solemnly at what he was saying; they’d recognize the quote from Deuteronomy. Nothing surprising here. After all, love for God was a given (even though it might regularly need a bit of fine tuning). Jesus' response to their question about which commandment superceded all others (“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with...) was the Jew's normal call to worship. But then Jesus added the words about loving your neighbor as yourself, saying that there is an inseparable relationship between all our piety, all these high-sounding things we attach to our worship of God, and the way we treat those around us.
Love for neighbor was not some un-heard-of concept; the command had been around since Leviticus. But linking love for God and love for neighbor this directly was a novel approach. That is probably why the scribe who asked the question to start with came back with as uninspired a response as, “You are right, Teacher...” That is like someone saying, “There's a lot of truth in what you say, Pastor.” Right. And that is probably why Mark’s version of this passage notes, “After that no one dared to ask him any question.” They had a new concept to chew on first.
Not new for us though, is it? We have heard it and heard it and heard it. It’s not rocket science. This loving your neighbor as yourself that the scripture calls for is not much more than the Golden Rule. Treat others the way you yourself want to be treated, and don’t do those things to people that you wouldn’t like someone doing to you. In fact, go the extra mile and deliberately do things for one another that you know would be appreciated. And one more thing: assume that the other person is just as important to God as you are. In a nutshell, that is what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.
Even though we have known all these things from childhood, we could all do a better job of it. The biggest hindrance is, of course, money. We worry too much about whether we will have enough. The stock market goes crazy, and we fret about our paper losses. Of course, few of us miss any meals because of it. God says that the standard for giving is the tithe - ten percent - but too many people hold back because they think they might miss out on something they need. I doubt that anyone could point to an individual here who went hungry or lacked shelter or medical care (or anything else important, for that matter), because they faithfully tithed. Meanwhile, there ARE cold and hungry people in this world who could be warmed and fed if the money were available. Does loving my neighbor as myself mean that I do something about the problem? Of course, it does. And we do.
You’ve all gotten this year’s stewardship letter reminding you of Consecration Sunday, on October 31st, just a week from today. And I hope that you will keep in mind that loving God means loving your neighbor as yourself. But this sermon isn’t about giving. You already know what’s right as far as giving to the church and giving to the poor is concerned. This sermon is about how to discern what the loving thing to do actually is.
The Ten Commandments have long been divided into two sections, with the first four having to do with how we relate to God, and the last five, dealing with how we relate to one another, and the link between them number 5, about honoring your father and your mother. Clearly the last five - no stealing, lying, adultery, murder, etc. spell out what “loving your neighbor” means in practice. Especially when you add Jesus’ spin on the attitudes underneath the actions mattering just as much. They’re pretty simple. Most people agree that we ought to keep them, except maybe the last one on coveting, that's just asking too much, isn't it... And are the first four really necessary to be “good people?'
It all depends on what you mean by love. If you just mean having warm feelings for other people and feeling bad when you see tragedies on TV, then, no. You don’t. But if loving people includes taking responsibility for being salt and light in the world, then you do.
The first four commandments - to have no other God but God, to make no idols, to honor God’s name, to keep the Sabbath - remind us what our priorities should be. If we are not living out these commandments in our daily lives, are we not saying to other people that God is not important? Are we not communicating to our children, our friends, our co-workers that they can live complete and fulfilling lives without God at the center? Are we not “sending the message” that it doesn’t really matter what they put at the center of their lives?
Keeping those commandments reminds us who God is, and who we are in relation to God. Once we stop trusting God, we start thinking that we can make up our own solutions to society’s problems... Like the ethics professor at Princeton, Peter Singer, who believed that infanticide up to 30 days is appropriate. He says, and I quote, “Newborn babies are replaceable.” He also thinks that people who are burdens to society should be eliminated... he calls it, “involuntary euthanasia.” Professor Singer’s ideas are simply the natural working out of the abandonment of God as the center of our ethical judgments... only if human beings are created in the image of God does it make sense to say that a damaged human being is of more value than a pet kitten or a thoroughbred horse.
And we “feel” that this is wrong when we hear about such things. But if we don’t know why, if we don’t know what God has to do with it, we will be unable to hold onto the truths that we once took for granted.
It is because human beings are created in the image of God, and we belong to him, that human sacrifice was forbidden so long ago. That is why the British stopped Hindu women from burning themselves alive on their husband’s funeral pyres, and why Miss Sallie said goodbye to her husband at Arlington and went home to grieve. It is because only the God who gave us our lives has the right to end them...
It is because God first loved us, giving us his Son to die in our place so that we might know him personally, that we are able to love God in return. And it is because God loves us that we know that even the tough rules, the ones that require us to say “no” to ourselves, are for our good.
But ignorance of God’s law makes it easy to be nice ... we can just tolerate everything. In the same way that ignorance might cause people to give heroin to addicts suffering from the pains of withdrawal, or offer suicide as an option for the depressed, ignorance of God’s character and law often renders our loving feelings toward our neighbors empty or misguided.
And it is only when we love God that we can give our neighbor the greatest gift of all - an invitation through Christ to be adopted into the family of God.
Love God by loving your neighbor. Love your neighbor by living God’s law. You can’t have one without the other.
