Loving God

Matthew 22:34-46

You’ve heard me say it before – our faith is not primarily about right belief, nor is it about right action, though both are important and both have their place. Our faith is primarily about right relationship, and in this morning’s gospel we have it from the lips of the master himself,

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The whole of the faith tradition, the law and the prophets can be summed up in these two commandments – both commandments to love, to be in right relationship.

But often when people tell me, it’s all about being loving, I shudder. Because this isn’t about sentiment. It isn’t about warm fuzzy feelings. The kind of love that Jesus is talking about is not easy, it doesn’t necessarily feel nice and it isn’t always pleasant. It isn’t about smiling at people in the supermarket or helping an old lady cross the street. This is the kind of love that gets us into trouble. The kind of love that leaves Jesus strung out on a cross. An inconvenient love.

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

Sometimes people want to make Christianity all about being good to other people and they forget the first commandment, to love God. So this morning let’s just try to reflect on what it might mean to love the Lord our God.

There are preachers who argue that to say our faith is primarily about a relationship with God is misguided if not downright foolish. How, they say, can we have a relationship with Ultimate Being, with spirit who blows this way and that and no-one knows where it is coming from or where it is going?

From their perspective, by over-emphasizing relationship we run two risks.

The first is that we domesticate God – we imagine her as a kind of human – someone rather like us – we get into thinking what a friend we have in Jesus and soon we’re pals with the All-Compassionate, which reduces the awesome God who hung the heavens to the status of an invisible friend. The other risk is that we imagine that each of us will experience relationship with God in the same way and if mine doesn’t look like yours then one of us must be wrong, or inferior, or better. Which can lead to someone thinking that somehow they’re doing something wrong because they don’t have that “joy joy joy joy down in their heart” all the time.

Just recently we’ve learned that Mother Theresa didn’t experience a warm loving close relationship with God for much of her ministry – she experienced the silence and apparent absence of God – all she had to go on was her faith. This is true of other saints too. So it may be that those of us who have good warm or exalted feelings of God’s presence are the absolute beginners and those of us who keep wondering if God really exists are actually much further along the spiritual path!

If you’re having warm feelings about God it’s fairly easy to think about loving God with “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” But if you’re not, if your experience is closer to Mother Theresa’s then how do you know that you are loving God? What does it mean to love the ineffable?

Now you might say, you know that you love God when you love other people but I think it is possible to love another human and not love God. Love is a multi-faceted thing. Some love is a selfish, clinging unhealthy love, but it’s still love. I don’t think that loving which is dependent and demanding and focused on getting our needs met is the kind of love that Jesus is talking about. Nor is the superficial love which is generally friendly but doesn’t cost anything.

If we are followers of Jesus and believe that he gives us the ultimate example of how to be fully human, and we are learning to love in the way that he loved, it’s going to be costly. It’s going to require an effort. It’s going to mean letting go your own desires and reining in your reactions so that you can be truly present and open to the other person and the situation.

Which may be how we show that we love God.

So this morning let’s ponder these three questions:

How do we imagine God?

How do we know that we love God?

How do we show that we love God?

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