Latest / Belin Memorial UMC / “The Secret to Love”
Transcript
- Belin Memorial UMC: Feel like to start this with an apology. If you looked up and saw the sermon title and thought you were coming to a seminar on romance, my apologies. My wife would tell you that I'm qualified to speak on a few topics, but that would not be one of them. I have a little bit of experience thinking and talking about other kinds of love. And I think that they are all related. For Jesus' followers, the the way that that Jesus teaches us to love has great impact on romantic love, on familial love, on on neighborly love, love of stranger, love of enemy. Like romantic love. It's never as easy as it looks on T V. It demands something of us. I think there's a secret to our loving well. It's a secret that's hidden in plain sight. It's probably something if someone were to say to you, Tell me how to love better, it's probably somewhere in how you would describe the way you think that would happen, but maybe you wouldn't necessarily use the word. Maybe it's not something you wake up thinking about. I wonder how things would be better if we woke up thinking about how can I love well today? Since since Jesus says that loving God and loving neighbor are the greatest commandments, how can I make this day a day when I love God and love neighbor well? And then because we're the way we are, maybe mid-morning we ask the same question. And by lunchtime, we need to remind ourselves in the afternoon and evening: how can I love God? Well, because Jesus, my Lord, says that loving God and loving neighbor are the greatest commandments. How can I do this? Well It seems like as followers of his. If he says these are the greatest. Then we would want to give attention to how to do it the best we can. I don't think I'll get much resistance to that idea. It's nothing new for you to hear from the church, to hear from the Bible, to hear from fellow believers that loving God and loving neighbor are significant things, significant ways of being active in our faith. It's not new to you, it's not surprising. It's been on your long list. It's been on my long list of things we should probably do a little better at. Things that we keep before ourselves. Eat well, exercise, sleep, manage stress, love God, love neighbor. I know I should be doing this. I'll get around to it when I have more time. It's not that we don't think Jesus commandments to love God and love neighbor are significant, but but there's something that some hidden something that keeps us from consistently doing what God what Jesus commands here. It's like it takes discipline or something. Love takes discipline. Now that's a romantic notion, right? That's not the way the romantic people speak of it. They they they speak of things of feel love and then we'll do love. But the Christian church says, No, we get that wrong. It's actually do love whether we feel it or not. It's why Paul begins his teaching on love, that love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love t Paul does not begin it with I can't help falling in love with Love is hard. It demands attention and and discipline, but but we know that. We understand that. We we know that genuine love is more than a feeling. It's choosing repeatedly, day after day, encounter after encounter, choosing to act in ways that benefit others, sacrificing, serving, honoring, cherishing. We know this is what is expected of us. We know it's something we should do. So the question becomes Is there a secret to help us do this? Help us love better. And what I'm going to tell you is I think there is, and I think Jesus reveals that to us right in the scripture we're going to hear today. Right after telling the Pharisees and the disciples and us that the greatest commandments are to love God and love neighbor, Jesus tells us how. He does so by an illustration. But I've missed it over the years. Maybe you have. I have missed that right after telling us those commandments, Jesus gives us an illustration about how to do that. I've always heard it as two different teachings. Like Jesus answered the Pharisees' question about what are the greatest commandments, and then he turned on to for some reason some other topic altogether. Until recently, when I read Dr. Zina Jackie, who helped me understand that it's not a change in topic, it's an illustration. It's the secret. It's the understanding that helps undergird how we love better. And so, out of reverence for these words that are about Jesus and that are by Jesus, I invite you to stand as you are able to hear. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, an expert in the law, asked Jesus a question to test him, Teacher, which commandment is the greatest in the law? And Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now, while the Pharisees were gathered there, Jesus asked them a question, What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he? They said to him, The son of David. He said to them, How is it then that David, by the Spirit, calls him Lord? saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your feet, your enemies, under your feet. If David thus calls him Lord, How can he be his son? No one was able to give Jesus an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. He may be seated. No one dared ask Jesus any more questions. That is not because they ran out of questions for Jesus. It's because their tests, which were disguised for which they disguised as questions, made Jesus look better than they made themselves look. Like this time, they thought they might trap Jesus with that question. Instead, he