(Loving God finds its expression in food
being delivered to the hungry in Honduras)
Loving God Defines Loving Neighbor
By Bishop Chris Giesler
For congregations in the United States, this Sunday comes two days before our national election for our President. Those preaching from this text can, if they wish, preach about how Christians can choose to vote based on their religious convictions. I note in the reflection below that our love of God must be expressed in how we spend our money and speak to one another. The preacher can extend this concept and talk about how our love of God should also impact how we vote. We should vote for the person who best exemplifies the values Jesus talked about in his ministry: hospitality for those at the margins, food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, etc.
Assigned Texts:
- Deuteronomy 6:1-9
- Mark 12:28-34
In our text from Deuteronomy today, Moses receives these words from God to give to his people: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.7Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead,9and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
This is the fundamental text that goes with our Jewish brothers and sisters when they wake in the morning, when they leave their homes, when they return home, and when they rest for the night. It is a reminder of a relationship with the eternal creator of the universe. It is so important that they are commanded to teach this to their children; they are to affix it to their hands and foreheads when they pray, and they are to put the text on their doorposts to acknowledge it each time they leave or enter. It is indeed quite remarkable.
If God were giving this command today, he might say, post this on your homepage, Facebook page, bathroom mirror, and refrigerator door. God wants this to be a constant reminder. Unfortunately, what happened was that reciting this verse soon devolved into a ritual that often lost its meaning. And lest we say this is a Jewish problem, we do it as well in our day and time. Our cherished traditions can also slide into meaningless rituals, like having a Lovefeast where there is no expression of love or a Christmas Eve candle service that leaves the light inside the sanctuary and does not follow us into the world.
In our Gospel lesson, a lawyer comes to Jesus asking a fundamental question. He wants to know which of the 613 commandments in the Hebrew Scriptures was the most important. It was challenging to keep track of all of these commandments, and there was always great debate among scholars of the day about how they should be prioritized. So, this man asks for THE most important commandment.
Jesus’ first response was predictable as he recited the command found in Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Again, this would have been the most familiar passage of scripture to anyone in that region, be they Jew or Gentile. Jesus could have easily left it right there since he had answered the question that had been posed to him.
But, Jesus goes a significant step further and picks up another important theme from the Hebrew Scriptures, most notably, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:34. Here, Jesus connects the love of God to love both self and neighbor, essentially saying that if we don’t love our neighbor, then our love of God might be shallow and self-serving rather than self-giving.
Every day, we should use rituals such as reciting the Lord’s Prayer and reading and praying the Moravian Daily text to celebrate our relationship with God and allow that relationship to influence how we speak to one another, how we manage our money, and how we conduct our lives.
How can loving God first and then our neighbor impact what we do and say in the next few days? How do they affect our personal decisions? How do they call us to be closer to God and closer to the world around us?
