Indianapolis First Friends
Pastor Bob Henry
October 18, 2020
Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV)
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 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.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Last week, we talked about Bishop John Shelby Spong’s concept, “Love Wastefully” and it has prompted many thoughts and conversations this week. It also had me returning and digging a little deeper into the biblical concepts of love and how Jesus transformed the Jewish idea of love into a foundational aspect of our faith.
For many of us, the passage Beth just read, is quite familiar. It is considered both a summary and a link that connects us to our beginnings.
You may be unaware that those words are a continuation of what our Jewish sisters and brothers refer to as the Great Shema from the Torah, or more specifically Deuteronomy 6.
If you are not familiar with the Great Shema from the Jewish faith, it is considered the centerpiece of the daily morning and evening prayer and is also considered by some the most essential prayer in all of Judaism. So much so, most Jews consider it a command.
This means, to fully understand this text, we must see it through Jewish eyes.
To a Jew of Jesus’ day when hearing the lawyer ask Jesus his question, they would have heard him ask it in the language of their culture, something of this nature:
"Rabbi, what is your yoke?" or "Rabbi, what is your interpretation of Torah?"
Basically, the lawyer wanted to know Jesus' "bottom line," his summary of the Torah.
For us it may be like asking for 25 words or less on the overall theme of the Bible?
In some ways, it was kind of a trick question - as a good Jew himself, Jesus would have been expected to answer with the Great Shema.
Which as I read it for you this morning, you will remember hearing it in Jesus’ answer.
Here is how the Great Shema from Deuteronomy 6 reads:
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.[a] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem[b] on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
But Jesus didn’t leave well enough alone (as we say) - he went a little further and made a modification or actually an addition - he added to the Great Shema.
This would have been quite problematic for the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and ours.
Not only did he speak the familiar words about loving God, but he went on and added a second greatest commandment.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Now, that addition probably came as a shock to the lawyer. He definitely got what he wanted -- but then got a little bit more.
What Jesus did was not simply expand the Great Shema but make it more practical - more tangible.
Jesus’s answer to how the Torah is summed up is living a life loving God with every part of your being in response to God's grace.
And how is that love for God best expressed...in loving our neighbor!
For those who appreciated the wisdom of Sesame Street, Jesus was saying... you can’t have one without the other.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves is how we live out the love of God in and through our lives - and I would go one step further and say it is also how God loves us - through our neighbors.
This sounds rather Quaker-like – if we embrace that of God in our neighbor.
Ronald Rolheiser expresses this concept well, he says,
“The God of the incarnation tells us that anyone who says that he or she loves an invisible God in heaven and is unwilling to deal with a visible neighbor on earth is a liar since no one can love a God who cannot be seen if he or she cannot love a neighbor who can be seen. Hence a Christian spirituality is always as much about dealing with each other as it is about dealing with God.”
And that is because when we are dealing with our neighbor – we are dealing with that of God in them.
During these challenging times, I continue to return to the book, “The Rebirthing of God” by John Philip Newell. This time, I found his chapter on “Reconnecting with Love” very insightful.
In this chapter he introduces the reader to someone he considers one of the greatest prophets of love in the modern world, Simone Weil (said Veil).
“She was a philosopher, mystic, and a political activist. As a French Jew, she saw the Nazi occupation of her homeland, fleeing Paris...only hours before German forces laid siege to the capital. Eventually, she set sail from the south of France to find exile in the United States and then in Britain.”
Newell points out that “Weil believed that the universe is essentially a vibration of God. Drawing on her Jewish inheritance, she saw everything as spoken into being by God. At the heart of that divine utterance is the sound or vibration of love.”
I know I have shared this before, but this week it seemed even more relevant as we explored “Loving Wastefully” which last week I said was to love and then love some more.
This is what Jesus was trying to do when moving from the Great Shema to a more meaningful and fuller understanding of the importance of love for all. He was expanding the concept of love more broadly and fully.
This vibration of God, as Weil describes it, allows us to see the universe as an “expression of love” and then everything in the “universe is essentially a means to love.”
Now, stop right there. Ponder that for a moment...The entire universe is a means to love - a sounding board vibrating God’s love to us at every moment.
Now, some of you are saying...that is not my experience? The universe is vibrating all kinds of things back at me on a daily basis.
But take a moment and think of it as Newell describes Weil’s understanding,
“The rising sun is a means to love, as is the whiteness of the moon at night. Every life-form, the shape of the weeping willow by the distant pond, the song of the robin in the hedgerow, the light in the eyes of every creature -- all these are means to love. I am a means to love, as are you, your children, and your nation.”
Spong said Love is the force that enhances life. Weil says, Love is the virbration of the universe that we are experiencing all around us.
It may take some adjusting in our minds, but it was a Buddhist writer that helped me see my neighbor as not just the people who live around me or for that matter just people, rather our neighbors are all kinds of living beings - animals (domestic and wild), trees and plants, the food and animals we eat, our earth and atmosphere and ozone….etc…
Boy, did that change and expand how I saw my neighbor being a means of love and enhancer of life.
I have to ask myself, am I treating animals, my gardens, the spaces I occupy on this earth in a loving manner and I allowing them to be a means of love? Do I love them as I would want to be loved?
We often talk about being stewards of the earth - but how are we really treating ALL of our neighbors. Maybe the reason we are not experiencing the vibration of God in the world is because we are not loving God and his creation fully and especially not the way we, ourselves, want to be treated.
And if we are only talking about our neighbor as people, maybe we are getting in the way of loving our neighbor.
I am reminded of Nelson Mandela’s famous quote.
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Love was Jesus’ bottom line, because God’s bottom line is love, and as Nelson Mandela seems to imply - so is our bottom line. It is the force that enhances life. It is vibrating around and from us.
Just imagine...instead of the things we so easily get focused on in this world, what if we were looking for the love of God vibrating in our universe?
What if we were looking first at where God’s love was vibrating from us and back to us?
Sadly, I often choose not to see or sense those “vibrations” in our universe.
Too often I focus on the distractions - those other things - and then miss the opportunities all around me to experience or even acknowledge that amazing love vibrating in my daily life from the people, creation, and universe I am surrounded by.
This week I have been taking an intentional inventory of the places where I sensed these “vibrations” in my universe - where what I experienced was a means of love from God and I took a moment to snap a photo.
To lead us into waiting worship, I want to share some of those photos in silence for us to ponder. I hope you will feel the vibrations of love and that it will continue to be a force to enhance your life. I believe the more we sense the power of love around us – the more we will be willing to “Love Wastefully!”
Enjoy these photos and I pray they will help you center down on the love surrounding you, today.
