Back to Basics

In today’s lesson, Jesus is asked to name the greatest commandment, and his answer is one of the “basics” of Christian faith.  What might it teach us today …?

Back to Basics

Psalm 90:1-6, 12-17; Matthew 22:34-40

In the seventeen years I have been preaching regularly, I have probably written sermons on this text a dozen times. And as I thought back over those sermons, they all said pretty much the same thing: loving God and your neighbor is a lot harder than it sounds.

That’s pretty much what I am going to say this morning, too,

because this text is so well known and so often quoted that it is easy to forget how radical and demanding it really is. I do not recall whether it was my Presbyterian Sunday School teacher or my Methodist grandmother who had me memorize this when I was a child, but along with John 3:16 and the 23^rd Psalm, this is one of the few pieces of scripture that I brought with me to adulthood.

I remember thinking about when I was in college, taking a senior seminar on Psychology and Religion. One of the topics we spent time on was “situation ethics.” The intervening 40 years have dulled my memory on the details of the theology – but what I do remember was that situation ethics did not offer permission to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. Instead, it recognized that no system of rules, laws, or principles can ever anticipate all of the ethical and moral decisions we will be called upon to make in our lives, and so we need to fall back, always, on the question of what action will show the greatest love.

That long-ago discussion has stayed with me, I think, because time and again I have encountered situations where no system of ethics was really very helpful – usually because two or more values that I held were on opposite sides of the decision. For example, when my children were growing up, I wanted to protect them from making mistakes, but I also wanted them to learn from their mistakes.

Moreover, I have also learned that I sometimes fail to understand exactly what is at stake – especially when I am watching other people make decisions and choose actions. When I first heard the story of Joseph Lee Heywood giving his life in the Northfield Bank Raid, I confess that my thought was that I was not very sympathetic to sacrificing human life for money. Then I heard a talk by Lynn Wilmot at a Defeat Days event, and realized that at the time, the money in First National Bank was not just money – it was the lifeblood of the young community. In a very real way, Mr. Heywood’s sacrifice was about people, and only secondarily about the money.

I think that people in our branch of Christianity (usually labeled liberal or progressive) tend to gravitate toward the second part of the great commandment – the part about loving our neighbors as our selves. In particular, we focus on the loving our neighbors. Which I entirely support. In fact, loving our neighbors – all of our neighbors – is precisely the thought I hope everyone takes with them when they go into the voting booth next week.

But as I say that, I want you to remember that loving your neighbors, and putting their welfare on a par with your own welfare, is a radical and counter-cultural idea. Our twenty-first century American culture is firmly rooted in free-market economics – and not just for money. The underlying assumption is that if everyone looks out for herself or himself, the common good will be served. In the past few weeks, we have seen the demonstration of the failure of that philosophy in the financial markets, and Christians believe that it is equally flawed in every other aspect of our common life. Looking out for oneself is not an adequate basis on which to build community – whether we are talking about the micro-community of households, the small communities of churches, neighborhoods, and cities, or even the world-wise community of all humanity. Self-interest is now enough.

Conversely, a focus on others is also not enough. I find myself often reminding people I am counseling that Jesus said “love your neighbor as yourself,” not “instead of,” “more than,” “before,” or “more compassionately” than yourself. Including our needs in our circle of concern is not selfish or unchristian. In harsh terms, it is as sensible and necessary as changing the oil in your car or washing your clothes.

If the second of these commandments is easier for most of us, it follows that the first – and greatest – commandment is the one that makes us squirm a little bit. In our tradition, we do not regularly and comfortably use the language of loving God or loving Jesus. When we do, we usually talk about showing our love for God – in all of God’s Trinitarian forms – by doing God’s work. And surely our acts of justice, charity, healing, and reconciliation are ways that we express our love for God. I think that if the Great commandments had been written by people from the United Church of Christ, it would include not only heart, soul, and mind, but also feet, hands, and ballots.

In fact, if I were going to suggest a voter’s guide for UCC voters, I would name precisely these Great commandments. There can be no more faithful way to evaluate candidates than by the extent of their commitment to loving neighbors as themselves. Here again, this is not as easy as it sounds: there are many ways to love neighbors, and people of faith and good will often disagree about the best and most appropriate way to do that. Moreover, no political candidate is inclined to say that she/he doesn’t care about some particular group (“Wall Street” being a current exception). Often the best estimate we can get of this quality in candidates for public office to look at the way that they treat the needs of people on the margins of our society: the very old and the very young, the chronically ill and the differently-abled, the victims of injustice and the perpetrators of injustice – who are often also victims. In the policies and plans for these vulnerable neighbors, we get a glimpse of the breadth of vision and caring that someone brings to public service.

Having said that, I want to return to the challenge of loving God – not just in the love we show in our actions, but also beyond it. This is the matter traditionally known as piety – and like many words in Christian tradition, it has come to have a bad reputation. When most of us think of piety, we think of “false piety;” in our mind’s eye we see someone prim and probably judgmental, someone who displays faith in a way that makes us embarrassed or uncomfortable.

At its heart, however, piety reflects our practice of nurturing our relationship with all that is holy. I have spoken many times about the importance of spiritual practices – prayer in its many forms, reading and study, meditation, individual and group reflection. On the one hand, I want that list to be as broad and inclusive as possible, because I believe that there are many ways to become close to God and stay close to God. On the other hand, I don’t want the list to be so broad that it makes you think that whatever you are doing that gives you a warm spiritual feeling is necessarily a spiritual discipline that will deepen your faith and move you along your spiritual journey. My favorite example is the person who testifies to feeling closest to God in a beautiful outdoor location. That’s a blessing to that person, of course. But unless that person uses that connection to be more than appreciation for their own favorite landscape, it is not really an effective way of living out a loving relationship with God. That’s why it is important – even for those who find God especially accessible in the wilderness – to also be part of a community in which both divine and human connections are nurtured, and in which those connections are seen as the beginning of faith, and not the end.

Perhaps you, like me, memorized these words when you were a child; perhaps not. Either way, I hope that you will carry them with you; they are, after all, the basics.

Amen.

Prayer for October 26, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

Gracious and Loving God, we bring before you this morning the prayers that we cannot bring ourselves to say aloud.

We pray for ourselves and our loved ones who are tormented by addictions and alcoholism …

We pray for ourselves and our neighbors who are embroiled in conflict, violence, or abuse.

We pray for ourselves and our community in the face of civic controversies and breakdowns in decision making ..

We pray for ourselves and our neighbors who grieve, whether the loss is the death of a loved one, the ending of a dream, the passing of an opportunity, or the hope of a change …

We pray for ourselves and others whose financial situation is precarious …

We pray for ourselves and our neighbors who suffer from despair, anxiety, and depression …

We pray for the leaders of our nation, of whom we expect so much and towards whom we forgive so little ..

And we pray for healing from the secret wounds that only you can see in our hearts.

All these things we pray in the name of the one to whom all hearts are open, even Jesus the Christ, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ..

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