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Pentecost 19/Proper 25
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10/23/2011
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1
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Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
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1 Thess. 2:1-13
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Matthew 22:34-46
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Grace,
Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen. Our text today is the Gospel lesson that was
just read, especially these words, “You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love you neighbor as yourself.” Thus far our text.
Dear
friends in Christ. In our text today,
Jesus tells us how we might fulfill the law, and the answer he gives us is
love. Love God with all your heart your
soul and your mind. Love your neighbor
as you love even your own self. If you
do these things, you will fulfill God’s law, and fulfill it perfectly.
It
sounds easy doesn’t it? And it is what
we want to do in our lives too right? I
can do what God wants. I can love the
people who are around me, and I certainly can love God. How hard could it be? But the truth is, it is hard. The truth is we can’t and don’t want to
fulfill this law of love that Jesus speaks of in our text today. We don’t love the people that are around us,
and we don’t really love our God either.
Love
is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another
person. To love our neighbor we need to
feel tender compassion for them, we need to have affection from them. But instead we don’t even like being around
the people we know best. We have
fighting and bickering in our families.
Neighbors yell at neighbors for silly things like the way they keep up
their yard or the loud noise that is made at what I deem to be too late a
time. We scornfully talk about the
problems that other people are having in their day to day lives openly, not
affectionately. We gossip about people,
we tell lies about people, and worst of all we work to always put other people
down, and to put ourselves in the advantaged position.
We
like putting others down don’t we? We
like to put others down, because then we feel better about ourselves. But friends, this is not love for our neighbor. This is not what Jesus has in mind in our
text. This is the opposite. Instead we love our neighbors less than we
love ourselves. Much less. And friends, according to Jesus, this is the
second most important law in scripture, the most important is to love God with
all our hearth, all our soul, and all our mind.
And
this first important law is even harder than the first. It is hard for us to be affectionate towards
a God that we really can’t see. It is
hard to care about a God who sometimes seems to let all sorts of trouble befall
us. We struggle with sickness and
disease, and we wonder, are you there Lord?
Are you taking care of us? We
have friends and family that we actually love the most die, and we get angry at
God for allowing them to leave. We find
all sorts of other things to do on a Sunday morning, during Bible Study, during
voter’s meetings, during any church event.
This
is not love for God with all our heart and minds. Once again, this is love for our self. Imagine you were in God’s shoes, and people
were telling you the excuses that we tell God.
“I have a hair appointment, and can’t make it on Sunday. I can’t hang out with you, because I am extra
tired this morning. I have a little too
much on my plate now Lord. How about
later?” We don’t like being friends with
people who always have excuses, why should God be any different?
But
friends, God is different. He does
things differently than we can possibly imagine. Instead of staying angry with us for our own
self-centeredness, he forgives us and loves us the very way that he would have
us love him. He loves each one of you,
more than he loves himself. If you doubt
it, look at what He did for you.
He
left heaven behind for you. There is no
better place than heaven, and Jesus gave it up to come to this crummy little
sinful world because he loves you. He
lived a life here, showing care and compassion for the people who were around
him. He came for the purpose of dying on
an old rugged cross for your sins, for your unlove, for your guilt. He came and died because he loved you. And because he loved you so much, he forgave
you with his own blood.
Scripture
is clear friends, “No greater love is there than this, that one give up his
life for his friends.” And that is
exactly what Jesus did for you. He
bought you, because he loves you, “not with Gold or Silver, but with his holy
innocent suffering and death, so that you might be his own, and live under him
in his kingdom. And in loving you, he
fulfilled the most important law. He
loved his neighbors, and He loved his God.
Now
friends, we are called to love the people around us, and our God. We show compassion on the people we run into
every day. We care about the person who
is struggling, we care about the person who can’t put food on the table. We
give of our time and talents to take care of people. We do all this, because it is precisely what
Christ has done for us. He loved us, and
so we too love.
Love your neighbor as
you love yourself. Its what Jesus has
done for you. Its what we do as
Christians because of Jesus. Amen.