gave them an inarguable answer. Out of the six hundred and thirteen laws, you can make a case that they basically fall into two categories. Some of the laws teach us how to love God better, other laws teach us how to love neighbor better. If you're trying to figure out how to summarize the laws, Jesus chose the perfect two ways to do that. His choices were not new, others had made the same observation. In fact, the Jewish faith had elevated one law above the rest. They said it daily throughout the day. The Shema, they they reminded themselves over and over from the scriptures. That hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Daily, daily they would say this, reminding themselves, this is the way we need to live our lives. It is hard to argue that that is not the greatest of the commandments. Followed closely by this teaching from Leviticus, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus' responses were the obvious responses then, there were obvious responses now. This is, these are the greatest commandments. What are the divining characteristics of a person of faith? That he or she loves God and loves neighbor. It's one of the least controversial things Jesus ever said. So you and I we're we're neither offended nor surprised by Jesus saying this. What is surprising and a bit offensive Is that something so fundamental to who we are as people who follow Jesus? The one we call Lord said, these are the greatest commandments of all the commandments. The one that we call Lord said, these are the greatest, and yet we find ourselves struggling to accomplish them. We find these fundamental greatest teachings hard to live out in our lives. And we know there must be a better way. There must be some Secret to loving well. It can't be feeling because you can't be commanded how to feel. You don't feel on command. Besides, we we we have people that we feel really positively toward that we don't always love well. And those that we don't feel positively toward, we still are commanded to love. So it can't be feeling. It can't just be commitment, although that is an essential part of this. A person committed to Jesus is committed to whatever Jesus taught and whatever Jesus did and what Jesus taught and what he did was love others. He wanted good for others, good for his friends, good for his family, good for his strangers, good for the enemy. He wanted And if a disciple does what his leader, his teacher, his lord does, then that's what we want too. I think maybe it's a good time for me to pause and and give it an acknowledgement that that's not easy. Th that wanting good for someone that you don't like might be the first step in this whole process for you. You might be in a relationship that requires you to love from afar. the y you've experienced too many bad choices from this person. Y you've been hurt too many times. You you've seen too little progress and too many manipulative acts out of him. Your first step may be to simply love that person by praying that God will put into your heart a desire for that person to actually have something positive in his or her life. That he might wake up to what's going on, that he might seek out God's purpose for his life and follow it. You might pray for him to want to get to a better place. Your step in loving that person might be simply to pray that God will open your heart to want that for that person. So start there. Grow from there. Grow into the secret to our commitment being more than a superficial acknowledgement that we should probably do better at life. Grow into what is found and what sounds to me or sounded for a long time like a riddle. Jesus asked him, Who is the Messiah? They said to him, the son of David. Jesus said to them, How is it then that David, by the Spirit, calls the Messiah Lord? Saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand. The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son? In other words, if the one who was first The one who had every right to consider himself the most significant, the Messiah of the Messiahs, the one who every cultural and religious expectation, understanding had him as first. If he looked to the one who would come later, the one who everyone thought to be the lesser, and he called him Lord. Well then we have witnessed what is required to love well. David had every right to consider himself the most important, the most revered, and yet out of his love for God and neighbor, before he understood who Jesus was, he called him his Lord and bowed before it. He wrote that in a psalm. The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. David chose to see in the Messiah, the one who coming after him, a greatness and power and authority beyond what he had had. David chose to see in someone that others thought beneath him. Someone greater than him. The Pharisees left that discussion without another word. Not because they didn't have more questions, but because they were unwilling, in Dr. Jackie's words, to do the same thing David did. To subordinate themselves to someone they did not expect to be above them. They struggled to love their neighbor Jesus because they had been formed to believe that their neighbor Jesus was beneath them. And as hard as it is to love everyone, it is very hard to love anyone we think is beneath us. Pity them? Sure. Appreciate their hard work? Okay. Want them to do okay? Just not as good as us, right? What Jesus made clear is to do well, is to love well required of the Pharisees a humility that they had not yet cultivated in their lives. That puts before us the question. Have we cultivated humility in our