That's straightforward enough! In fact, we might stumble over only four little words: Love. God. Neighbor. Self. Love God with your whole self. Love your neighbor as yourself. Words like these can lead to some questions that are not pieces of cake. How do I actually go about loving God and neighbor in such fashion? Why are these commandments linked in such an absolute way? And why does endorsing all this put one "not far from" -- but not "in" -- the Kingdom of God?
Let's start with that first word: love. There are plenty of times we can't crank out an ounce of charitable feeling towards someone. Especially when that someone is near and dear and has grieved, hurt, or angered us, we feel anything but loving. We don't even like that person. And to love persons that we're not close to, or who are actually strangers, just because they're in our vicinity? Riiight!
Beyond that, there are times we doubt God's care or are angry with God. Luther himself was almost driven to despair by the command to love a God whose commands and demands were so high and absolute. "Love God?" he's reputed to have cried. "Why, I loathed him!"
Other times we experience a spiritual dryness where we don't feel much of anything. Prayers seem mechanical; worship leaves us flat; reading scripture becomes a bore. Like Luther, we may be driven almost to despair by a command to love God with the totality of our being. How can love be commanded? Isn't that as realistic as asking a terrified child just "to relax"?
Love is not primarily an emotion or feeling. You don't have to like someone in order to love someone. Loving God means this: through the power of his Spirit, to pray deliberately and work for God's gracious will to be accomplished on earth as in heaven. Loving neighbor as self means this: through the power of God's Spirit, to pray deliberately and work for God's will to be done in the neighbor's life as it is done in your own.
Whatever feelings and emotions crop up when we love, at its core, love is about faithful obedience to God and gracious extension of God's justice and mercy to neighbor. We know a fair portion of God's will: that everyone comes to believe in his fierce and holy love for them, shown in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus. That all that opposes God's love be destroyed and that new sons and daughters be raised up from that watery burial. That everyone receives daily bread and life's necessities. That the sick are healed, the despairing given hope, the poor and weak have their burdens lifted. That the Good News is shared with them all. That sinners turn from their sin to receive life in God's kingdom -- and that they are welcomed into the fellowship of forgiven sinners. To love God means to say, "Yes!" to God's will with every fiber of our being. To love our neighbors means to pray for their good and to allow God to do, through us, even a small portion of his will for them.
Even when we don't feel a particular way, we can still, with God's help, begin to pray that God's will be done, and work for it to happen in our neighbors' lives. We're already answering the question, "Why are these commandments linked so absolutely?" But there's more to why our Lord was so emphatic about that point, and backed it up with the authority of heaven itself. It has to do with who God is, how God loves, and what it means that we are created in his image.
Jesus intends for us to look to his life as the pattern and source of our own love for God and neighbor. His own love for God is the human expression of the eternal Son's love for the Father. Within God's own self is a communion of absolute love between the Father and Son, shared through the Spirit. That loving God creates and redeems humanity with an equally enduring and passionate love. And Jesus' whole life was a demonstration of divine love for the "other," for the "neighbor," for ... us.
Think of that beloved verse: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). I doubt that God likes us when we are rebellious, selfish, destructive, and unfaithful. Nevertheless God loves us utterly. Jesus proved that love by actively and deliberately praying and working for our redemption, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God. That wasn't pleasant, easy, or convenient for our Lord. But do we doubt that he did it out of love?
As I said earlier, loving God is deliberately praying and working for what God desires and for what God names good. That's the kind of love for his Father that Jesus himself constantly showed. Now, we are still fallible, sinful human beings. We may still get angry with God, and sometimes we won't feel any exalted emotional response when we worship or pray. We may still doubt or wrestle with God. Even our Lord did that in Gethsemane! And yet in his next breath, he prayed, your will be done. Think of his anguished cry from the cross, too: "My God, why have you forsaken me?" And yet with his dying breath he gave a great shout and (if we are to believe Luke as well as Mark) commended his Spirit to his Father. Do we doubt that Jesus' love for God was absolute?
Loving God in faithful obedience, and loving neighbor by praying for and working God's will for them is precisely the pattern of love displayed by the Son of God himself. And we are created in his image and likeness. In Baptism we are grafted into his everlasting life and loving heart. What other kind of love could we possibly be meant to display?
There is an additional point to be made here. Jesus' love for his Father -- and for us -- is never a mere sterile, logical "Act of Will and Duty." There's never anything grim, calculating, guilt-inducing, or grudging in his love. Instead, words like joyous, compassionate, humble, shepherd, even mother hen are used to describe him. He's completely immersed in his Father's love; how else could he respond? Everything was grounded in his active, obedient praying and working of his Father's will for the good of his sisters and brothers. His joy, compassion, peace, holiness, and sheer loveliness are grounded in the love of his Father. That's what he wants us to experience and how he wants us to act. That's why he shares with us the Holy Spirit of his loving union with his Father: so that we can love rightly and beautifully, with his own love!
The scribe who came to Jesus with his question about the greatest commandment heartily endorsed Jesus' answer. He had a deep understanding of God's Law. Of him, Jesus said, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God" (v. 34). Which begs the question: Why did Jesus say, "You are not far from," rather than, "You are in," the Kingdom of God? Could it be that Jesus was "teasing" the scribe into seeing that the great, twofold commandment was literally enfleshed before his eyes?
Looking at Jesus, who stood an arm's length away, and hearing his words, the scribe was actually in the presence of God, whose will it was to save and redeem Israel and the world. Could he see that? Could that arm's length be overcome by an arm's embrace of this loving and self-giving One?
Looking at those around him, could the scribe actually see them as his neighbors? They included disputatious Sadducees, a poor widow, ostentatious wealthy contributors, and even those who refused Jesus' authority and words. And yet this same Jesus would willingly give his life for them, and open the riches of his Father's Kingdom to all who would turn to him in repentance, faith, and humility.
In spite of all the times we speak of and pray for (and even act on behalf of) "the sick," "the oppressed," "the poor," and so forth, loving our neighbor comes down to actual contact with individuals. It comes down to making concrete decisions that get our hands dirty, our schedules loused up, and our hearts broken. That's Jesus' way of loving; it won him a cross. Can we let his love shape ours, no matter how risky and painful those "close encounters with the sinful kind" may be?
I think it was Charlie Brown who said, "I love humanity! It's people I can't stand!" Yet the costly love that Jesus embodies involves an intimate encounter with God's fierce and holy love. It involves pouring out self for real people, sinners all, with all their real-life quirks, faults, smells, and flesh-and-blood sins.
Would the scribe allow Jesus to "hang" his knowledge of the law on a cross? Would he allow Jesus to "flesh out" God's will in his own life? Will we?
That harried young mother in the doctor's waiting room (or maybe the next pew): perhaps loving her as yourself means offering to watch the toddler while she feeds the baby. That person in line at the bank who's stumbling over the English language and struggling to understand deposits and withdrawals: could loving him mean stepping out of line and helping him get it straight? That next-door neighbor struggling to keep his marriage together, that daughter who pushes your buttons every ten minutes, that husband scared of being laid off -- these are the ones who desperately need the strong saving love, the compassion and mercy, the challenge and holiness and presence of Jesus. In those moments, dare to risk being rebuffed or inconvenienced. Dare to look foolish and make mistakes. Dare to love God and that person, even if it wrings your heart with pain to do so. It's what we've been created, redeemed, and commanded to do. Hang your whole life on love, for the truth is, it's God's love, active in you. And his love will never fail. Amen.