Proper 25 --Exodus 22:21–27; Psalm 1; I Thessalonians 2:1–8; Matthew 22:34–46
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, October 26th, 2008
“Class, it’s a pleasure to do theology!”
You’ve heard me say before that that was the way one of my theology professors in seminary started every class session….A distinguished-looking man, always impeccably dressed in black, with a broad clerical collar, a pressed handkerchief in his left outside pocket, and often wearing a Homberg hat, he would grin widely at us as he said these words, “Class, it’s a pleasure to do theology!”
So, let’s do some theology this morning….
Theology that has to do with love, and particularly that part of the matter of love that shows us who God is, how God loves us (because we’re worth it), and how we can imitate that love by giving that love back to God, and to others.
For that is the subject of the first part of today’s Gospel reading….Having silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees now step forward one more time, seeking to test Jesus. They ask him, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
In response, Jesus summarizes the whole of the Law of Moses in these very familiar words (which we hear at the beginning of our service of Holy Communion),[1] “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 a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
In essence, what Jesus is doing by responding in this way is to summarize the Ten Commandments. For the first four of those ten commandments have to do with the way we behave toward and regard God. The remaining six commandments have to do with the way we behave toward and regard our neighbors.
So, Jesus says, there are three objects of our love: God, others, and ourselves.
But, we must acknowledge that many people do not love God, do not love their neighbors, and certainly don’t love themselves. In connection with this point, we also ought to admit that unless a person has a healthy love of self (as distinguished from an unhealthy preoccupation with self), it’s nearly impossible to love God or to love others.
So, let’s begin our study of the theology of love by looking at the bonds of love that tie together the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. Then, let’s look at the ways we know God’s love for us, so that we can imitate God’s love by loving God in return, by loving our neighbors, and by loving ourselves.
We begin with the Holy Trinity….Theologians often describe the three Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in terms of love: They say that the Trinity is bound together by the forces of pure love….That is, the Father loves the Son perfectly, the Son loves the Father perfectly, the Holy Spirit loves the Father, and loves the Son, and so forth. It is love that binds the three persons of the Godhead together.
I must say, I don’t often think of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, in those terms.
But I like the description very much…..Perfect love, which is surely the most powerful force in the universe.
But the Holy Trinity’s love relationship isn’t simply focused on itself.
No, the Father doesn’t just love the Father, and doesn’t just love the Son and the Holy Spirit (and so forth). The Father also loves us!
We are folded into the relationship of love, taken up into the divine life (as theologians often describe it). God seeks to wrap us up into the life of love that the Father shares with the Son, and which the other two Persons of the Trinity share with each other.
How can we know that this is so?
By the ways in which God acts (which is, by the way, the way in which we get to know anything and anyone, by the actions we witness[2]).
God has created and given to us this wonderful world. Though it is marred now by the presence of sin and wickedness, it remains a wonderful place, a place that God called “good”.[3]
But God also has a wonderful habit of saving people….Again and again, God saves people….The Old Testament is full of such examples: Think of Noah and the Great Flood, for example. Consider the leadership of Moses, who led God’s Chosen People out of bondage in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land. Remember the great prophets of old who, time and again, warned God’s people to return to a genuine love of Him, and to turn away from idols.
In the fullness of time, God the Father sent God the Son to save us. Here, we see the perfect image of God the Father, in Jesus Christ, His Son and our Lord. Jesus says in John 14: 8, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
God’s love is most perfectly seen in Jesus Christ, His person and His work. From Jesus’ work and Jesus’ character, we can see that God’s love is a self-giving, self-emptying sort of love. The sort of love that the Greeks would describe with the word agape, that sort of love which seeks the welfare of others, even to the detriment of self.
We see agape love most clearly in the image of the cross….Here, Jesus empties Himself of everything, and does so out of love for us.
So, God’s love is always moving outward, toward others, seeking the other. God could have turned His back on us, and simply walked away from the human race. But God doesn’t do that. He constantly, again and again, reaches out to us, reaches out of love for the human beings He created.
How might we then, respond to God’s love?
We should begin with a healthy love of ourselves….You see, God loved us, even in our sinful and fallen state….In truth, none of us, by virtue of our inability to live the way God intended us to live, are worthy of God’s love.
But Holy Scripture says that “God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”[4]
You see, God’s love bridges the gap between His holiness and our un-holiness.
For the God we love and worship is a God who is more holy than we can ever imagine, yet more willing to love us in spite of our sinfulness and waywardness, and all at the same time!
Moreover, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That’s St. Paul’s point as he writes in Romans 8: 38, which chronicles a whole list of awful things that we might think would separate us from God and God’s love. But, Paul concludes, “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God’s love for us is perfect, and it is a love that casts out fear entirely. Hear what we read in I John 4: 18, which says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.”
If we understand and accept at the deepest levels of our hearts the reality that God loves us, not because we deserve it, but because God made each of us intentionally to be in a love relationship with Him, we can begin to love ourselves because God loves us.
We are of infinite value to God! Each one of us is worth more than we could ever describe to God!
And so, we respond to God’s love. We return to I John 4: 19, where we read, “We love, because God first loved us.”
Today’s text calls us to a critical and deep self-evaluation:
- Do we love ourselves? (I am not talking about self-absorption, but a healthy love of self with affects how we regard ourselves and our individual self-worth.)
- Are we then able to love others? (For if we do not have a healthy understanding of our own value in God’s eyes, then we cannot love others.)
- Do we love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds?
For, you see, God’s love is the sort of love that reaches out to others, seeks an object for that sort of love. God seeks us out, in order to fold us into the equation of love that holds the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together in perfect unity.
May we come to the place where we accept God’s self-giving love for us more and more, that we may, in turn, love ourselves, love others, and love God.
AMEN.
[1] Known as the Summary of the Law, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 324
[2] Think, for example, of a person who is applying for a job….the person offers references who can verify the past actions they have taken which witness to the person’s character and the person’s ability to do the work being applied for.
[3] Genesis 1: 31
[4] Romans 5: 8