own lives such that we might love well? H have we wrestled sufficiently with whatever has formed us to think that some people are beneath us? Whatever it is that might make us think that they deserve our pity, maybe our appreciation for their work, perhaps wanting them to do okay, just not as good as us? Have we wrestled with what put us into that position to think that's the way things should be? Can we, with the Apostle Paul, do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than ourselves? Can we, as Paul instructed, look not into our own interests, but into the interests of others? Can we be humble enough to To love like that. Will we with Jesus not just love those who love us? Because as Jesus said, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same. Anybody can love people who love them. It does not take following the God who lived humbly among us, touching the untouchable, washing feet, and praying for his killers while they were killing him to be forgiven. It does not take loving them. It does not take following him to love like that. Anybody can love. People who don't follow God, people who don't believe in God, people who are the most self-centered going out there will be willing to love those who love them. What Jesus is calling us to is something more. What he's calling us to is something more that requires less. Less self centered. The secret to love is humility. When I think of people who have cultivated humility in their lives, it is obvious to me that they believe God when God says that everyone is created in God's image. That they look around and they see others and and it's not just the privileged and it's not just the attractive and it's not just the holy and it's not just the nice that they believe everyone is created in God's image. And then there those who cultivate humility, they are bold enough to believe that God, when God says that He loves everyone, loves everyone, not just the ones that are easy to love, that God does indeed love everyone. And they somehow they've come to the place to believe that if that is true of God, if if how God sees others and how God treats others is through love and mercy, and as people created in God's image, that if that is how God God sees them then they are called to to see people that way. They also know. A critical step in cultivating humility, they also are able to look at their own lives and realize that they have fallen short, that all have fallen short. And humbled by their own imperfection and grateful by for the grace that they have received, they feel called to show grace. What they do is resist the gravitational pull that is in all of us. The gravitational pull to make everything about ourselves. They resist that in such a way that they are able to stop keeping score about how many rights they have done and how many wrongs the others have done. They stop that gravitational pull so that they no longer are looking to see what they can find against somebody else, but looking to see the one who has found in them. An opportunity to show grace and mercy and love. They keep their eyes on Jesus who makes life about him and others. The one who chose, Jesus, who chose to come into our imperfect world in our imperfect lives among our imperfect people and to listen to us and to find good in us and to honor us despite who we are and how we are. Those who cultivate humility know that the one who was above all others. Jesus chose to come to be among all others. He made time for us and he showed us respect and washed our feet and died for us. And they look at him and they think, if he is willing to do that, are we not also called to love like that? They know that Jesus' secret to loving well is cultivating humility, that he chose to regard others as better than himself, and they ask the question, it's a question we should ask too. If he was willing to do it, who are we not to? Jesus who's above all others. He willing to humble himself to show grace to all. To want good for all. Love. Really not. Lord, who did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. But instead humbled yourself to come among us. Who loved us so much you were willing to walk in our dust, touch those others avoided, see past flaws and into hearts, give fresh starts, forgive awful acts, love even when your mercy and kindness and truth was met by hate. Help us. We know your teaching that the greatest commandments are to love you, love God, love neighbor. We know that. So awaken within us whatever it is that we need to see, that we need to know, help us to see what keeps us from fulfilling your commands. Lord, if it's arrogance, humble us. If it's stubbornness, move us. If it's selfishness, help us to see your call to be beyond self. If it's indifference or inattention, call our attention back. Whatever it is, by your Holy Spirit, redeem us of it and humble us until we love more fully, until we love more like you. Help us to make loving God and loving neighbor our day's priority. In your love, by your spirit, we pray for those who are difficult to love. Pray also for places where love is hard to see. Bring peace to this world. Move in the minds and hearts of leaders that a just peace can come for the people of Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Gaza, Iran and the US. Wherever there is suffering from violence, from loneliness, from physical and mental health struggles, from grief, we pray that your healing spirit and merciful presence will be known. We ask it. We ask all things through you. Praying as you taught. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power of the Glory.