The Love of God

Near the end of seminary, on my path toward ordination, I took the General Ordination Examinations, affectionately known as the GOEs. These are considerably less exciting than the Ordinary Wizarding Levels—the OWLs—in the Harry Potter book series. Although, after spending the better part of four days trying to demonstrate what I had learned in three years of seminary, I would have welcomed a magic wand.

I was grateful to receive proficient scores in every area. But looking back, I recognize how much those examinations could not tell me or anyone else. There is a considerable difference between explaining the Good News of God in Christ and allowing that Good News to shape the pattern of your life. You can write a convincing answer about forgiveness and still hold a grudge against a classmate.

Of course, those sorts of blindspots follow us all well beyond formal schooling. We know something about patience, generosity, and compassion. We recognize wisdom when we hear it, recommend it to someone else, even put it into a pithy social media post. Then, someone interrupts us at precisely the wrong moment, and we discover how much we are still learning.

This morning, in our Gospel lesson, we near the end of a long series of tense conversations between Jesus and the religious authorities. We are in Jerusalem, during the days we now call Holy Week. Questions about authority, taxes, and resurrection have become occasions to test Jesus. He has answered with searching inquiries and unsettling stories, inviting his hearers to reconsider their lives before God.

Now comes a question whose answer many of us could give without looking it up. 

A lawyer walks up to a rabbi, this is not a joke, this is simply what our text says. A lawyer walks up to a rabbi and asks, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers with words from the Scriptures that have nourished his people for generations: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 

And then, having been asked for one commandment, Jesus gives another. “A second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” He joins them together and says that all the law and the prophets hang upon these two commandments from Holy Scripture. Everything else depends upon this love.

We hear these words so often that we can almost miss them. Love God. Love your neighbor. Yes, of course. We know the answer. But Jesus is describing something that reaches into every corner of a human life.

Love God with the mind that solves problems and the heart that carries old wounds. Love God with the body that gets tired, the imagination that dreams, and the attention that wanders. Love God with your relationships, your resources, and the hours you would rather keep entirely to yourself. And this love of God takes shape in how you treat the people whose lives touch yours.

Last Sunday, we considered what belongs to God. The answer was everything. This Sunday, Jesus invites us to consider what a life might become when we begin to trust that truth. If everything belongs to God, then everything can become a place where love takes root.

But before we get very far with that invitation, Jesus asks a question of his own. “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They answer, “The son of David.” It is a recognizable, faithful answer: the Messiah belongs to the line of Israel’s great king.

Then Jesus quotes a psalm in which David calls this coming figure his Lord. How, Jesus asks, can the Messiah be David’s son if David himself calls him Lord? We do not need to untangle every thread of that ancient argument to feel its force. Their answer leaves something unexplained; the Messiah is greater than the category they have supplied.

And perhaps that is where their conversation begins to reach us. We have words for Jesus, too. Messiah. Savior. Son of God. Lord. We confess them faithfully, and still the living Christ can surprise us, challenge us, and draw us beyond what we thought we understood.

We can recognize Jesus in a Gospel story and struggle to recognize him in the person standing before us. We can admire his patience with difficult people while quietly hoping he will understand why we have run out of patience when in the same spot. We can celebrate his welcome and then hesitate when someone needs room in our own lives.

Our baptismal promise gives us a practice for that hesitation: seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Seek means there is looking to do. There is attention to offer, a story to hear, a judgment to reconsider. The neighbor bears a dignity we did not give them and therefore cannot take away.

That neighbor might be the person beside us in this church. It might be someone whose needs interrupt our plans, someone whose politics bewilder us, or someone we have already decided is impossible. We may encounter Christ through a kindness they offer us, too. Sometimes our difficulty is admitting that the person we have dismissed has something holy to give.

And somewhere in all this talk about loving everyone, there is a person we can easily overlook. “Love your neighbor,” Jesus says, “as yourself.” Yourself. The person whose limitations you know so well, whose mistakes you can replay without prompting, whose needs you keep moving to the bottom of the list.

If everything belongs to God, you belong to God, too. Your tired body belongs to God. Your anxious mind belongs to God. The part of you that believes you ought to be handling everything better is already held within God’s love.

That does not mean we have to achieve perfect self-love before we can care for anyone else. Thank goodness. It does mean we cannot assume that everyone deserves tenderness except us. The love Jesus commands includes the person we are.

So here is a question worth carrying into this week: What would it look like to love myself as someone God loves? Sometimes that might mean making a difficult change or asking for help. Sometimes it might mean going to bed, sometimes it might mean soaking up one more moment of joy. It may mean taking a walk, making something for the sheer joy of it, or allowing a friend to listen. 

Rest has a place in a life offered to God. So does delight. We do not have to justify every good gift by explaining how it will make us more productive tomorrow. God loves the person who receives the gift. FULL STOP.

The psalmist here in Psalm 90 gives us a prayer for that receiving: “Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning.” Before we consider what we can even accomplish today, we recognize fulfillment in God’s love. We bring our hunger, our limitations, and our hope that the work of our hands might become fruitful.

That is a prayer we can bring into all parts of our life, including our financial stewardship season. Here at Holy Apostles, our theme is “Plenty Good Room.” Our pledges matter. They help sustain the worship, care, formation, and service through which this community makes room for people to encounter Christ.

God’s invitation to love reaches through those pledges into the whole of our lives. What are we doing with the gifts entrusted to us? What patterns help us become generous? Where might our time, our money, our abilities, and our attention serve the love of God and neighbor?

God’s claim upon our whole lives can sound overwhelming, especially when so much is already being asked of us. But look at the Jesus who speaks these words. Within days, he will embody them through his Passion. His love for God and neighbor will carry him into the heart of the suffering of the world, and through his death and resurrection God will open a future that human violence cannot close.

The one calling us into love is already giving himself to us. We are learning to receive his life and participate in it. Around this table, we come with empty hands. Christ feeds us, gathers us into his body, and sends us to love. 

I am grateful I passed those ordination examinations at the end of seminary. I am more grateful that God has kept teaching me since. Often the lesson comes through someone I did not expect, in a moment I would not have chosen, with an invitation I am still learning to accept.

We know the answer to the lawyer’s question: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself. This week, may we receive that love deeply enough to practice it. May someone encounter its tenderness through us. And may we have the grace to recognize it when someone offers it to us. Amen.