Sermon Title: "Love Is More Complicated Than It Appears"
Date: October 26, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 22:34-40

Love:  what a lovely word.  It sounds so simple, so straightforward, so easy to understand.  You love your mother, or your grandfather.  You love your brother or sister…most of the time.  You remember your first love in high school or college.  You love your spouse or partner.  You love your children.  And it goes without saying that you love and adore the cutest grandchildren on the face of the Earth!

Yet, then the cracks begin to appear.  What about when your love for your spouse turns bitter?  A parent, lover, child becomes abusive and dangerous?  Someone you care about deeply is voting the opposite way than you on Proposition 8, or for the other presidential candidate.  That is when love is more complicated than it first appeared—at least love as Jesus defined it.  In our culture, there are those who believe with the Old Beatles song that “all you need is love,” as if love were a fairly simple activity.  The trouble is we have attempted to make love a rather vague word that can mean just about anything you want it to mean.

Until we meet Jesus.  When we hear today that once again, for the gazillionth time, he was put to the test by the Pharisees, they thought they had him cornered.  There were 613 Mosaic laws, all of them binding on Jewish life.  Why not ask Jesus which one commandment is the greatest?  See how he answers that!

And Jesus, master that he was, answered admirably.  In response, Jesus quotes two traditional Jewish summaries—the commandment to love God, found in Deuteronomy 6:5, and the commandment to love neighbor as much as you love yourself, found in Leviticus 19:18.  Jesus’ answer to his critics is painfully obvious, because faithful Jews recite these words from the Shema each morning and evening.  The Pharisee’s attack is thus blunted by a disarming reply.

Jesus not only said that God is love, which everybody already believed, but he demonstrated, enacted, and embodied a very different definition of love than what everyone already believed about love.  And that’s when love got complicated.  Jesus loved not simply as a strategy to bring out the best in everybody, but he loved by commanding us to turn the other cheek when struck on one cheek, to go the second mile when commanded by an enemy to go one mile, to forgive our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to give without expectation of return.  In other words, you can’t just say you love somebody; you have to do something about it.

An institute has been established in Cleveland to examine the source and impact of unselfish, altruistic love, what it really means to say you love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself.  It’s called the Institute for Research into Unlimited Love (www.unlimitedloveinstitute.org), founded in 2001 by Stephen Post, a bioethicist, whom I quoted in the Meditative Moment in today’s bulletin.  Its researchers are looking at why some people become remarkably kind and generous—not only to family members, but also to strangers.  They are probing whether a believe in divine love translates into positive action.  And it’s studying how the good deeds affect the doer.  The Institute can give us some guidance on how we are to obey the great commandment in our lesson for today.  As much as we might want to faithfully follow Jesus’ commandment, we need a map to show us where love of God and love of neighbor will take us.

The person who takes time to drive a friend or neighbor to their chemotherapy session, and sits with them.  The person who volunteers for a charity or in a hospice, giving up hours of their time and pouring out their own compassion with no expectation of anything in return, except for a sense of exhausting satisfaction.  The schoolteacher who buys out of his or her own pocket what an disadvantaged student needs to be prepared for class.  The teenager who gives up part of their school vacation to work on a mission project among people they will likely never see again.  Says Stephen Post of the Institute for Research into Unlimited Love, “A single visionary individual, committed to change under the power of unlimited love, can make a difference in the world.”

But, there’s a problem.  If all of these good deeds are done simply to get a helper’s high, then it’s still all about us, and not about God.

Jesus is clear:  Love God, and love your neighbor.  Love which reaches our neighbors may be altruistic love, but not necessarily agape love.

The person who loves with agape love is not looking to drive home high on satisfaction, but is looking for help from on high.  That person, when she loves her neighbor, is loving God.  She works and volunteers not to feel good, but to touch God.

This is the thrust of Jesus’ comments here to the assembled onlookers.  Love God.   Confused about how to do that?  Love your neighbor.

The law of love is a powerful force.  When it’s embraced, and put into practice, personal relationships are affected and entire societies are transformed.  It doesn’t really matter whether the love’s being expressed as you shop for Christmas gifts for Native American children on an Arizona reservation or our Christmas families in Long Beach, as you cook meals or serve dinner for the hungry at Christian Outreach in Action, by volunteering side-by-side with others at your favorite charity, visiting a housebound person or sitting at a hospital bedside, or by talking to a stranger at fellowship hour today.  In every time and place and situation, the practice of love of God and love of neighbor is going to have an impact on the world.

But understand that this is all about the nature of God and how deserving God is of our love.  Jesus said first to “love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”  What better way to reach up and touch God than to reach down and touch the fallen, or to reach over and pull the alienated to ourselves, or to reach around and embrace someone who’s alone in the world.

Yesterday, I heard a social worker from the county Department of Children and Family Services tell how his own mother, as each of her children grew up and left the house, would take in another foster child.  Then when her own children were all gone, she adopted her foster children.  Recently, she received a call from the social worker.  He said, “I know your house is filled to its limit of eight.  I’ve called all my other foster families and no one will take in this three-month-old child who has been abused.  Will you?”  And she did.

By loving God, we can make a powerful difference in our world.