In the name of God – who was, and is, and is to come. Amen.
“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 mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” What a world this would be if our actions were more aligned with those words. The reason why I preach about love so much is that the Beatles were right, “love is all you need.” Being rooted in the knowledge that God loves us, if we respond to that love with our whole being then we’d see more what we pray for each week – thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. But because of Sin, we aren’t the best at remembering that we are loved or showing love to others. And so love must remain at the center of the Church’s preaching. Once we get love right, then I’m happy to entertain a discussion about what the next priority ought to be. But until then, love remains at the center.
When Jesus is asked what is at the root of faith, he responds out of the depths of his Jewish tradition, citing Deuteronomy, “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 mind, and with all your strength” and Leviticus, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The scribe asked Jesus which commandment is first, and Jesus, in his usual way, doesn’t give a straight answer. Instead, he gives two. And in doing so, Jesus makes it clear that loving God and loving neighbor go hand in hand. Religion is not something between you and God, it is something between you and everyone in the world.
But what is love? We throw that word around so often that it’s easy to skip right over what Jesus is actually saying. First of all, love is not an emotion. It can’t be. You can’t command someone to have a particular emotion. Liking someone is an emotion, and we all know that you can’t make yourself like someone in the same way that you can’t make yourself happy if you are depressed. Love is not about how you feel. And it’s not even really about what you think. This is made clear when Jesus tells us to love our enemies. By definition, our enemies are those who we don’t like and would actually like to see their downfall. And they are our enemies for good reasons. No one has enemies for fun. An enemy is someone who has wronged you or is someone you find repulsive. But love is not changing your opinion about that person. Love is not saying “Well, maybe they’re not so bad.” No, often enemies are that bad, and Jesus tells us to love them.
So love is more than an emotion and more than our thoughts. Love is action rooted in God. Love is about devotion, concern, and charity. Love is about putting the good of the other ahead of your own good. And that’s hard. I love my daughters, but when they went out Trick-or-Treating, they got some Reese’s. Love would say that I shouldn’t have one after they’ve gone to bed, and yet… I realize that’s a silly example, but it’s true. And if it’s true with something like candy, how much truer it is with things like prestige, and money, and reputation. One theologian has said that “Christianity has not been tried and found lacking, it has been found difficult and not tried.”
If any other commandment were at the center, we’d have a chance at keeping it. Don’t eat meat on Fridays? I could swing that. Don’t work on the Sabbath? We’d have to rearrange some things, but it could be done. But love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself? We don’t stand a chance; at least, not on our own.
As we know from 1 John, “We love because God first loved us.” This is the grace of God – that we do not need to muster up the ability to love God with all of our being or to be charitable towards our neighbors. We do not have to manufacture this love. God’s love is sufficient for all. Loving God and neighbor is about having the love of God fill us and flow through us in action. That’s still not easy to do, but it’s at least possible. As our Collect today prayed “It is only by God’s gift that we offer to God true and laudable service.”
Love though can be a vague concept. What does it actually mean to love God? What does it look like to love our neighbor? I want to focus in on two ways that love is put into practice in our society and in our parish.
Love that is enacted in society is called justice. Justice is the name that we give to love that is expressed in our common life. There are many injustices all around us, and you can pick up a newspaper or turn on a television if you want to know more about them. But this morning I must focus in on one specific example of injustice, and that is discrimination. Certainly, there are many forms of discrimination – there is sexism, classism, and elitism. Racism is a particular scourge in our society and through our work around Becoming the Beloved Community, we are seeking to pursue justice there. But this week, in light of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue, I have no choice but to mention the discrimination of anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is prejudice and hatred against the Jewish people. Sadly, our legacy as Christians is full of anti-Semitic rhetoric. It takes on lots of forms – “The God of the Old Testament is full of wrath and the God of the New Testament is about love,” or “The only purpose of the Old Testament is to set the stage for Jesus,” or “It was the Jews that killed Jesus.” I hope that none of you would consider yourselves to be anti-Semites, but we are all impacted by an anti-Semitic culture.
Some of this is rooted in simple ignorance – we forget that Jesus, Mary, James, John, Peter, and Paul were all Jews. We forget that we are actually Gentiles, that is, we are not God’s chosen people. Rather, it is only by the grace of God that we are included in the salvation given through Israel. But as we saw this week, it’s not enough to know these things. Love compels us to work towards justice. And justice means that we cannot remain silent when the ugly head of white supremacy rises up in our society. If we are going to love our Jewish neighbors, we must stand with them in their grief and mourning. But more than that, love compels us to pursue justice in dismantling all attitudes and institutions of discrimination and prejudice, and especially of anti-Semitism. Love in action in our society is justice.
And when it comes to our own community of St. Luke’s, generosity is what love looks like. As you know, we are in the midst of our stewardship efforts for 2019 and I firmly believe that generosity in pledging is transformative in your life. Money is one of the most powerful forces in the world, and if you do not exercise control over your money by giving it away, it will absolutely have control over you.
First of all, pledging helps us to plan for growth and vitality at St. Luke’s. Truly, I am appreciative of everyone who gives money to the mission of love at St. Luke’s, but pledging really helps us out. Already this year, we have received more in non-pledged income than we had budgeted for. And while that is wonderful and a sign that this is a growing and vibrant parish, it also means that we could have planned to use that money in a more intentional way. When you pledge, you let us know how much money we will have for our budget as the household of God. A pledge is not a contract, sometimes you can’t give what you hoped you would, that’s normal and comes with no sense of shame or guilt.
But more than being helpful in planning, pledging is about committing yourself to this parish and making sure your spending is aligned with your faith. Truth be told, money is green and whether you pledge or just give, this parish isn’t going anywhere. Yes, the Vestry, Treasurer, and I appreciate having a reasonable idea of what to expect when it comes to income, but we’re pretty good at making estimates.
I commend pledging to you because it is a spiritual discipline of generosity, of love in action. When you make a pledge, it means that you start with God instead of giving whatever is left over. Practicing generosity means that you have to actually sit down with a budget and be intentional about money. Not only is this good financial advice, it’s even better spiritual advice. I can tell you from my own experience that the salvation of God comes partially through generosity. Money and the anxiety related to it causes so much stress and selfishness. But when you give away a generous amount, it shifts your focus. It makes you more aware of God’s abundance towards you. Generosity is a response that allows you to participate in God’s love.
That doesn’t make generosity easy though, as it requires that we don’t put ourselves first. In our household, St. Luke’s is only one of the places that we are passionate about when it comes to giving, though this parish is the most important in our giving. So for 2019, our family has pledged $6,000 to St. Luke’s and the other half or so will go other organizations whose mission we believe in. And I’ll tell you, when you give 10% of your income away, off the top, it means you might not be able to take every vacation that you’d like or buy every comfort item that you want. Generosity really is a practice, you have to do it over and over again to feel comfortable. But a holy thing happens, money is transformed into simply a tool, not an end.
As we all know, when it comes to money, there is no such thing as “having enough.” We put love into action through generosity, and in doing so we are reminded that, in God, we already have enough. Love put into practice when it comes to this parish and money is called generosity.
In Judaism, the first half of this Greatest Commandment is called the Shema and Jews recite it twice a day. If Jesus thinks that this love of God and neighbor is the most important thing, then it would do us well to also have this be a mantra for us to remind us of how deeply we are loved by God. And knowing this love, we pray that God’s love might work in us to promote love in our society, which is called justice, and love in our parish, which is called generosity.
In Deuteronomy, right after the Shema is given, we read “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Indeed we would do well to bind these words to our day, to our society, to our wallets, to our lives – 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 mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
