The following is the link to our reading this morning:
Matthew 22:34-46
He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Love. It is a word that we use all the time. I love your dress. I love chocolate. I love you. I typed the word into Google and got 7,170,000,000 results. We heard it twice this morning in our Gospel reading. It is a common word, a well-known word, but what does it mean? What is love?
It is difficult to define isn’t it? It is so familiar, so commonplace to use the word, and yet saying what love is so very difficult. It is almost impossible to define. And after thousands of years of working on love, it never seems to come any easier for us. It can be hard to love those people we want to love—our family and friends. These people should be easy to love. But often we don’t show them love. And now in our Gospel reading for today we have Jesus telling us that we are to love not only those we want to love, but also we are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. And by the way—our neighbor is not just the person who lives next door to us, or just the people we live with, or just the people we like. Our neighbor is any human being our life touches. Our neighbor is not just those people physically close to us. Our neighbor is in the car in the lane next to us who we cut off when changing lanes on the highway. Our neighbor is the person working in a call center in India who takes our customer service call at 2 am in the morning. Our neighbor is the Chinese woman who works 12 hour days in a disgusting sweatshop to sew together the pants we are wearing. And Jesus says we are supposed to show to all these people and to God this word that we can barely define.
Love. It is a word that we use all the time. I love your dress. I love chocolate. I love you. I typed the word into Google and got 7,170,000,000 results. We heard it twice this morning in our Gospel reading. It is a common word, a well-known word, but what does it mean? What is love?
It is difficult to define isn’t it? It is so familiar, so commonplace to use the word, and yet saying what love is so very difficult. It is almost impossible to define. And after thousands of years of working on love, it never seems to come any easier for us. It can be hard to love those people we want to love—our family and friends. These people should be easy to love. But often we don’t show them love. And now in our Gospel reading for today we have Jesus telling us that we are to love not only those we want to love, but also we are to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. And by the way—our neighbor is not just the person who lives next door to us, or just the people we live with, or just the people we like. Our neighbor is any human being our life touches. Our neighbor is not just those people physically close to us. Our neighbor is in the car in the lane next to us who we cut off when changing lanes on the highway. Our neighbor is the person working in a call center in India who takes our customer service call at 2 am in the morning. Our neighbor is the Chinese woman who works 12 hour days in a disgusting sweatshop to sew together the pants we are wearing. And Jesus says we are supposed to show to all these people and to God this word that we can barely define.
So what are we to do? Well, first of all I think we need to come to a realization that the love that Jesus is referring to is not a feeling. Loving God with all our heart, soul and mind and loving our neighbor as ourselves is not a vague warm feeling toward God and others, but is instead a pattern of action. When Jesus says to “love your neighbor as yourself,” he was essentially saying, treat those around you and all people who touch your life as you would treat your own flesh and blood. If you wouldn’t cut your mother or your son off when changing lanes, then don’t cut anyone else off. If you wouldn’t make your husband or your daughter work slave hours in filthy conditions to make you a pair of pants, then don’t make someone else do that for you either.
Perhaps the best definition of love is that love is thinking of someone outside of ourselves and putting that thinking into action. Real love always involves some sacrifice. Now, I want to add a little aside here. Sometimes we Christians confuse sacrifice with bad boundaries or behaving like a doormat. Real love doesn’t mean that we allow people to mistreat, abuse us or take advantage of us. Real love does not mean that we tolerate bad behavior. Sometimes real love is saying to someone—I won’t allow you to treat me this way anymore, or I will no longer tolerate your behavior—it is hurting you and others. But real love does involve some sacrifice. Let’s look again at the examples I already gave. Maybe I am driving too fast down the highway because I am running late and have a meeting to get to. I cut the person off in the lane next to me because they are going five miles below the speed limit and I just want to get around them. True love would call me to set my impatience aside and drive in a safe manner, waiting to pass until it is safe to do so. Or the example of the pants sewer in China—it is natural to want to own as many pants as I can and therefore it is natural to want to get a deal on pants—to find the cheapest pair possible. But what if, instead of owning many cheap pairs of pants, I did some research, discovered the labor practices of the various companies that make pants, and only bought pants made by companies with fair and safe labor practices? I might then own fewer pairs of pants, but I would be showing love for my neighbor in China. Real love is hard. Real love takes time and effort. Real love requires us to put someone else’s needs before our own.
The supreme example of love is Jesus Christ. God sent his son Jesus because he loved us. Throughout the Gospels we see example upon example of love in Jesus’ life. He stands up for the poor and the outcast. He heals the sick. He eats with those whom society says he shouldn’t eat. He challenges those in power whose actions are keeping the poor, poor—the sick, sick—the outcast, outcast. And it is for all these sacrificial loving actions that he is killed. Jesus was no doormat. Nobody abused or stepped on him. But he consistently put other’s needs before his own. And he did this to the very end. Jesus was killed because he stood up for the least—because he stood up and challenged those in power on behalf of those who had no power. And Jesus calls us to love our neighbor with that same kind of love—with a love that is made up of action not feelings. Jesus loved us human beings when we didn’t deserve his love, when we weren’t too loveable, simply because we needed his love. This is true love. This is God’s love. It is about giving without expecting to get anything in return. It is especially to love when you don’t have cozy, warm feelings in your heart toward that other person. It is to love when you don’t even know the other person and to love them when loving them will cause you to have to change yourself or something in your own life.
The supreme example of love is Jesus Christ. God sent his son Jesus because he loved us. Throughout the Gospels we see example upon example of love in Jesus’ life. He stands up for the poor and the outcast. He heals the sick. He eats with those whom society says he shouldn’t eat. He challenges those in power whose actions are keeping the poor, poor—the sick, sick—the outcast, outcast. And it is for all these sacrificial loving actions that he is killed. Jesus was no doormat. Nobody abused or stepped on him. But he consistently put other’s needs before his own. And he did this to the very end. Jesus was killed because he stood up for the least—because he stood up and challenged those in power on behalf of those who had no power. And Jesus calls us to love our neighbor with that same kind of love—with a love that is made up of action not feelings. Jesus loved us human beings when we didn’t deserve his love, when we weren’t too loveable, simply because we needed his love. This is true love. This is God’s love. It is about giving without expecting to get anything in return. It is especially to love when you don’t have cozy, warm feelings in your heart toward that other person. It is to love when you don’t even know the other person and to love them when loving them will cause you to have to change yourself or something in your own life.