Three stories; The first concerns the great sixteenth century Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila. She was traveling to visit one of her convents when she almost died trying to cross a a rain-swollen river. Dripping wet and muddy she raised her arms and said, “No wonder, God you have so few friends. You treat the ones you have so poorly.” Second story is from the movie “Oh God.” The God character played by George Burns is asked if he made any mistakes. Sure, God answered. “Tobacco was one of my big mistakes. Ostriches were a mistake. Silly-looking things. Avocados, made the pit too big.” Third is from one of my favorite authors Annie Dillard: “Many times in Christian churches I have heard the pastor say to God, ‘All your actions show your wisdom and love.’ Each time, I reach in vain for the courage to rise and shout, “That’s a lie! — just to put things on a solid footing.” What these stories have in common is a less than reverential treatment of God. On this day when we hear the command to “love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind” we should be clear about who exactly we are loving. The catechism definition of God as all good and all powerful don’t exactly square with our experience. If God is powerful, how come we are going through this pandemic? If God is good why does racism continue to plague our society? What justice is there that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? How do you square God’s goodness and power with a world where things are so messed up? Where is God’s wisdom and love?
We have to wrestle with questions like these to make sure that we are loving “the Lord, your God” as God is and not as we would like God to be. There is a temptation to create God in the image we would like God to have – some combination of St. Francis of Assisi, Heidi’s grandfather, Santa Claus and a plush teddy bear. Wouldn’t God be more loveable if there was a cure for cancer, if there were no more hungry people in the world, if the violence in our city ended, if your husband hit six good numbers in the lottery? Imagine for a moment that you were God for a day. Aren’t those the kinds of things you would do? (You might throw in a White Sox World Series victory too.) But cancer, hunger, violence and useless lottery tickets persist — which means that the challenge we face is to love with our whole heart, soul and mind the God who lets such things persist, who doesn’t think as we do. The commandment is to love the God who is, not the God of our imagination.
All of which helps to explain why Jesus pairs the commandment to love God with the command to love our neighbor. At first it seems that these are very different things. After all, as the prayer goes, God is “all good and deserving of all my love.” My neighbor, not so much. My neighbor, relative, child, friend, schoolmate, co-worker is a mixed bag who sometimes is hard to tolerate, much less love. However, when we love God as God truly is, these dual commandments are not all that different. The command to love requires getting over ourselves and how we think things should be and giving of ourselves to the other. While I have met many couples who love each other deeply and have done so for many years I have yet to meet a couple who don’t, at times, disagree or argue. This is not all that different from our love of God. The commandment to love our neighbor is all about two who are different becoming one — the same with the love of God. We must love a God we at times argue with.
The command to love God with all our heart, soul and mind is not, therefore, a no brainer. Obey God, sure. Worship God, okay. But love God? To love God who is so totally other than we are and whose thoughts are not my thoughts nor God’s ways my ways (as the Prophet Isaiah puts it) makes demands on us. First, we love God who is distinct from me. God is not our wishes and dreams writ large but One who we must encounter in all the divine otherness. Second, we love God who has a created a world where grief and loss and pain are present which is not how we would have done things. The divine gift of free will challenges our sense of how things should go. Third, we love God not because we understand God but so that love will lead to understanding. God is always on the horizon, just beyond my reach. As in any love relationship the reasons you can list for loving someone are not really the reason you love them. The love comes first, the reasons later.
Which leads us to why – why is the commandment to love at the very heart of the message of Jesus? Quite simply it is because we are loved. From the first moment of our existence God has loved us just as we are. We didn’t do, we can’t do, anything to deserve that love. It comes as a free gift, unasked and unearned. AND, nothing that we have ever done or ever will do will stop God from loving us. What can we do in the face of such complete, total, unremitting, absolute love but to return it! We love God because we are loved by God. We love our neighbor because the God who loves us also loves them. Yes, things might be a mess but we experience God’s all-encompassing love in the smile of a baby, in the song of a bird, in October’s bright, blue weather, in the laughter of a friend. What else can we do but love in return!
