A sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, October 29, 2023
Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
It is fairly common for Christians to think because Jesus says this in a controversy with the Pharisees, that he came up with it, or at least that he was saying something that they disagreed with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus’ answer was from the scriptural text that is most important to all Jews, and certainly the Pharisees. From the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, it is known as the Shema: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Jesus is telling these figures of the religious establishment that he fully shares and agrees with the most essential point of their belief: that it is God and God alone that deserves reverence and obedience. In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, a young lawyer asks Jesus about how to attain eternal life, and Jesus asks the lawyer what the law says and it is the lawyer who tells Jesus exactly the words that Jesus repeats to the Pharisees. It’s not complicated, it’s not secret, it’s not innovative—it’s just very serious business.
In Luke, the young lawyer tries to justify himself, asking, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. You’ll have to wait until that text comes up for a sermon on the Good Samaritan, however.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Note that he doesn’t say, “Act like you love the Lord with all your heart” or “be really showy with how pious you are” or “tell everybody if they don’t believe and act just like you do that they will be damned to hell.” The command is to live in God’s love—always—at all times and in all ways.
Most people have a god that is far too small, a mascot god that does what they want, makes them comfortable, helps them feel justified in however they do things. That is not the One God of Scripture. The true and only God is no one’s mascot. I once calculated approximately how far a particle traveling at the speed of light would have travelled in the 13 billion years since the Big Bang—80 sextillion miles and change. All of that distance, in all directions, could fit in the palm of God’s hand. God’s love is likewise infinite and it is not subject to manipulation—by magic, or self-serving rhetoric, or use of power over others, or by any attempt to turn the Gospel upside down.
We like to duck out of our responsibility to the one God, who created everything that is and who loves even the poorest of god’s creatures, and find some kind of religious expression that will confirm our prejudices and privileges. It’s always a temptation. The Pharisees answered Jesus’ question about God’s anointed by looking back to when David was the monarch of Israel, a thousand years before. Jesus interprets that scripture by saying that the Kingdom of God is infinitely more and more immediate. Jesus came to hold people to the truth, and ultimately, his speaking the truth was what led to his crucifixion.
That seems like a big jump, but it’s not. Because it is not a matter of words or philosophies or discussion groups. Jesus really meant it and he held people accountable to loving God in their lives and actions.
And what Jesus says after the Shema, wasn’t a controversial or unusual thing to say in his time either. “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That quote comes from our reading from Leviticus today—it’s from the holiness code which lays out how the holy people of God are supposed to behave. Thus, it interprets what it is to love God with all your heart in terms of a person’s behavior. Loving other people and valuing their welfare every bit as much as you value your own is living the love of God. The God of heaven and earth leads us beyond what is good for us and into what is good. Abundant life is life for others, living in generosity, living in God with our entire heart, soul, mind and strength. Living this way is not a matter of being more religious or better than ordinary people—actually it is very ordinary. And it isn’t optional at all. Being connected in love is what gives life—being focused only on ourselves and our immediate community is what causes life to shrivel.
We live in a country that has spent far too much of its energy encouraging people to focus on maintaining themselves and disregarding their neighbors. It’s clear to anyone who has eyes to see how this has damaged our country and what a frightening place this has made of our body politic. Honoring God as Scripture directs is essential for the prosperity of a people; elsewise the selfishness of the arrogant undermines those who are ever poor or weak—and that is every one of us at some time or another—the selfishness of the arrogant destroys us all.
In the years that I have known you here at Trinity I have seen how you love and respect one another, reaching out to the sick and shut in; those who are bereaved and those who need encouragement. Trinity has reached out into this neighborhood—a neighborhood which includes many new immigrants and many whose resources are severely limited—and provided a thrift store with free or very low-priced clothing and other articles. From that we gathered a community to share a meal around the table and find spiritual support. It is in such generosity of spirit, in humbly welcoming and supporting the humble that this country—this world even—can survive and thrive. It is not just our family or those we know that are the neighbors—it is all those, poor or wealthy, whom God has called his children.
Our first lesson, from Leviticus defines the treatment of our neighbor—which Jesus observes is the same as our love of God. I’ll conclude by reading a little more from this passage:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 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.
Leviticus 19:9, 17-18
Observations 