There are certain things which you can try to see if you like. “Try it. You might like it.” Maybe you want to try tennis. You get a racket and go to the court and hit the ball. If you don’t like it you say, I want to stop and go home. Other things you have to give your whole self to. Let’s say you want to try sky diving. You get in the airplane, put on your parachute and when you’re high in the sky jump out of the plane. At that point you can’t say, “I don’t like this. I want to stop and go home.” No, once you’ve jumped you’re committed to seeing it through. The only way that you’ll know if sky diving is for you is to do it completely. The Biblical evidence is that our relationship with God is much more like sky diving than it is like tennis. If we think that we can dabble in God, tinker with faith, play at God’s love we will never get it. Only by throwing ourselves completely into the great enterprise of living as one who trusts that God is with us in all things and through all things will we ever get what divine life is all about.
That is what lies behind the description of the Great Commandment that Jesus gives to the Pharisees in St. Matthew’s gospel. Loving God with “all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind” demands a certain wholeness or completeness — ALL. Loving God cannot be a sometime thing, a part time thing, an irregular thing, a sporadic thing, an occasional thing. You can’t just love God when you feel like it, when the mood strikes you, when you’re on a roll. You can’t love God here but not there, at this place and not that. To love God with all your heart, soul and mind means you love God not only in church, but also at the dance; not only when you’re praying but also when you’re playing, not only on Sunday morning but also on Saturday night. Whole-hearted love involves good times as well as bad, sickness and health, for richer and for poorer. The kind of love that Jesus talks about is not a hobby that you work into your busy schedule but something which requires 100%, 365/24/7, from A to Z, the big enchilada, the full deck, the whole ball of wax. Loving God is not like dipping your toe in to test the water. It is diving into the pool and getting soaked to the skin.
Now think for a minute: when Jesus tells us to love God with all our heart he knows what our hearts are like. I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that some of what is in my heart is not pretty. Yes, I hope that there is love and openness and generosity and peace in my heart. But there’s a lot of other stuff too. There might be resentment in my heart over things that have been done to me over the years. There might be anger in my heart at situations which perpetuate injustice and abusive treatment. There might even be hostility in my heart when I see someone who is acting in a hateful manner. But the amazing thing is that Jesus instructs us to love God with all our heart – not just the best parts, not the worthy parts, not the holy parts but love God with all our hearts, good as well as bad. The command of Jesus serves as a reminder that the love of God is not required merely of the saints. We sinners have to love God too. If we can’t love with complete purity and innocence, we love as we can. The willingness to bring our hearts to God completely, knowing that we are full of imperfections and flaws, is preferable to pretending that my love of God is somehow other than or different from the reality in which I find myself. All our heart means all our heart.
The same is true when we think of loving God with all of our soul. Instead of a soul which is focused on living a spiritual life and awaiting an eternity on high with Jesus, my soul is too often frittering away its energy running after the distractions of this world. Instead of worrying about the things of heaven I worry about paying the bills and fixing up the building and scheduling the meeting and eating healthy food. When Jesus tells us to love God with all of our soul he doesn’t just mean the parts of ourselves which have a religious or sacred character. No, we have to love God even with those parts of our soul which are rooted in the troubles of this world. Maybe the soul of an angel can love God without those kind of distractions but a human soul can only love God in the midst of a world which includes CBS, CGI, CFM, CNN, CVS, the CTA, the CPS, the CDC, and the CIA. My soul might not be otherworldly but that’s the soul I must love God with.
And, of course, to love God with all of our mind includes a similar kind of mixed bag since my mind is full of a lot of junk — “stinkin’ thinkin’.” My mind is a morass of prejudices, cliches, bad attitudes, self-serving statements, unreflected opinions, blame for others, deal-making, selfishness and fake news. I would certain prefer that I had sufficient information, developed proper understanding, used good judgment and made proper decisions at all times. But since I don’t and since God wants the love of my mind such as it is I have to present myself to God with all of my thoughts, good and bad, and count on our heavenly Father to make up for what is lacking in my mind. The command of Jesus that we love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind means that the love God wants from us requires loving “just as I am.”
We love God with the mishmash of good and bad, sacred and profane, right and wrong that characterizes the all of our heart, soul and mind because God loves us first. God doesn’t wait for us to get our act together before extending unconditional love toward us but from the first moment of our existence bestows upon us limitless benevolence. God’s love is not contingent upon our goodness but is given to us because of God’s goodness. That also explains the seeming equation that Jesus makes between the love of God and love of neighbor. “The second commandment is like the first: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” How can love of my neighbor whose faults and failings drive me crazy at times be like the love of God who is all good and worthy of all love? It is because both kinds of love require merely that we love as we can. The love command of Jesus is not some impossible ideal but practical. So love God and neighbor even when you don’t feel all that loving. Love God and neighbor when you are having a bad hair day. Love God and neighbor when you get the elevator and when you get the shaft. Love God and neighbor when you get the bear and when the bear gets you. Love God and neighbor just because you can.
