SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON OCTOBER 26th, 2008
Matthew 22: 37-39
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind….and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the movie Mama Mia. It was a double pleasure because I had missed the stage show, even though I could have seen it in London or Australia, or even San Diego. I really enjoyed it – and like many of my generation the music of Abba has been in my head ever since. I’ll be walking to church over the Washington Street pedestrian bridge and suddenly I will be humming one of those wonderful tunes!
Of course I’m from the generation that believes it had the best music. Each generation has its particular music – recently I had coffee with the daughter of one of my best friends, and we were talking about movies we liked. I confessed to having a liking for The X-Files and she said: “Does your music extend that far?” I said, No, it stops at the 80’s!
As a teenager in the 60’s I was to be exposed to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to Sony and Cher and Neil Diamond, to the Beach Boys and Woodstock. Ah Woodstock – my younger brother thought he was a hippie for awhile! Free love was in the air wasn’t it?
The theme song of that era was the Beatles – “All you need is love“. That’s what we thought – that all you needed was love. But it was a love that lacked depth and scrutiny. It could include everything you wanted – that was why it was so good – but it could also include nothing. And in keeping with that generation there was no authority, no rules.
As an idea love is very appealing. But as Charlie Brown once said: “I love mankind, it’s people I cannot stand!”
Jesus spoke about love quite a lot, sometimes in unusual ways. In Matthew 22 we have one of his most famous sayings – a statement in response to a question. And it was a trick question to catch him out. His response comes in the form of a commandment about love, and he says there are just two.
This is not a love about feelings, or being nice – not even “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. And it is in two parts – two equal parts that cannot be separated. And the second depends on the first.
Jesus is using two basic Old Testament statements. He says that at the heart of Christian living is this stark truth: “Love God, and love your neighbour”.
Jesus starts with loving God and defines it. He says it’s about heart, soul, mind. So let us look at these three.
Loving God with all our heart – it speaks of emotion.
We here at All Saints’ are more enthusiastic, I think, than many Episcopalians. We love coming together for Mass; we love our worship and its tradition; we embrace new people and welcome them; we get rather excited about being All Saints’, San Diego.
Nevertheless we do lack the fervour that you would find at a Black Baptist Church or a Pentecostal meeting. Our services are not punctuated with cries of “Hallelujah” or “Amen, Brother”. And just as well, as I would get rather embarrassed, as enthusiastic as I am!
Originally the word “enthusiasm” was an insult. It meant literally “possessed by a god”. And you can see how some might appear possessed by a God in their enthusiasm.
Some of the great saints in our church calendar were full of enthusiasm and fire. We don’t see that, for conveniently the Church often directed them to religious orders far away where they could be quiet – like Saint Francis of Assisi, whose enthusiasm was channeled into a Religious Order which still exists today.
Even for the enthusiastic, however, love from the heart can fade, or become sentimental. So Jesus says that as well as loving God with our heart, we must also love God with all our soul.
The soul – it’s not easy to define or describe is it? Scripture refers to the depths of the soul. Out of the depths our souls cry to the Lord, the Psalmist says.
This deep experience from the depths of the soul is familiar to all of us – and a profound love of God can come out of those deep experiences of life. The soul not only knows the depths, it knows the heights. It knows those incredible moments of bliss – what Scripture calls “unspeakable joys“. The love of another person can do that to us, both the depths and the heights. And when it does, it makes us aware of the gravity of love, how deep and how broad it can be.
If human love can do that, then surely the love of God can do much more. But deep love which never looks outward can be both self-absorbing and self-indulgent.
So a profound love of God, like emotional love from the heart, is not enough – we must love God also with all our mind.
This appeals to many Episcopalians. We enjoy discussions about God, and the finer points of Doctrine, and we like to argue about councils, and statements, and bishops. Or perversely, some Episcopalians will jettison the Creeds and any notion of Dogma. Episcopalians also get very excited about morality, and what the love of God allows or disallows in personal behaviour.
Our boast as Episcopalians is that, unlike some Christians, we don’t leave our mind behind when we enter the church door on Sunday. We are thinking Christians.
But loving God is not an exercise of the mind. As an academic idea without emotion or depth such love has no spiritual power – and on its own it’s not enough.
And so you see that is why Jesus challenges us to love God with our whole being – heart, soul, mind – and strength. To love God like this, is a natural response to his great love for us. No half measures, no conditions.
If we love God in this way then we cannot help but to love our neighbours as ourselves. This is the second part and flows from the first, and it is not that easy – for there is always the question, “Who is my neighbour?”
G. K. Chesterton said (I hope jokingly): “The Bible tells us to love our neighbours and to love our enemies – because they are generally the same people!”
This command to love God and to love our neighbours finds practical expression here and in many churches in October at the time of the annual stewardship appeal. In being asked to commit our time, our talents, and our treasure to the Church – and to make a financial pledge to our budget – we are not being asked just to make a commitment to the financial needs of the parish. We are really being asked to express our love for God as completely as Jesus requests. And to do that with enthusiasm, with passion, and with thinking.
And so you will be asked to think, and to act about a pledge. Let us see this not as the annual appeal, but as one more chance in our lives to show that we do love God, with all our heart, with all our mind, and with our soul, and our neighbours as ourselves.
Ultimately, we are being asked to show our love in a practical way because we remember that He first loved us.