If you asked anyone studying their catechism what is the great commandment of Jesus they would probably be able to come up with the response Jesus gave today: love God and love your neighbor. I know, I know, send me in coach. While love of God and love of neighbor are not identical they are, as Jesus put it, similar, alike enough to one another as two sides of a coin. However, a closer look at the text suggests that Jesus does not command only two kinds of love – love of God and neighbor – he also commands a third love – love of self. Look at the commandment: “love you neighbor as yourself.” If you don’t love yourself, you don’t know how to love your neighbor! The love of God is also distorted if we do not love ourselves. Now we have a three sided coin, if there is such a thing. Let’s try to describe what these three kinds of love look like so that we will be able to fulfill the love command of Jesus more fully.
What does it mean to love yourself? At first glance you wouldn’t think we would need to learn how to love ourselves. We seem to do very well looking out for number one, thank you very much. However, the greed, selfishness, narcissism, vanity that is all too prevalent (I was going to say today but these have been human characteristics throughout history) are not examples of self-love at all. In fact, they are symptoms of the opposite, a kind of self-doubt. We are greedy because we need something outside of ourselves to make us feel good and possessions can do that, for a while … until we need more possessions. We are selfish because we don’t feel complete in ourselves so we put up walls to protect us from others hurting us. We are narcissistic because we need the affirmation of others since we are insecure about our identity. We are vain because we can’t imagine that we are worthwhile and valuable so we put on a false front to compensate for what we feel we are lacking. True self-love is nothing like that. When we have the kind of self-love the Bible talks about we know who we are – children of God, made in God’s image. Real self-love happens because we know that we don’t need to do anything or be anything other than what we are in order for God to love us. We are precious in God’s sight just as we are. Genuine self-love rests secure in the knowledge and awareness that we belong to the family of God as part of our DNA. Self-love manifests itself in the blessed assurance that God has a plan for our lives, that we are on the way, that we have an eternal destiny.
Love of our neighbor flows out of the love of self as we see ourselves reflected in others. We recognize in our neighbor what made love for self possible. Our neighbor is made in the image and likeness of God, precious in God’s sight. Our neighbor has a worth and dignity just in being who they are. Our neighbor’s value does not depend on their good looks or their income or their address but in their very being. Our neighbor will one day join with all God’s children in the great heavenly banquet so we’d better make friends with them now. There is one major way that love of neighbor differs from love of self. We’ve only got one self to love but there are lots of neighbors out there competing for our attention. That is why in the Bible the true test for love of neighbor is how we love those who ask something of us. We kind of have to love family and friends. It’s easy to love the beautiful people, witness 150,000 teen-age girls at the Taylor Swift concerts at Soldier Field. It’s harder to love those who are other, who are different. The Old Testament lesson gives some examples of the litmus test we can use for our love of neighbor. “Do not molest or oppress an alien.” What a challenge for us in Chicago as we try to reach out to the refugees who have been thrust upon us and are in desperate need as they sleep in front of the police stations. While we can’t do everything, we can do something. “Do not wrong the widow or orphan.” There are some in our community who are in need and love of neighbor requires that we reach out to them. The homeless and the hungry, the used and abused, the poor and abandoned all have a claim upon us. Loving those who are on the margins is the true test of love of neighbor.
How is love of God related to love of neighbor and of self? Jesus suggests that it’s a matter of wholeness – you love God with “all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.” We love God who is distinct from us. God is not our wishes and dreams writ large but One who we must encounter in all the divine otherness. We love God who has a created a world where grief and loss and pain are present as well as joy and hope — which is not how we would have done things. 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. Jesus placed love as the one essential commandment for his followers because love lets us know who we are, shows us how to treat our neighbor, and situates us correctly before God. The old song was right: love does make the world go round.
